ROLE MODELS: Elvis Perkins

It’s sort of hard to narrow the list…but if I had to pick one or two whose music I find the most compelling and rich, it’d have to be Mr. Cohen and Mr. Dylan. When listening to those guys at their best, the song and performance become like a force of nature. They’re something elemental that can be broken down into its parts-but it needn’t be. I find them so impressive and potent because their music can be such a complete and powerful event.My Top Dogs

It’s sort of hard to narrow the list…but if I had to pick one or two whose music I find the most compelling and rich, it’d have to be Mr. Cohen and Mr. Dylan. When listening to those guys at their best, the song and performance become like a force of nature. They’re something elemental that can be broken down into its parts-but it needn’t be. I find them so impressive and potent because their music can be such a complete and powerful event.

Early Listening

I listened to a whole lot of weird stuff in my teenage years that was offered to me by MTV. Not really knowing where to get my music at that time, I took it; I went for the glam-rock moment-Poison, Cinderella, Guns ‘n Roses and Warrant. At this point, I don’t know that they have much to say to me.

Digging Deeper

I do remember hearing Simon and Garfunkel songs coming at me through various channels before making my own musical choices. I knew there was something mystical about them. They and Cat Stevens suggested that I’d be able to choose music for myself.

Career Move

I don’t know if I can pinpoint when I decided to become a songwriter. I know that I felt good with a guitar in my hand, more than I did with other tools of creation and destruction. I wasn’t ever given too much of an example of how to be anything other than a creative person. My father [Anthony Perkins, best known as Norman Bates in Psycho] was into words and wordplay…he was a singer himself. I’m the kind of person who just takes literature and poetry into my quiet time. I was a writer of words and a player of guitar. They just found themselves meeting together.

Father & Son

It wasn’t the easiest jump into my consciousness to see my father as a successful artist. I think I have experienced my fair share of self-imposed pressure to make my folks and other creative people in my ancestry proud-to feel like my own person, not just be “son of” or “nephew of,” or whatever. I wanted to be my own creative presence.

Hollywood Exposure

I wasn’t around actors when I was younger [so much] that I wasn’t impressed by it. In other words, when one did appear, it was as extraordinary a thing as it would be for anyone seeing someone in the wild…that they’ve seen on the screen. I wasn’t desensitized by any means. My dad did a good a good job of keeping work and home separate so it didn’t feel like a Hollywood family. It wasn’t a happening every Thanksgiving; it was pretty tame.

Different Strokes…For Different Folks

I have no idea what kind of music is being heard these days [on screen]. I myself am not in the mind frame to hear a song in a movie-or on the radio, for that matter-and go and buy it.

The Songs, The Album

[My songs are] all written in the language of my mind, my experiences. In essence, it makes sense that it’s an Elvis Perkins album. As much as we try to have a linear ending of our experience, the reality is that songs get locked into our personalities and our stance toward the world. There are so many common threads that any human deals with from day to day…that what we have here is a chaotic blanket of all the colors of a rainbow, and I hope that the songs make some sense together.

Elvis Perkins’ latest album, Ash Wednesday, is available online and at retail locations.