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El
Ray
Danish surf-rocking/cigar-smoking/rum-drinking El Ray are
back, with a
brand new album called “Tick… Tick… Tick…”
which received rave reviews
from a lot of music magazines, including this one. Now they
are back on our site, for a talk about themselves, and surf
music in general. El Ray are straight off, one of the best
surf acts you can see in Denmark; surf rock at its finest.
Back from touring in Europe, I catched up with the four members
of El Ray: El Twang, El Firetone, El Fuerte and El Kid’o
– here’s what they had to say for themselves.
By Kristian
 LowCut:
Theres not a lot of information about you on your website,
so can you tell us who is in the band, and maybe how it was
formed?
El Ray:We started the band in 2001. El Twang and El
Firetone played
guitars together in a “indie-rock band” and decided
to start a type of band, that could play everywhere without
a PA system and a band that did not have long lyrics about
life and death…El Fuerte joined shortly after and he
knew a cool bassist, El Doc´torro - and El Ray was born!
El Doc’torro isn’t in the band anymore and has been
replaced by newest kid on the block, El Kid’o.
LC: On a side note – whats up with your names?
Any specific meaning?
El Ray: Just for fun really. A lot of surf, garage,
rock’n’roll and rockabilly bands do this and we
just bought into that idea. We thought of stuff that could
relate to each bandmember and put ‘El’ in front
of it. For example ‘firetone’ = fast fiery double-picking,
twang = Gretsch rock’n’rollish sound, ‘fuerte’
= fast’n’crazy drumming and so on. Voila! Guess
that would make you El Reporter… On a more serious note
we think that a lot of bands in Denmark tend to promote themselves
self as persons through the music they play. We want and try
to have a band with focus on the music more than the persons.
Maybe that’s a cliche but that’s also why it’s
completely true!
LC: Did you start off with straight rock’n’roll
– it seems like a very specific step to play Instrumental
Surf, or did you always have an interest in surf music?
 El
Ray: No, before we formed El Ray we were all more or less
newcomers
to the garage-scene. Actually what got the band started was
covering a few Calexico and Ventures instrumentals. Then a
guy called Frank gave us a compilation cd with wild surf-tunes.
We figured out how to play those songs and got a huge kick
out of it. From there we started to do our own stuff. We entitled
our first demo “El Frank Francesco D´angelo EP”
as a tribute to Frank for getting us started.
LC: In the press release for your latest album, you
say that you’ve found Surf elements in bands like The
Pixies and Bob Hund – do you, think a lot of bands let
themselves inspire by the surf genre?
El Ray: Yes, we do. We also believe that a lot of musicians
easily gets into to surf because of the energy, sound and
feel. From Pulp Fiction and on to the end of the of 90’s
a lot of bands always mentioned surf-music as something they
got inspired by. Bob Hund do some excellent reverby rock-instros
and The Pixies went as far as to cover surf-classic ‘Cecillia
Ann’ and put it as the opening track on Bossa
Nova. That was so cool! We call our style “Surf with
a twist” because we get as much inspiration from musical
styles that´s got nothing to do with surf as we get
from the classic surfstyle.
LC: Which bands have been the major inspirations in
developing your special style?
El Ray: Man or Astroman?, The Apemen, Satan’s
Pilgrims, Link Wray, The
Ventures, Dick Dale, Surfaris, Johnny Cash, The Pixies, Calexico,
Bob Hund, Sonic Youth, Elvis, John Lee Hooker + 1000s of bands
that plays real instruments and have a pulse.
LC: Some surf bands like The Tremelo Beer Gut have
recieved a lot of good reviews, and a lot of people went to
see their concerts. Do you think surf bands will ever achieve
the same general appeal as say The Raveonettes?
El Ray: No.
LC: You’ve just come back from a European tour.
Which do you enjoy most, touring or recording, and why?
El Ray: It is two very different kind of things. In
the studio you get to listen to and experiment with your stuff
– and you are not that drunk... We seldom record in the
rehearsal room, so we enjoy to get tunes down on tape. And
of course releasing them. When we play live/tour, it´s
all about sex, drugs and rock’n’roll – which
in El Ray terms means something like: love’n’hugs,
beer’n’HavannaClub,
surf’n’roll and dance’n’shouting…
LC: Whats the weirdest, coolest, freakiest, or scarriest
thing thats ever happened to you while touring?
 El
Ray: Ermmm, once we got pulled over by the police because
they thought something was wrong with El Firetone. He was
asleep up against the window and looked really pale, bad and
as they said ‘dead’…When we played in Thun,
Switzerland in February the hotel we were staying at made
a booking mistake which meant that El Firetone and El Twang
had to share the bridesuite and sleep in a heartshaped bed
with only one quilt…that was kind of weird and scary.
LC: You’ve already released two albums, plus a
single – do you still have appetite for more?
El Ray: Yes, we do. We won’t stop until we hit
the Temple of Surf in Santa
Cruz, California!
LC: Any future plans? New records, new more tours?
El Ray: We want to tour the US (got any contacts?)
and record more albums because they just get better and better.
We haven’t reached ‘point break’ yet. Another
Benelux/Germany tour is being arranged for February 2005.
LC: Anything you want to add?
El Ray: Thanks!
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