Sam Perduta was losing his mind at the mic. The audience could see it slipping through his open lips and strumming fingers as he played, a brilliant flash of light here; a catch of breath there. In a small, clean corner of his skull, Erin McKeown, Buddy Holly and Wilco were slapping high fives and toasting to his new-found insanity.
Lucy Gellman Photo
Or maybe he had lost it already, wailing:
Lonesome, when I see you smile
And I’m dreaming that I’ve been someone else
Holy, when you’re here for a while
All is beaming and we’re no longer in hell
I lost my mind in 2009
Perduta and bandmates Greg Perault (bass), Dan Hollenbeck (drums) and Ilya Gitelman (guitar, pictured) make up the latest iteration of the New Haven based Elison Jackson, a folk-rock tour de force named after Perduta’s late grandfather, who died in a seafaring accident long before his birth. This summer, the group faced the daunting task of reinventing itself, when its guitarist Mike Kusek “decided to be a grown up” and left due to work commitments. In their inaugural concert as a “new” group Wednesday night at the Outer Space, the New Haven band proved that it doesn’t just have that it factor that has scored awards and interviews on public radio. The members, particularly Perduta, are ready to move into a new period of writing and music making.
”For two years, we were five guys. It kind of … it kind of passed its course. We were a loose and at times jammy band for a while – I think we’re tightening it up. We’ve been seeing different kinds of audiences in the past six months, so I think … I think we’re going to try to keep it a little more together,” Perduta said at a rehearsal earlier this month.
The energy of ‘let’s just do it’ is really exciting,” added Perault (pictured).
Bear Grass, who got the audience ready for Elison Jackson.
Revved up after performances by Lea and Bear Grass (pictured above), Perduta led the charge, inviting a small but faithful audience into a winding, morose kind of storytime hour. As the main vocalist and songwriter for the group, he is perhaps its most public face, the guy you see around town and sort of know. But the visibility has not made him an overbearing presence in the ensemble.
To the contrary, the timber of his voice as it wound around and meshed with the other instruments brought the band together. In his throat was a rusted, bottomless box of wonderful things: a big chunk of Iowa sky, under which banjo or bass could be played late into the night; a few brown ales, newly opened around a campfire, an ambivalent child’s whine, turned into something spectacular. Listen to pieces like “I lost my mind in 2009” (above), and you disappear into it, only to come out understanding words like memory and melancholy a little differently.
But he wasn’t alone. Perault played with soul and vigor, infusing his bass playing with hints of classical to rock music. Gitelman, who comes to Elison Jackson from Ports of Spain, and Hollenbeck, a keyboard player who “got pushed into” playing the drums after EJ’s drummer left, held their own during the concert. Gitelman in particular is a proficient guitarist (click on the videos for more), providing a steady beat for Perduta to build on top of. With riffs during pieces like “Burned” (below) that had those who stuck around whooping and cheering for more.
Which they got.
“This was a test run,” Perduta said after the show. “And it was good.” His cigarette let off wispy puffs of smoke into the cool night, bright white against the stars for a moment, before disappearing into the wide, arcing Connecticut sky.
