Meet Aloha Soul Artist, Eli Smart!
Interview by Lindsey Dadourian
Photo by Phoebe Fox
Our Editor in Chief, Lindsey, got the chance to chat with up and coming artist, Eli Smart. He is an “Aloha Soul” musician from Hawaii and continues to put out super groovy tunes, with his next one being released this Friday! They talked about musical influences, dream venues and more!
PLEASER: Hello! I love “Highschool Steady” so much, it's been on repeat for me recently since I found it! What are some of your processes behind your music and your songwriting?
Eli: I think I'm always in search of a reliable process that I can trust every time, but I think it is different every single time. “Highschool Steady” for instance, I had just come home from university at the start of Covid, back here to Kauai. A lot of stuff I do is all like, I plug a guitar into a looper pedal and run it through an amp and just start messing around with guitar ideas and melodies and chords and riffs. For this one, the original voice memo that I had on my phone was called like “Birds” or something. I don't know if you can hear right now but there's like birds all the time. And it was a super chime-y guitar riff maybe inspired from a lot of birds. But then after that, I really dug it and tried to beatbox a groove in my voice, somewhat just to kind of note the rhythm that I was hearing with it. And then from that I tried to make it into more of a tune by recording the guitar riff into the computer and then tried to write words to all that and then made it more like an actual tune. I guess a lot of tunes happen in a similar way. Words are always the thing I take the most time with because that's the hardest part for me, so that usually comes last and then I'll record it all and put it together. I wish there was more of a straightforward, reliable process. I think that's something I need to figure out, what works for me the best because I kind of feel like I'm shooting in the dark most of the time but, hey, maybe that in and of itself is the process.
P: Yeah, if it works it works! And it definitely seems to be working!
E: Yeah sometimes. For every one of those, there's so many more.
P: I know you have had a lot of musical influences in your family, what was some of your experience growing up being surrounded by that?
E: Yeah big time! Most people in my family play or are deeply passionate about music. And everyone has been incredibly supportive of me choosing to put energy into it growing up, whether it was like just having instruments around when I was really young, to like when I was in middle school, like 11, I started performing in a band with my mates. My dad would help us set up our gear and we would just post up in random places on the island and just play anywhere we could for anything. Everyone was super helpful. My mom helped me write a tune. The first time I tried writing a tune, she sat down with me and was just incredibly supportive, which is something no one is obligated to do but everyone was really so sweet with it. My grandpa, he plays jazz, he's like a crazy jazz wizard, he lives in San Francisco. And my grandma, she's still in this all girl rock band called the Ace of Cups that came about during the 60s. She was part of this crew called the Merry Pranksters who I guess took a bunch of LSD and drove in a bus across the country. She's the wildest one of all. My mom and dad, they both play. My dad is a jazz guitarist and my mom sings a bunch of jazz as well. And then as I was growing up here, we took over this ukulele shop where I worked growing up and we sold records and then we put a stage in the corner so it kinda became like our hometown venue. We just made a little environment for it within our family and everyone has their own relationship with it, you know, everyone's passion for it is unique. I think growing up and being able to see that it was just very apparent in how much joy it brought everybody, so I'm sure that's why I gravitated towards it. It was never imposed upon me but, yeah, I was very inspired to do it.
P: What are some of your biggest goals for your music or a potential audience?
E: As far as the audience, I love making music for anybody and everybody. That's the truth, I love music from all over the world, and music finds its way to people. I would love my music to appeal to anyone that vibes with it! As far as goals, the more time I spend in the process and doing music, it becomes more apparent that there isn't ever a point where you get to somewhere and feel as if that's it. I'm always brought back to realizing the actual getting there and the process of it all, and the people I connect with through it, whether it's on the music making side of it, or through playing music, or just like the different places that music has brought me. That's all that there really is,is the actual doing it and the process. So my goal is to just be present in that process of music and life and just to try to do it in a healthy way. And have more beautiful experiences and meet more groovy people through it.
P: Yes 100%! I have met some of the coolest people thanks to this industry.
E: If you think about it, it's what there is to take away from it, like the actual places it draws you to and just the really lovely connections, and I'm not talking just from an industry standpoint, just literally like the person to person connection to people, that's all I think anything is actually about.
P: Speaking of people and influences, if you could pick any artist past or present to collaborate with, who would be your top three choices?
E: Oh damn, okay, top three. Present, I'm like the biggest fan of Brittany Howard, who plays in Alabama Shakes and she has her incredible solo career. I think she's just a wicked songwriter and guitar player and I love her voice and all the production on her stuff. Yeah, that would be awesome to even meet her. And then past, there's a Brazilian composer named Antônio Carlos Jobim, who's written like all the most beautiful bossa nova music. I don't know what I would collaborate with him on but I'd love to at least meet him. Yeah, he makes all of that beautiful music. If I get one more choice, maybe Paul McCartney or maybe like Smokey Robinson or something, I don't know, there's too many to choose from.
P: What's a song that you can physically never skip everytime it comes on? Because that was me with “Highschool Steady” for a hot minute!
E: No way! That's crazy to hear, thank you. For me, I wanna give you an honest answer. I'm going to scroll through my Spotify. I always have a hard time skipping “I Say a Little Prayer” by Aretha Franklin. I don't know, there's something about that intro that grabs me every time and I love it. Everything about it is just perfect. I think her sisters sing background vocals on most of her recordings, if that fact is correct then I love it and, yeah, it's badass.
P: And you have a new single coming out on Friday, are you excited about that?
E: That's right! That's a fun one! It's called “Done Me,” and my best mate in England, this guy James Kerr, we went to the University of Liverpool together. He actually plays drums in my band and has the same birthday as Ringo and is from Liverpool so he's basically our very own Ringo. He is an incredibly talented songwriter and producer of a bunch of his own stuff as well, but we lived together in London in a town called Lewisham and we sat down to work on a tune. We were both feeling an upbeat kind of vibe. I was listening to this tune by a guy named Georgie Fame called “Yeah Yeah.” It's an upbeat, just really groovy tune. And then we started messing around with this kind of groove and wrote this tune, and I whistle all the time so it's got a bunch of whistling on it. We were just kinda dancing around the room making this tune and it happened all quite naturally. I think we maybe had been touring or had a bunch of gigs before that so we were definitely both a little tired and it was probably getting a little gloomy in London and we needed some peace and love, some sunshine. I think through this tune we were able to give ourselves some life.
P: Yeah, I'm super excited for it! My last question is if you could pick anywhere in the world to do a show, where would you pick?
E: This is a good question. I'm not too familiar with too many iconic venues but we recently did a show here in this outdoor pavilion in my hometown. It was last weekend when we did it and it was like this really beautiful thing and we were within this forest with these big trees everywhere. I felt like I hadn't played a show in nature in a while and that was really beautiful. There's gotta be some groovy natural amphitheaters or nature venues in parts of the world. That was just a really cool experience and I would love to do more of that. And then iconic venues like Red Rocks, and then the opposite of that which is equally as appealing. Like, I've never been to New York but there's a place called The Bitter End, and a bunch of live records were recorded there, like Curtis Mayfield’s live record. I don't know if it's still up and running but cool things like that are on my bucket list too.
Make sure to check out Eli Smart’s newest single, “Done Me,” out now.
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