I’m Eli and I’m into electric acoustic and lap steel slide guitars. My former bands include playing everything from fusion, jazz and folk to electronic and progressive rock with bands including The Baker’s List, Figaloo, Quid and Soundchasers.

 A Melbourne Guitar Epiphany

My musical epiphany came later than it probably does for most people. Growing up in Melbourne, I never took music lessons as a kid, nor did I try to learn any instruments.

Studying for my Year 12 Finals, however, had an inspirational effect on me. By which I mean, faced with my school books I suddenly found inspiration to check out my mum’s old guitar stashed away in a cupboard in my room. That was more way interesting than studying and thus began my love affair with the fretboard!

My first “wow!” moment happened almost immediately – right when I picked up that guitar and was fiddling around. I landed on a note I recognised – the first note from the lead melody in Nothing Else Matters by Metallica. Then I found the next, and another, and the next thing I was playing it…WOW, I didn’t realise it worked like that! Soon I was playing solos to Metallica songs & Guns N' Roses ballads. 

Melody Maker

From the start, I was all about guitar melody. The harder part was the rhythm – I found it boring and tedious, getting the bar chords down and rhythm strong. Lead and melodies and solos came very naturally. It makes sense that a lot of my guitar hero players started on drums, and in a way I’m quite envious of them to have that foundation, but I guess I was a late bloomer! By far my biggest influence is Trey Anastasio from Phish, but also the Beatles, even Kirk Hammett, Steve Vai.

My early days were undoubtedly all about the melodic ballads – Jimmy Page from Zeppelin, then progressed to the Chili Peppers and got into the funk stuff a little bit more. I loved the tone of Santana and went through a big acoustic guitar period where we’d jam all night long – Dave Matthews Band were a big influence. John Schofield, Medeski Martin and Wood too. Then I discovered Phish. It was new level of musicianship, creativity, diversity – it changed me. In terms of tone and technical ability, they blow everyone else out of the water – and Phish remains my biggest influence by a long way.

From Glick’s to The Espy

Playing with others happened very quickly – I went away on a gap year to Israel. After I came back, I had a big community of friends playing music. My very close friend owned a bakery on Glenferrie Road – Glick’s Cakes & Bagels. There was an empty room over it. One day we just started cleaning it out – this was an industrial area so we could play in the jam room as loud as we wanted, until whenever we wanted. We’d always be jamming together and the natural progression was to form a band. We’d bring up leftover doughnuts and bagels and play till 3am. Our first band was The Baker’s List, the next one was Figaloo. The bass player and drummer from Figaloo went on to form Quid with me.

Figaloo got fairly big back then and even ended up with a residency playing in the Gershwin Room down at The Espy in St Kilda every Sunday. Lots of the people we jammed with went on to become career musicians – people like Simon Mavin from Hiatus Kaiyote, Husky Gowinda, Jess Lubitz from Tinpan Orange.

There was a real sense of excitement around the Espy back in the ‘90s and early ‘00s – you were playing on the same stage as the Red Hot Chilis, Nirvana, all these massive rock bands before they were stadium bands. When they came through Melbourne they’d play at the Epsy, so playing there once a week for a year or two was very cool. It was the classic rock dive bar – the front room was dark and grungey, with old sticky floors, but had this cool vibe.

Anyone looking to see good music in Melbourne would hang there – there were various rooms, and the Gershwin where we played every Sunday night was an awesome music space. It was a like a dream – we were so lucky to have that community.

Music Is Everything

Music is everything for me – I don’t quite know how to explain it (I’d rather play a song about it!), but it does seep into everything I do. It’s my meditation, my inspiration, my creative outlet. I have the guitar in my hands for at least a couple of hours every night – sometimes up to four or five hours if I’m particualrly inspired or learning something.

Now that I live in Sydney, I haven’t had a full band for quite some years. I mainly write and record in my home studio, play the odd Zoom gig, and I’ve been doing little parties and festivals for years. I occasionally still put an outfit together when there’s a suitable occasion, but since I haven’t really had a band since I left Melbourne, I decided to put together this website as a focus for my musical endeavours.

Thanks for reading. If you’d like to collaborate (or even just to say hi!), please do leave a comment or get in touch.