Eyes Lips Eyes Final Show -- Part 3

Shows started popping up with high frequency (no pun intended).  Here are a couple of show posters.  I believe the biggest show of the fall of 2007 was at the Sego Festival.  The Sego Festival was basically a local music and art festival in Provo that ran for a few years.  That year had some big local headliners: Chris Merritt, Fictionist, Neon Trees, Another Statistic, Return to Sender, Mathematics Etc.  Elizabethan Report found its way in one of the headliner slots and played one of the their better shows.  It was the biggest crowd they had played for.

For the next while they focused their attention to putting out their first EP 'Hola May'.  They converged on a cabin just east of Park City and lived there for at least a week, doing nothing but recording.  I made my way up there a few times to see how things were going and to add some background voices and claps.  Months later the EP was released to high praise.  I was really excited because I had listened for months to the songs in concert but couldn't listen to them outside of that, which drove me crazy.

At the beginning of the summer they received a big invitation to play in the North American Music Union in Pittsburgh to compete in a contest of a hand full of other college bands.  The winner to be given a one album deal.  The rest of the festival included acts like Bob Dylan, The Black Keys, The Roots The Raconteurs and Spoon.  All of this was currated by Anthony Keidis.  So there was no way I was going to miss this.  I flew into Washington DC, hung out at a family reunion in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, then drove 9 hours from there to Lake Chautauqua where they were playing a show to a random art colony there.  I then drove from there to Pittsburgh.  There was some nervousness among the band members of what songs they should play.  It was only a 25 minute set so they had to decide which songs would resonate best with the judges and the crowd.  It took a while before they narrowed down some songs.

The other college bands played to some mixed reception.  I felt a little intimidated for them.  Two bands that were invited were French Horn Rebellion and Royal Bangs, both of which currently are successful touring bands.  They went on and I did my thing in the crowd, danced around, clapped and what not and the band came through had an awesome performance.  The crowd really got into it and responded very positively.  After the show they completely forgot to man the merchandise table, which had a good little crowd around it so I ran over and started helping people.

When it came to judgement time, another band was picked but the judges had them as a very close second place.  They definitely made an impression, even the local paper thought they had the best performance.

Things were on a high from that point.  They pushed hard to put out a full length album.  This would be called 'Are you a Murderer?' based a lot on a couple of Tony's relationships.  It was a very descriptive and visceral album.  Much different than the previous EP.  While it had some lighter numbers, there were some darker ones as well.

Months went on after the album where they did played some shows.  I followed them to San Diego, LA, Durango and Telluride CO. for some shows.  During this time they decided it was time to pick up a manager, which is when Alex Jones came into the picture.  A big fan of the band from Santa Ynez (near Santa Barbara), his first order of business was to change the bands name and to have them move to LA.  I had mixed feelings on both.  Even though everyone in the world couldn't pronounce Elizabethan Report correctly, Being a very nostalgic man by nature I wanted them to keep the name, I liked the name.  I also loved having them live nearby, but could understand the need for both changes.

With this move came the end to the Hillary Hathaway era, which ended on a semi-weird note.  The alliance with her was always an unsteady one, so it was not a big surprise to see it happen.  In my opinion, it was needed to happen to further the bands success.  The band contemplated pulling on another female singer; even played another show with one to test it out. In the end it was determined that they would continue on without the extra singer.

Several names were thrown around, like Sweat and Blue Red, but ended up land on Eyes Lips Eyes based on the lyrics of a song that was yet to be released.

--To Be Continued--