Electro 35 Comes Together For St. Regis Concert May 25
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By David [email protected]
Thanks to technology, however, they can still put an album together.
The collaborative group will come together May 25 for its album release concert from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. at St. Regis Club, Warsaw. Tickets are $5 at the door.
In an interview at Courthouse Coffee, Fellman, 29, said he grew up in Winona, Minn. He went to college in the Twin Cities for music.
“I’ve done basically nothing with my music degree,” he admitted.
But he did meet his wife there. Her family is from Fort Wayne. After two years and a few kids, they moved to Indiana.
“My band actually still lives in Minnesota for the most part, two of them do,” he said. A girl who sings with the band lives in Chicago.
“We do play together every month or two. We’ll do a show here, Chicago or back in Minnesota. The most money goes to whoever has to drive the farthest,” Fellman continued.
He started playing guitar when he was 17. For the longest time, he just performed church music. A couple of years ago, he started working on his own music.
“My band formed – I was just going to do a couple of my original songs with a friend who has a studio. I wanted a bass player, so I asked a friend of mine from college to play bass with me. Then my violinist used to work with me at a church I played at and he just showed up at practice one day,” Fellman recalled.
Last year, Electro 35 released an album titled “Loose Ends.” This year, they added a drummer, who also is their audio engineer.
“It’s more of a rock album than a folk album, but we do what we call electrified orchestral folk. Because I do kind of finger-style guitar, I’m a pretty accomplished kind of guitarist. The vocals are pretty simple, catchy melodies. I’ll write about all kinds of different things, from the Arab Spring to the depression in the Third World,” he said.
That doesn’t mean he also won’t write about loss and love. He said he’ll venture into some “poppy” kind of stuff occassionally.
“That’s kind of punctuated with a very good stand-up bass player. He actually plays an electric bass,” Fellman said. “And then our electric violinist, he comes up with all kinds of different sounds, so you have something that doesn’t fit into any neat genre because the instrumentation doesn’t lend itself to it. Adding the drums makes it a little more normal.”
First they had the folk album, now with their newest release, “Closed System,” it’s a little different.
“The idea is just, it’s about ... We often think life is open ended. We don’t think about the ultimate consequences of a lot of the little things we do. It’s an open system. But technically speaking, the whole universe is a closed system. Ultimately there’s only so many molecules and we’re stuck on this planet, so there’s only so many people. It’s really about our interconnectedness and how we affect each other,” he explained.
In the fall, Fellman said he’s going on a solo tour to New York and back with a couple of acoustic artists from the area, including Patrick Woods, Warsaw. They recently did an acoustic tour in California. But he’s looking forward to the album release concert.
“I really like the St. Regis Club. I play there on occassion. It’s a fun club. I like the atmosphere, the members, the clientele they have there. It’s a fun place to hang out. It’s a pretty intellectual crowd. It’s stimulating to talk to them. It’s not like going to a music club in Fort Wayne with people who can’t string two sentences together,” he said.
Classical guitarist Derek Ort, Fort Wayne, will be the opening act for the May 25th show.
To get Electro 35’s album, listeners will have to download it.
“Our album’s only going to be available online. We have, after this album, we have five more ready to go,” Fellman indicated. “And so we decided not to dump money into printing CDs.”
Besides the cost of printing CDs, he said there’s the burden of carrying the inventory around. By encouraging fans to buy digitally, the band saves on expenses.
“We make more money, and we don’t have to have money tied up in discs,” he said.
Half of their sales comes from online radio, anyway, he said, like Spotify.
“I think we’re better served from doing it online,” he said.
Online is how Electro 35 put its albums together. They don’t all go into a studio at the same time, but record stuff and send it to each other.
“It’s kind of an interesting way to write and do music together. It’s really effective. We don’t know how to just sit down and write music together. That’s just a gigantic waste of time because normally I create the structure or someone else comes up with a basic structure and we send it back and forth until we each get our parts. By the time we actually play it together, it’s almost ready to record. Just sitting down from square one, we just don’t do that anymore,” he explained.
For more information about Fellman or Electro 35, visit online at electro35band.com, johnfellman.com, Youtube.com/johnfellman, Twitter.com/johnfellman or Facebook.com/pages/JohnFellman/34167341028[[In-content Ad]]
Latest News
E-Editions
Thanks to technology, however, they can still put an album together.
The collaborative group will come together May 25 for its album release concert from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. at St. Regis Club, Warsaw. Tickets are $5 at the door.
In an interview at Courthouse Coffee, Fellman, 29, said he grew up in Winona, Minn. He went to college in the Twin Cities for music.
“I’ve done basically nothing with my music degree,” he admitted.
But he did meet his wife there. Her family is from Fort Wayne. After two years and a few kids, they moved to Indiana.
“My band actually still lives in Minnesota for the most part, two of them do,” he said. A girl who sings with the band lives in Chicago.
“We do play together every month or two. We’ll do a show here, Chicago or back in Minnesota. The most money goes to whoever has to drive the farthest,” Fellman continued.
He started playing guitar when he was 17. For the longest time, he just performed church music. A couple of years ago, he started working on his own music.
“My band formed – I was just going to do a couple of my original songs with a friend who has a studio. I wanted a bass player, so I asked a friend of mine from college to play bass with me. Then my violinist used to work with me at a church I played at and he just showed up at practice one day,” Fellman recalled.
Last year, Electro 35 released an album titled “Loose Ends.” This year, they added a drummer, who also is their audio engineer.
“It’s more of a rock album than a folk album, but we do what we call electrified orchestral folk. Because I do kind of finger-style guitar, I’m a pretty accomplished kind of guitarist. The vocals are pretty simple, catchy melodies. I’ll write about all kinds of different things, from the Arab Spring to the depression in the Third World,” he said.
That doesn’t mean he also won’t write about loss and love. He said he’ll venture into some “poppy” kind of stuff occassionally.
“That’s kind of punctuated with a very good stand-up bass player. He actually plays an electric bass,” Fellman said. “And then our electric violinist, he comes up with all kinds of different sounds, so you have something that doesn’t fit into any neat genre because the instrumentation doesn’t lend itself to it. Adding the drums makes it a little more normal.”
First they had the folk album, now with their newest release, “Closed System,” it’s a little different.
“The idea is just, it’s about ... We often think life is open ended. We don’t think about the ultimate consequences of a lot of the little things we do. It’s an open system. But technically speaking, the whole universe is a closed system. Ultimately there’s only so many molecules and we’re stuck on this planet, so there’s only so many people. It’s really about our interconnectedness and how we affect each other,” he explained.
In the fall, Fellman said he’s going on a solo tour to New York and back with a couple of acoustic artists from the area, including Patrick Woods, Warsaw. They recently did an acoustic tour in California. But he’s looking forward to the album release concert.
“I really like the St. Regis Club. I play there on occassion. It’s a fun club. I like the atmosphere, the members, the clientele they have there. It’s a fun place to hang out. It’s a pretty intellectual crowd. It’s stimulating to talk to them. It’s not like going to a music club in Fort Wayne with people who can’t string two sentences together,” he said.
Classical guitarist Derek Ort, Fort Wayne, will be the opening act for the May 25th show.
To get Electro 35’s album, listeners will have to download it.
“Our album’s only going to be available online. We have, after this album, we have five more ready to go,” Fellman indicated. “And so we decided not to dump money into printing CDs.”
Besides the cost of printing CDs, he said there’s the burden of carrying the inventory around. By encouraging fans to buy digitally, the band saves on expenses.
“We make more money, and we don’t have to have money tied up in discs,” he said.
Half of their sales comes from online radio, anyway, he said, like Spotify.
“I think we’re better served from doing it online,” he said.
Online is how Electro 35 put its albums together. They don’t all go into a studio at the same time, but record stuff and send it to each other.
“It’s kind of an interesting way to write and do music together. It’s really effective. We don’t know how to just sit down and write music together. That’s just a gigantic waste of time because normally I create the structure or someone else comes up with a basic structure and we send it back and forth until we each get our parts. By the time we actually play it together, it’s almost ready to record. Just sitting down from square one, we just don’t do that anymore,” he explained.
For more information about Fellman or Electro 35, visit online at electro35band.com, johnfellman.com, Youtube.com/johnfellman, Twitter.com/johnfellman or Facebook.com/pages/JohnFellman/34167341028[[In-content Ad]]
Have a news tip? Email [email protected] or Call/Text 360-922-3092