Her Way

With her wide eyes, shy demeanor and devastatingly adorable giggle,
you’d think Elaine Greer would welcome musical input with a warm smile
and how-do-ya-do.

“Oh, no, I’m not very good at it at all, actually,” laughs the local
singer-songwriter. “Most of the time I give [my bandmates] the
recording and say, ‘Here’s the song, learn it.'”

Anything after that can get a bit, um, sticky.

“When people suggest changing [songs], I generally don’t take it
very well,” she says. Her resistance doesn’t stem from disrespect
— after all, she does need people to play with — Greer just
wants her songs to sound like, well, Elaine Greer.

“I think it’s coming more from the place of I don’t want it to lose
the genuine kind of — I don’t know, I guess it’s not really a
situation in which we all sit down and write together or anything like
that,” she explains. “So when someone does suggest changing it, I’m
kind of like, ‘Well, you know, you’re not going to be here maybe for
this show and then if we change it for this, then how am I going to be
able to do it the same way by myself?’

“So, for a few different reasons, I’m pretty particular about keeping
things one way. But it’s not like I’m going to shoot down everything. I
try to be open, I guess…” she says and laughs.

Those attempts were put to the test earlier this year when Greer
finally broke tradition and headed to the studio to record the six-song
Making Plans and Going Places. Her latest EP marks a change of
pace from the past five years of recording her Feist-y, Rilo
Kiley-esque sounds solo via her bedroom.

“It was kind of awkward for me because I hadn’t really recorded with
other people before, and not having that control actually kind of
freaked me out,” says Greer, no longer surprisingly.

“I’ve always done the home-recording thing where I’m just
sitting in my bedroom like, ‘Oh, I’m going to shake this salt shaker
and see what I make for percussion,'” she says, imitating her former
self by lowering her head and speaking in a voice similar to Disney’s
Goofy.

Greer might be a stickler onstage and in the studio, but she’s not
afraid to poke fun at herself off-camera. She entrusted her recording
duties to News on the March guitarist/vocalist Joe Weber at his Master
Bedroom Studios, conveniently located in NOTM headquarters, i.e., the
band members’ house. Yes, they all live together, but it wasn’t exactly
an easy transition for Greer.

“I actually had to kick Joe out of the room to do most of my
vocals,” she says. “They were very subpar, but once he left and just
let me do it, they were much better.”

Greer admits to putting up some fights, but she also gave in more
than usual. Especially when it came to mixing the EP with Sugar Hill
hero Steve Christensen. Not hard to believe, given Christensen’s
experience awards him a lot of “Yeah, I should probably listen to this
guy” weight.

“I did put quite a bit of faith into his ability,” says Greer.

In fact, Christensen frequently had to encourage Greer to speak up as
he undressed her tunes.

“He definitely strips the songs down,” she says, admitting they
needed to be. “We definitely had these huge, grandiose productions, and
he kind of brought them back. All the extra stuff, I thought was good,
but he kind of had to say, ‘Well, other people don’t know these songs
and they’ll want to listen to the actual songs.'”

Local friends and sometime bandmates including (to name a few)
NOTM’s Austin Sepulvado (guitars, accordion) and Gillian Williams
(cello), Wild Moccasins’ Andrew Ortiz (drums) and Grandfather
Child/Satin Hooks’ Lucas Gorham (lap steel) all helped out. Greer says
although all of their sounds stayed in, it was inevitable that some
would be cut back.

“I kinda knew that was going to happen,”she says. “I knew we had
overdone it with the adding on.”

The final product, though, echoes Greer’s musical and collaborative
maturity. This is mostly thanks to her decision to re-record old
favorites instead of rolling out all new tunes.

“A couple of them I’ve recorded before, like home recordings, but I
didn’t want to just leave it at that,” she says. “I like these
songs…and I think they deserve a good recording.”

Longtime fans who remember Greer from her days at Super Happy Fun
Land — both on her own and fronting duo The Bluebirds —
will sense the years of rethinking, restructuring and retuning.

Greer’s vocals are now slowed down, relaxed and unmistakably more
confident. Nowhere is her leap into maturity more evident than on the
rich, Gillian-Welch-like transformation of favorites like “The Key” and
“Wild Things,” which make perfect companions for new numbers like the
waltzy “Under the Radar” and two-steppin’ “Ancient History.”

“I think a lot of it was just me learning how to sing,” she says.
“In The Bluebirds, I was like, ‘I guess I can kind of sing,'” she says,
once again impersonating former “Goofy Elaine.”

For the EP’s release Saturday, Greer says she’s doing her best to
bring in as many musicians as possible.

“I mean, for me, it’s always kind of like,’I don’t know —
maybe,'” she says in a vaudeville-comedienne tone.

Nudging the air with her elbow,Greer laughs.

“Whoever gets together to practice.”