INTERVIEW: TELEPHANT GRAVEYARD: A LOYAL TRIO
Erik: I'll give the credit to John for putting all of the dogs in the video. We needed to fill space. We had live footage and some rough ideas. We needed a good 30-second to cover it. John was like: "Why don't we just put the best cartoon dogs?" Jake, the dog! One of my favourites. Mr Peanut Butter from Bojack Horseman also appears in the video. It's a loud, aggressive song. I had this visual of someone screaming into a microphone or just a very dynamic scene. Phil and I had to go scope out the place.
John: We encountered a problem. We were going to film ourselves playing the song live at this abandoned place. We figured we would be able to film one or two takes before security kicks us out. We got one take and security came immediately. We didn't have a whole lot of footage to work with. Erik found the dog costumes on Amazon. "We'll just dress up like dogs and go do a bunch of stupid stuff in public.
Out of all your music videos, which one was the most fun to shoot?
John: "Jump!" It was fun because we got to sled.
Erik: It was the coldest. Middle of January, -30 or something. We thought "Why are we doing this?" I'm sure people thought: "Why do these grown men have eggs and are sledding?" I don't know why we landed on eggs. Maybe it's because they're fragile.
John: It's that trope from tv shows. "You have to take care of this egg for a week. You'll know what it is like to be a parent."
On your socials, it says: "Rock trio that sounds like Nirvana and Rush. How did those specific bands influence you and your music? Were they two of the first bands you discovered?
Erik: We are all Rush fans. It was something someone told us at a show once. Like I said, I'm a big Foo Fighters and Grunge fan but we all have Prog elements too. We like Coheed and Cambria. "You guys have the perfect mix of Nirvana and Rush." Shoutout to the guys from Nova Scotia, a band called Monteith who told us that. We have a lot of odd time signatures stuff too. We have a lot of Punk elements, maybe some Metal and Hard Rock. There is a lot of 90s, 70s influences for sure. The first riff I showed Phil was "Jump". It was a riff that was literally going to make people jump.
John: Erik writes most of the songs and is a big Nirvana fan. As for the Prog stuff, you guys like Coheed a lot. I like Frank Zappa.
Can you remember what was written in your Instagram bio before?
John: I think it was written something like: "We play loud music with guitars."
A lot of artists and bands affirm that in this day and age, it's impossible to just be musicians. You have to be an influencer, graphic designer, and content creator. How do you feel about all of that?
Erik: I got into music because I wanted to make music. We make music. We record it. We do funny videos. We like doing that stuff. The marketing aspect of it is now put on the artist. It is an option. There are still artists who go with independent labels or major labels to get their music out there. Now with the accessibility of the internet, you can take online marketing courses and figure out how to get your music out there. We are all trying to learn as the market evolves. With this latest release, we kind of experimented with some Instagram Reels and see what gets people listening to the music. They end up being goofy videos. Phil and I made one for "Hungry as a Dog" where it's me in my car thinking: "This is what music sounds to me in my car." From someone looking in, it's kind of awkward and funny. It's just more hats to wear, you know.
Phil: I like that one too! We took that "What it sounds like" trope but made it funny. I also started headbanging with him from outside the car.
John: I always liked playing around with photoshop so that's been good for us for posters and things like that. Erik has been getting good at editing videos.
Erik: There is a good app on my phone that makes it accessible called "Inshot" that I use for the audio and filters. All three of us are creative people to begin with. We kind of all fill in each other's gaps.
Being a trio yourself, if you could put together the trio of your dreams, who would be in your band.
Erik: I would say Phil Collins on drums. I would have Dave Grohl on vocals and Geddy Lee on bass. That would be a wacky trio!
John: I would say Greg Brown, Cake's original guitarist. On bass, I would pick Rob Wright from No Means No. I'll throw in Stewart Copeland on drums.
Phil: I got Claudio Sanchez on guitar and vocals, Steve Harris on bass, and Chad Smith on drums.
If you could pick one of the members you picked and create a band, who would you pick (one singer, one bassist, one drummer)?
Erik: We'll pick Claudio to be the singer, Geddy Lee to be the bassist and Stewart Copeland to be the drummer.
With that group you just created, if you had to pick a song of yours for them to cover, which one would it be?
Erik: What do you picture Claudio singing?
John: Iron Sculpture!
Phil: I can see Stewart Copeland play drums on that song too!
Erik: That song is unreleased but we have been playing it at shows for years. It's part of a batch of new songs we'll be recording for an eventual album. It's very Coheed and Cambria, especially the main riff.
If the band had to film a music video for that particular song, what do you think it would look like?
John: Something about them being made of iron maybe like the tinman from Wizard of Oz.
From what I have seen, you have been a band for nearly a decade, right?
Erik: Yes! Our first show was in November 2015. It's been the three of us for 10 years.
How would you say you have changed as a band? What are things you still want to work on?
Erik: We have our 45-minute sets now knowing what we are doing, what we are saying, and having a good presentation. Every Thursday, we get together and play music. I don't think we would still be doing it if we didn't genuinely enjoy it. We got good feedback. We are always open to criticism. We realize we aren't perfect. We take pride in what we do.
John: I think fixing our setlist has been a pretty big game changer, trying to make it flow better and not just play the songs in a random order. We have a long solo guitar at the end. That was rehearsed.
Erik: Everytime I do that at practice (the solo), John will take a video of me and post it as if they are waiting for me to be done.
John: We would also like to record drums ourselves in an efficient way. We had to pay to record the last ones. It's a lot of pressure when you put a lot of budget money and only have a certain amount of time.
You mentioned playing your very first show back in November 2015, what do you remember from that show?
Erik: The venue was Club Lambi on Saint-Laurent. I had done a handful of shows with bands before but they were booked for me. How do I book a show? I called and emailed every venue in Montreal. I don't remember how much he charged us. Maybe he liked us so much at the time, we got to play for free. It was me, Phil, and John. John wasn't sure if he was joining the band. He had other commitments. "We have a show booked. Play some songs with us and we'll go from there." I have the setlist somewhere. John played a few songs and fucked off. Sorry, am I allowed to swear on this? Then, it was just Phil and I for half of the set. I had an acoustic song, a clean song, and we closed with "Jump". The rest is Rock n Roll history.
It's really cool that you kept the setlist. I feel like people don't have a lot of physical memories.
Erik: I have physically kept some setlists, others I have pictures of them. I have this notebook here that my mom gave me, it says: " The best is yet to come. Dream big. Work hard. Do what makes you happy." Cute little note. John came over a couple weeks ago after our last show. I don't think Phil knew about this either. Every show I have ever done is cataloged here. For that first show, we had "Black Widow", "Curves", "Lipstick on a Pig", "Jump". I don't remember if we played a cover. We might have covered a Foo Fighters song. I don't remember what songs John played. We had 2 friends opening up. I was nervous. It was my first time singing in a band. Other times, I was just the guitar player. How did you feel, Phil?
Phil: Honestly, I was super nervous. It went pretty well. Whenever you play a show, you practice all this time and then you get there, it's over in a blink of an eye. It was our first show, I was rusty. I was still learning. The last time I played a show before then was in 2007-2008.
John: The last time I played was 2009-2010. It had been a while for me too. I was playing an 8-string guitar back then. I play the guitbass. *Shows the guitar
It has 7 strings and some extra ones.
Erik: People ask: "What is that???" I might have charisma but John has the coolest guitar for sure.
What was your favourite moment as a band this year (2025)? I know you released a new song, played a show for the release of that song, put out a music video.
John: The show at Bar La marche à côté. I was having a crappy day that day. I wasn't expecting it to go well but we played really well, It felt good. By the end of the night, I was like: "Okay, everything is good." Everyone who was there had a good time. We had a pretty good amount of people show up. It was good besides getting red paint everywhere. I painted my crocs. I thought the paint was dry.
Phil: Everytime we release a song or finish a song. Listening back to it, "I did that!"
Erik: I would say either recording and hearing the mixes to the two new songs we recorded which was a bit of a confidence and moral booster for us in that we can still make good (& better) music we’re proud of! Very grateful to see the fruits of our labor come to fruition. And, probably our small show we did at Marche à Coté in August. It was our first show back in almost 2 years and we were eager and a bit anxious to play again, and play some new songs. We feel we upped our showmen ship the overall flown of our set.
I don't know about you, but hearing Erik talk about the setlists he kept and the notebook his mom gave him has reminded me how important it is to document meaningful moments of our existence. It doesn't have to be a flashy social media post. Writing things down can be so important and rewarding. Don't be afraid to keep artifacts of your life. Also, do not hesitate to give local bands a listen. Thank you for taking the time to read this latest interview. Thank you, Palo Ukuku and Fanny Dozios, for the absolutely incredible pictures. Do yourself a favour and check out their work as well. That's it for this one! Many more interviews to come!
LINKS TO FURTHER DISCOVER AND SUPPORT TELEPHANT GRAVEYARD
Telephant Graveyard's Instagram
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