Life & Work with Gayle Ellett

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gayle Ellett.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’m a musician and composer living in Topanga since 1986. I was born in 1960, and I remember back in 1967 (when I was just a little seven-year-old kid) when I first heard the Beatles’ album Sergeant Pepper. It really freaked me out. I realized then that music could actually rival Film & TV in its ability to make “mini movies in your mind”. And ever since then, I’ve been interested in trying to do that same thing, but using instrumental music instead.

I started playing piano when I was five, and I began learning guitar when I was 13. Currently, I play in seven bands. I’ve scored music for 60 different TV series and some films, and I’ve played on over 120 albums. Besides guitar and keyboards, I play a large number of acoustic instruments such as dilruba, greek bouzouki, oud, gimbri, charango, bulbul tarang, jal tarang, swarsangam, etc. These and many others can be heard in my award-winning World Americana group: FERNWOOD.

I’m a music freak, so I feel very lucky that I get to spend my time working in my studio, making music every day. I’ve had my music reviewed in all of the biggest music magazines, and I’ve been interviewed over 100 times. I love talking about music!

I grew up in super liberal Pasadena, and all my neighbors were rocket scientists at JPL. But our family also had a large cattle ranch in New Mexico, many miles from nowhere. I built a big log cabin there, when I was a teenager, from trees from our forest. Ranchers there are very conservative and traditional people. So I’ve had the benefit of living in and getting to know the people of these two very diverse environments.

I was a part-time hang gliding instructor for nearly 20 years, and I’ve flown my hang glider off the cliffs of Yosemite about 25 times. The US Forest Service actually allows us to fly there, it’s totally awesome!! We also used to regularly fly here in Topanga, down to the beach, and also from other locations in Malibu as well. It’s all fun & games until your friends get killed, and then it’s just too depressing to continue, so I’ve quit doing that.

One of my bands, DJAM KARET, has been around for 39 years, still with the same four original founding members. And we’ve released 20 albums of instrumental Progressive Rock music so far. We are often compared to Pink Floyd and King Crimson. We’ve been reviewed in Rolling Stone, Billboard, and many others. Guitar Player Magazine did a nice 5-page feature article on me a few years ago. We headlined a 3-day music festival held on the beach in Bordeaux, France, a few years ago. That was pretty fun!

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
A smooth road? You should see the street that I live on! It’s crazy! Cars get stuck here every week, it’s a huge mess. It is one of the steepest streets in Topanga.

But as far as music is concerned, it has been mostly smooth sailing. No real problems. But I do have rather bad stage fright. I don’t mind playing at casual Topanga parties or at our local bar, etc. But playing bigger gigs, where our fans drive in from far away locations like San Francisco, Denver and even Chicago just to see us play … that all stresses me out immensely! You owe them greatness, and that causes me a ton of anxiety.

On the other hand, Topanga has a lot of musicians, and I’ve been fortunate enough to play with many of them. Each year we have a cool low-key 3-day festival called “Topanga Dayz”, which is a fund-raiser for our Community House. It’s a casual scene. Some years I’ve played in four different groups. Everyone is having fun, it’s a big party, and it raises a lot of money.

My wife, Rita Street, is awesome and a real asset to me. She’s an Animation Feature Film & TV Producer who has created numerous shows, including Disney’s “Space Chickens In Space!” and the feature film “100% Wolf”, and many others. She founded Women In Animation many years ago and has been a driving force in the industry ever since. I’m very proud of her, and we get along great, which is important because she just earned her 2nd Degree Black Belt!

Also, where I live, there is a mile of open space right past my backyard. Mountain Lions regularly visit my neighbor’s house (they have a watering station there). We see lots of Bobcats, Foxes and other critters. Some of my neighbors have cows, horses, donkeys and chickens. It’s all very quiet here, and that’s just how I like it.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I write music in two different categories: art & commerce, and I never ever mix the two. Either I am making art music, with no commercial considerations at all. Or I am making commercial music for use in TV commercials, computer games, art installations, music libraries and numerous corporate applications. It is difficult to do either of these styles well, so I never merge them together. Trying to do both these styles in one song seems too difficult to me. Anyway, the music critics seem to love my art music, and I really never get any bad reviews, so I am very happy about that! And my commercial music seems to do pretty well too, so I feel very fortunate.

My art music is always instrumental. I don’t sing, and the world thanks me for that! And often when I am making commercial music, I focus on creating real traditional World music using traditional acoustic instruments. There are not very many American composers doing traditional Chinese music, or music from Japan, or Bali, etc. So I specialize in that genre. Sometimes I’ll play a song that was written many hundreds of years ago and is now in the public domain. Other times I’ll write a new piece of music based on these old traditional scores. Either way, it is challenging and quite fun too!

But I also play in other people’s groups as well, and learning their music and adapting to it, is very educational. It greatly expands my musical knowledge, and it helps me be a better, more well-rounded player. Sure it’s great having your own band that plays your own compositions, but learning how to fit into other people’s music is a challenge and you learn a lot too. I also play keyboards in a totally improvised Jazz-Rock group called HILLMEN. Playing totally improvised music, where you just tune up and start playing (with absolutely no predetermined music) is very difficult and often it fails, ending up sounding horrid! But it teaches you to really listen to others, a skill that is rather hard to learn. You need to be good enough on your instrument so that you can devote most of your mind to just listening to the band and figuring out how you can fit in and make things better. And then, if you are a good player, then you only need a little bit of your mind to actually play the part. It is great practice and I highly recommend that all musicians play in an improvised music group.

Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
Right now I’m working on a few different albums. One is the follow-up album by my group: Gayle Ellett & The Electromags. The rough working title is “Friends”, because it has a lot of my old pals guesting on it. But I’m not really sure of what the final title will be. It features many European musicians and guys from Japan and South America, many of which I’ve known since before the Internet existed. I first met many of them when I would send them my band’s mailing list of American: music reviewers/magazines, distributors & DJs, and then they would mail me back their list for the country they live in. Since then we’ve all remained friends.

In closing, I’d just like to say how thankful I am to be able to write and play music every day. I think more people should do it. It’s good for you, and it is really fun! And many thanks to Sid and the folks at VoyageLA.com, for giving me this opportunity to talk about my music. Many Thanks!

Pricing:

• Fernwood CDs $10 https://fernwood.bandcamp.com/album/arcadia
• Gayle Ellett & The Electromags CDs $10 https://gayleelletttheelectromags.bandcamp.com/
• Djam Karet CDs $10 https://djamkaret.bandcamp.com/
• Hillmen CDs $10 https://hillmen2.bandcamp.com/

Contact Info:

• Website: https://gayleellettandtheelectromags.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/djam.karet/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWLOgLzq_lc

Image Credits
Photos by my wife: Rita Street. Me Skateboarding on the 10 FWY, photo by David Good Me Hang Gliding in Yosemite, photo by Don Richmond