Check Out Eric Ellis’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Eric Ellis.

Hi Eric, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
We initially started out as a four piece in college at CSU in 2020. Stephen Garrison our bass player was running a Ska band called Fists of the Proletariat that our drummer Nicky Podrez and I were playing in, but we were on all different instruments than we play now and this project really started as an excuse to get together and play some Vulfpeck and Cory Wong-esq funk on the instruments we wanted to play. My buddy Ben Krueger and I had been hanging out and jamming where he was playing keys, so that was the OG band. We got booked to play at a pinball arcade for a Jewish Purim party right before Ben got in a gnarly bike accident and broke his hip so we had to rehearse around his bed in the beginning. That gig was Monday before the pandemic shutdown, so used the pandemic to practice a bunch. We then brought in my friend Andy Seracuse to sing, as well as Amy Kiesling on sax, Sierra Graf on trumpet, and Trevor Shuffler on Trombone for a new music party at the Lyric Cinema in Fort Collins 2021. That was really the beginning of Hand Turkey as it is now. We’ve had a few personal changes but the core of the band has stayed the same. We put out our first ep Fridge Art Vol 1 in May 2022 that was recorded and produced in my shed where I was living, and then our first album Time and Time Again in August 2023, which was also self produced from my basement. Once we added horns we were playing a good handful of weddings and social events, as well as bars and venues around the front range. We’ve had the opportunity to open for a ton amazing musicians like Sam Greenfield, Donny Benet, Mono Neon, Melt, Moon Hooch, Bermuda Search Party, Sorry Ghost, and others. We sold out our Time and Time Again album release party at Lost Lake Lounge, and setup a show with Jewel House and Wildlove Tigress last summer. Right now we’re working on writing and recording Fridge Art Volume 2, and set to play a ton this summer, and maybe make a few short tours out of state.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think as far as bands go, we’ve had a pretty smooth road. All of our personal changes have come largely from people moving away or stepping back from music in a regular performance activity. Obviously with 7 creative people there are always going to be some amount of artistic disagreements, but we handle our struggles I think as gracefully as any passionate group of people can. The biggest adjustment has been from all of us being in school to having full time jobs. Hand Turkey is made up of just about every engineering discipline. I was working in mechanical engineering, Stephen is electrical, Amy is biomedical, Jack (our trumpet player) is civil, Andy is software. The transition from being a fun college band that got us through school and was a fun social hang, to a slightly larger business obligation on top of transitioning to the workforce has been exhausting for everyone to say the least. We went to Texas last summer for a two week tour, and everyone was working remotely while also playing shows until 2am and we all came back from that absolutely drained. But we also had so much fun so we’re trying to set up more in the near future!

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Hand Turkey really started trying to be a Nu-Funk, Soul-Pop kind of band. We are super inspired by bands like Vulfpeck, Lawrence, and Couch, who blend so much pop music with some harmony closer to jazz, but still keep everything really fun and dance-able. I’d like to think that if we’re known for something its really high energy groovy fun music with really sick horn lines. We write much more intricate horn lines than most of our other funk pop contemporaries. I feel really proud of our recordings which I’ve done all myself. Its amazing to hear how much better they’ve gotten as we’ve gotten better and I’ve gotten more comfortable recording and mixing. I think it’s amazing to see how much we’ve grown since we started. Feels cliche maybe but we just keep getting better, in terms of writing, performing, playing, and recording. The trend is just continuing up. Selfishly as a side note, I build all of the guitars and basses for Hand Turkey and I think they sound and play amazing. We get lots of feedback from sound guys and audience members and fellow gear nerds about how cool they are and frankly I agree.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
We try pretty hard to make sure that each show has its own flavor and you’ll never get the same show twice. We mess around with lots of goofy bits that come and go, like we played a Mario Kart Medley to open our show for a while that was super fun. Whenever we have a ticketed show we always try to play a new song or two. Recently we’ve been reharmonizing and funkifiying lots of pop tunes to give them a real Hand Turkey flavor which has been fun for us and our audiences. I’m really passionate about trying to make art that feels important and groovy, and Andy, who helps me with most everything is really good about making sure that the audience experience is good too. I think we work really really well as a team, and are really good at giving and receiving feedback from each other cuz we both know everything is in service of making the best show that we can. Recently we’ve been writing in lots of small groups and then bringing those demos to the band and that has been a really fun process because each demo is very coded in the people that initially wrote the song but then we get to turn it into a full Band song so everyones creative voice gets to be featured, and yet we’re also honing in on what our sound is.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://handturkeyband.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/handturkeyband
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/handturkeyband
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@handturkeyband9091
• Other: https://handturkeyband.bandcamp.com/

Image Credits
Makenzie Tharp
Chandler Harris
Ben Krueger