Your name:
Rik Janssen.
Where are you from?
Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
Name of band:
Ellow.
Who else is in your band?
Eline van Hooff and I formed Ellow as a duo. But we also get help from Maarten (all-round musician with a killer voice), Maurice (crazy creative percussion dude) and Hans (the punk rock drummer).
How would you describe yourselves?
We are a YouTube band or duo. That means we write and cover songs, turn them into videos and upload them on YouTube. Our friends help us perform these songs live since we only have two arms each.
Who are your main influences musically?
Pomplamoose (Nataly Dawn & Jack Conte), April Smith, Caravan Palace, Joey Cape, Yann Tiersen (the guy who composed music for the French movie Amelie), Lauren o’Connell, Julia Nunes and Walk Of The Earth. A couple of them are Youtube artists. They inspired us to use YouTube as a stage and help us think outside the box.
What do you hope to achieve in music?
A bit of traveling and touring, releasing some EPs and albums and making collab videos with nice people from all over the world (like we did with the lovely Liz Fanora Jones). We don’t have ridiculously high goals and expectations and realise that we are not the best band in the world. As long as we can do what we like and learn new things, Ellow will be putting out new material. If other people like that too, we are a happy bunch.
What has been the highlight of your career so far, and why?
Career sounds so heavy, haha! I have played a lot of gigs as a bassist with punk, hardcore and metal bands, which was fun. But the day I found out that merely playing bass guitar in a band was utterly boring and started writing songs to fit those new needs and instruments, that was one of the best things so far…
And what’s the moment you want to forget?
That one time, where we had to play a living room show, and I still was kinda drunk/hungover from the reunion show (with my old punk band) the day before. I messed up big time but luckily people understood. However Eline sure did give me ‘the evil eye’...... Lucky that I’m still alive….
If you had to pick just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?
Tough question. I think Lady Irony, Knock Knock or The Flemish Guy (will be released later this year) represent Ellow pretty well. It’s written for the instruments that we use the most (Philcorda, Ukulele, Bass, Cajon, Melodica) and the vibe is ironic and sarcastic in a funny way.
Where can we listen to it? (direct link)
Where can we find out more about your music?
We have a nice little website that Eline built. You can find all our video’s, newsletter, showdates and biography there: www.ellow.nl
If you like more frequent updates you can like, follow, tag us at the following links:
Anything else you’d like to say that I forgot to ask?
Well, we just released a new video. It took us ‘only’ 3 months to complete… ;-)
It’s a cover of OneRepublic’s Counting Stars with some Ellow sauce over it. Also, we left the ‘boxed’ video behind us and tried something new with After Effects, white/greenscreens and a lot of fictive enviroments. More video’s like this will follow soon! We already have two more in the making.
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