INTERVIEW // El Kempner of Palehound Talks “Eye On The Bat”
Photo: Tonje Thilesen
Eye On The Bat is the fourth album from indie rocker, Palehound. It was released in July 2023, and they are setting out this fall for their first headlining tour post-Covid. The album hones in on frontperson El Kempner’s intimate experiences, such as a breakup and the drive back from the canceled tour the band started in March 2020. It marries rawness and feeling to gritty classic rock sounds, harping on ideas of self-growth and nostalgia.
Although this is their first big tour in a while, Kempner is no stranger to the road, having released Palehound’s first album, Dry Food, in 2015, when they were just nineteen. Since then, they have played with artists of all kinds, including Mitski, Big Thief, and The Breeders. Kempner draws influences from many of their artist friends as well, even starting a band called Bachelor with their good friend Melina Duterte of Jay Som.
Before Palehound left for tour, I got to ask Kempner a few questions — we discussed music dreams, influences for the album, and tour life.
Ida Ward York: Are there any specific venues or places you’re excited to visit on this tour, after your 2020 tour being cut short?
El Kempner: Yeah, I’m really excited to do the whole Pacific Northwest this time because we had been cut off right after San Francisco for our last headline tour. I’m excited to get back to Seattle and Portland just because those were our next stops, I feel like those are the ones I've missed the hardest. There have been some places that we’ve been able to play since Covid like Austin, TX for example, that I’m just really excited to go back to.
IWY: Do you have any pre-show rituals you’re returning to as a band in preparation for the tour?
EK: We have a whole new lineup for this tour and we’ve been trying to develop some new ones. Some of them are sticking, some of them are in test mode but we’re all kind of grounding with trying to find a new ritual that works for everyone that feels fresh.
IWY: Is there any gear you’ve grown to love and are excited to have on tour this time around?
EK: Always my guitars, my Fender Strats for sure. I actually just got a new amp, it’s a Fender Tone Master Deluxe Reverb–it’s solid state, so it's incredibly light to carry which is very exciting for tour. And it sounds great so I’m pretty stoked on that right now.
IWY: You mentioned picking up the finger-picking style used in Big Thief’s music from touring with them. Is there anything you picked up from your latest dates with Boygenius?
EK: Not quite yet, I got back from tour a couple of days ago and I’ve still been processing, but nothing I can feel I've concretely picked up. It’s so inspiring to see them and how they play, and how they sing especially. I’m feeling very inspired for sure.
IWY: What season do you connect Eye on the Bat with? Is there a reason behind touring for it in the fall?
EK: No, not really. I kind of feel like Springtime would connect with that album because that's when the majority of the recording of it was done, so that's just how I feel when I think about it. The only reason we waited to tour it until fall was just cause it’s just the best season to tour in a bunch of different ways, like weather and people being around, stuff like that.
IWY: How do you approach tough subjects such as anxiety and breakups in your songwriting without making it too self-deprecating?
EK: By laughing at them, by not just being like “oh, woe is me” kind of thing, but trying to realize just how funny some of that shit can be too. Humoring myself a little bit and humbling myself that way, you know.
IWY: There is a very obvious narrative flowing through this record. Did that come to be naturally or did you have to workshop that?
EK: It kinda just came naturally, it just was the narrative of my life as I wrote those songs so it just materialized that way. I mean, in terms of the tracklisting and the order of it, we just decided that based on the energy of the songs, not as much lyrically. But the narrative of the record really just comes from being a snapshot of the period of time it was written in.
IWY: From your first album Dry Food in 2015 to Eye on the Bat in 2023, how has your process changed in that time, with getting the confidence to sing louder, rawer and give your recorded music a more live sound?
EK: I think it's changed so much just over the past few records, I had to do a lot of experimenting to see what felt right to me as a recording artist. Like do I want to perform in a really clean kind, of fancy environment? Do I want to record in a grungier environment? After Dry Food I had freedom luckily with a record label to pursue different types of recording scenarios, and I just landed on wanting to be as raw as I could for this record because feelings were so raw. But I’m not sure if that means that's how I’ll always treat the recording process from now on. I think each set of songs speaks to a different set of needs.
IWY: How do you think a more DIY start to music influenced your take on music to bring you to where you are now?
EK: Oh my god, I mean, it’s the foundation of how I look at it, which I’m grateful for because I think the foundation that was able to build for me was one of like–this is about connecting with other bands, and other artists, and it's about hanging out at a show and it's about sharing gear and it's about stuff like that. The communal element of it instead of an “I'm on my path and this is what I'm gonna do to get where I want to get” or something like that.
IWY: How do you perform differently for larger audiences compared to smaller ones?
EK: I had to think about that a lot this week with the Boygenious shows cause they’re the biggest shows we’ve ever played so I was intimidated by that and thought it would feel really different, but it didn’t. I kind of just performed the same way. I just want to bring the same energy to every room because regardless of how many people are in that room, the people who are there deserve the best energy they can get from us. Some shows that we’ve played like small-ish smaller shows we’ve gone harder than at bigger shows–it kind of doesn’t matter to me the size.
IWY: You’re playing your dream show. Where is it and who’s on the bill with you?
EK: Well, the Boygenius’s are living the dream venue tonight at Madison Square Garden. That’s definitely my dream venue just because I’m a huge New York Knicks fan and that’s where they play, so that’s definitely the venue. I mean, we’ve played with The Breeders already but it would be The Breeders again, maybe like Green Day, maybe Brittany Howard. I don’t know, there are so many people. Dead or alive? I don’t know, Jimi Hendrix.
IWY: What music are you loving right now?
EK: I’ve been listening to the new Al Menne record, Yves Jarvis is really cool and then I’m always listening to classic rock, that’s always just kind of in the background, I’m listening to a lot of The Who right now randomly, I don’t know why.
Catch Palehound at Bowery Ballroom on Thursday, October 19th, follow them on Instagram here!