How did we get here?: Laura Carter of Elf Power, Orange Twin Records, and Elephant 6

When Laura Carter phoned me up on Sunday from "somewhere btwn Richmond / Cincinnati" I felt a mixture of nerves, excitement, and gratefulness that she could take some time in the middle of her busy tour schedule to talk to some college radio station in central Illinois for their music blog. We chatted about Elf Power, Orange Twin Records, Elephant 6, their current tour with Neutral Milk Hotel, and just a lot of really cool things. Here are those things:JT: When did you start doing music seriously?LC: It wasn’t really until I had met Andrew [Rieger] and was hanging out that it was ever anything more than just an occasional messing around with instruments, and that was in college going to University of Georgia. And he had kind of an apartment that was close to downtown and a 4-track, and he was just starting to learn how to record and lay down stuff on the 4-track, and then I started joining in on that project. JT: And that project was the forefront of Elf Power, right?LC: Yeah, it was Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs, and we found a vinyl place that had no minimum so we ordered 50, and that was like the first release.JT: How successful was that first release? Were you also playing shows around Athens?LC:  Yeah, mostly house parties, and you know kind of underground spaces. But, we sold out of all 50. Pretty exciting.JT: Could you tell me a little bit about your early involvement with Elephant 6?LC: I met some of the core people in New York and some of them in Athens. The first one we met was Julian [Koster] who came through town touring with his band Chocolate USA, and we had kind of had conversations, and we knew we were into similar stuff. When we went up to New York we reunited with him and kind of extended our friendship, and that included Jeff [Mangum] and Robbie [Cucchiaro] and then we also had met simultaneously kind of down in Athens Will [Cullen Hart] and The Olivia Tremor Control gang. Suddenly we’re like ‘what? You made a 4-track album? Oh gosh so did we,’ at the same time. So, we didn’t even know each other existed in this same little town. We were all kind of inspired by the same artists but also turning each other on to new stuff that each other hadn’t heard yet. But that’s when we kind of all joined forces, and we’ve taken different roles in each other bands. We’ve all recorded on each others’ records and toured with each others’ projects in different forms or another.JT: I’ve heard around that Elephant 6 has “disbanded” sort of. Is that true exactly?LC: I mean, I don’t know that it was ever banded. I would say that it’s not that it’s disbanded it was just never banded. It’s always just been like connections of people helping each other out. The perception of it being some sort of entity like in the sense that you think of Drag City or these things, Elephant 6 has never been like that. There’s no call to order. We have no president.JT: You’re also a founder of Orange Twin Records. Could you tell me a bit about those early days?LC: Our label started as a fundraiser because we went in on a piece of 155 acres of land and needed a fundraising mechanism. And so we started just having a web store just where we’d sell any kind of local art. It’s supposed to be kind of like representing our little community of people that were going in on this land, and we would just—anyone who wanted to sell something we’d sell it. And we would take 2 bucks per item towards the land project just as a way of raising funds. And so we started that little store, but it was 90% musicians and then like 10% paintings kind of. Most of what everyone had to contribute was signed CDs, vinyl, like the music stuff was what we were producing more than any sort crafty thing. So then because we were just kind of selling music and had that format laid out that we found this album called Elyse, and um so it’s actually reissued, and he tracked down the artist which was a process, and she agreed and so then we put that back into print. And then that was kind of the start of the record label. We didn’t mean it to be a record label, he just thought that that should go back into print, and then we started picking other things to be in print. And next thing you know we actually had a real label.JT: Moving back to Elf Power. Could you tell me a bit from your perspective how it’s developed?LC: It’s just always changing. I don’t know how else to put it. You know. We take risks and you know sometimes retreat back toward our roots. Then we take other risks and retreat. Kinda test waters. Try stuff. Usually works out.JT: I just have one last question that I’m interested to know. How has this tour with Neutral Milk Hotel developed?LC: Oh, it’s super exciting for us. We did one of, you know, our first real national tours where we were just hitting every city night, after night, after night was with Neutral Milk Hotel 15 years ago so it’s like a huge family reunion of sorts. Their shows are super spectacular and amazing and the audiences have been really, really sweet, super passionate. It’s real emotional. It’s good.JT: Great. Thank you so much for this interview! I'm looking forward to seeing you on Tuesday.