El Ten Eleven

Oxbow Live: El Ten Eleven with Tall Tall Trees

** 21+ **

| El Ten Eleven |

We like to believe our lives can be shaped into stories—clean arcs, legible meaning—but life refuses the outline. Instead, it moves bluntly and without apology, indifferent to our sense of order. Events pile up without resolution, momentum divorced from direction, motion confused for progress. Sometimes the only refuge left is the nowhere of our own minds.

El Ten Eleven’s Nowhere Faster, the duo’s 16th release, was forged within that unease. Across eight tracks, it considers not just nothingness but velocity—the strange urgency that propels us forward even when the destination remains unclear. We are committed to acceleration, convinced speed itself might save us. The 33-minute album slows just long enough to pose the harder questions: what are we running from, and what do we think we can outrun?

That tension appears even in the album’s artwork, once again created with longtime collaborator Rob Fleming. It depicts a classic liminal space: familiar, anonymous, quietly unsettling. A stained glass-colored building and a streetlamp blur at the edges, suggesting motion that feels less like escape than enclosure—the kind that traps rather than transports.

| Tall Tall Trees |

Tall Tall Trees is the musical id of songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mike Savino, a pioneer in the realm of experimental, DIY banjo music. Accompanied by his trusty Banjotron 6500, a highly customized, electrified banjo and effects pedal setup, Savino has wowed audiences since the 2009 debut of his self-titled album with his eclectic and innovative blend of psychedelic folk, rock and world music. His work seems to actively evade comfortable definition, upon first listen one will recognize the tenderness of Cat Stevens, the melancholy introspection of Elliott Smith, the anthemic psychedelia of Pink Floyd, and a deep abiding respect for Earl Scruggs. Savino often performs solo, showcasing his fleet-footed loop pedal mastery, as well as alongside long-time collaborator and fellow innovator, Kishi Bashi. He has recently collaborated with fellow psych-banjo maestro JD Pinkus of the Butthole Surfers, releasing Ponder Machine, a psychedelic banjo opus on the Shimmy Disc label. Tall Tall Trees latest release and 5th LP, Stick to the Mystical I, featuring a collaboration with Josiah Wolf of the band Why? is out September 8th, 2023 on Joyful Noise Recordings.

[ Doors 7 PM | Show 8 PM ]

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