Eli Young Band photo courtesy of Universal Records South.
They built a local following, each of them often holding down two jobs at the same time they were attending school and fitting in rehearsals and gigs. The stress would have decimated most bands, and they certainly had their share of tense moments.
"We got all the really good arguments out of the way the first couple of years," Jones reflects. "It also helped that we knew each other before we were a band. We really were friends. We figured if we could keep our friendship together, we could keep the band together. After a couple of years, we really found our identity, and all those other little things started to seem like really little things. Because they are little things." The band befriended another young musician, Miranda Lambert, before her performances in the first season of the USA Network’s Nashville Star brought her a national audience. Shortly after she signed her first recording contract in the fall of 2003, she asked EYB to front a show for her at Dallas’ Gypsy Tea Room, then told Frank Liddell to make a point of seeing the opening act. He was impressed and formed the independent
Carnival label to give the Eli Young Band an outlet; the first album, Level, arrived the following year to glowing reviews.
EYB expanded its base by opening for the likes of John Mellencamp, Pat Green, Sheryl Crow, the Dave Matthews Band, Jack Ingram, Jason Aldean and Robert Earl Keen, and documented its in-concert intensity with the 2006 album Live At The Jolly Fox.
When the band started recording Jet Black at Nashville’s Omni Sound in 2007, it was unclear where the project would ultimately land. But that also guaranteed the foursome would stay true to its unique sound, coalesced around the commandeering, Randy Meisner-like edge of Eli’s vocals.
Unlike some of the group albums made in Music City in previous eras, Jet Black is truly an Eli Young Band CD, with the four musicians and Wrucke augmented only in a handful of spots by other players. Wrucke inspired the guys during the Omni sessions to push themselves, and that resulted in a sound that captures both urgency and confidence.
"Mike (Wrucke) can play any instrument that you put in front of him, and he can play it well, so as a producer, he knows three ways he wants something," Thompson maintains. "He wants for you as an artist to play the song the way you’re gonna play it, but he’s also got an idea in his head of what he’d like to come out of your instrument. In that regard, he was definitely more hands-on without being hands-on than any producer that we’ve worked with before."
From the invigorating opening strains of "When It Rains" to the closing contemplation of "Home," Jet Black & Jealous succeeds in pushing the Eli Young Band to the next level as a musical force. It’s the next step in a slow-building process that’s become uncommon in the 21st century, a band that purposely evolved in small advances rather than trying to blast its way in a single firestorm.
"We were young and 18 and just trying to make music," Eli says, recalling the journey. "We just wanted to be popular in our hometown. Then once we captured that, I thought, ‘I want us to be popular in DFW’—Dallas and Fort Worth. Then once we did that, it was, ‘Let’s take over Texas.’ Then next thing you know we’re saying, ‘Let’s take over the South.’ Now it’s, ‘Let’s take over the country.’"
Eight years into the journey, that national target has shifted from a hazy, optimistic dream to a very realistic possibility. Throughout their advances, the Eli Young Band has maintained an internal enthusiasm that’s easily apparent in Jet Black & Jealous. Where their journey ends—as Jones says, that’s worth sticking around for.
