Q&A: ‘Constant Change’ - Ax and the Hatchetmen’s Latest EP and Lifestyle
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY FAITH HOCHGESANG ☆
Photo by Harry Bearrows
RELEASING THEIR THIRD EP AND KICKING OFF THEIR FIRST MAJOR SUPPORT TOUR — Ax and the Hatchetmen’s lead singer and guitarist Axel Ellis reflects that “the only thing we can really count on in this profession is change.”
The five-track Constant Change EP, released on July 18, encapsulates the band’s current inclination towards intentional randomness and sonic exploration. “Hotel Room” provides a surefire Ax and the Hatchetmen sound, an upbeat indie-pop tune with catchy guitar licks from lead guitarist Salvatore Defilippis, and embellishments from Phil Pistone on the trumpet and Quinn Dolan on the saxophone. “Victim” shows off Ellis’s cheeky command of creative lyricism, conceptualizing a fictional narrative surrounding a serial-killer girlfriend.
Live at their sold-out headlining show at the House of Blues Parish Room on July 25, “Blurry Lights” brought a high point in crowd energy, with fans singing each chorus back to the band, dancing, and cheering for the full three minutes the song was engulfing the stage. Pistone even took breaks between parts to sing along to the melody into his trumpet mic. “Stay // Honestly” became an impressive showcase of the band’s musicianship, with an extended off-record outro that was dynamically intricate and invoked the spirit of Chicago jazz that each member of the band has personal experience in and affection for. “7x9,” the first track on the EP and the song Ellis used to formally introduce the EP to his live audience, ornamented the night in the band’s showmanship. Ellis and Defilippis used every break between verses to jump up and down with each other, creating space between sections for Hunter Olshefke’s bass tone and style to capture moments in the foreground. Nick Deputy confidently and cleanly navigated the band through breakdown and build-up transitions in the song, bringing a unique and exclusive aliveness to Ax and the Hatchetmen’s music in a live setting. A double-song encore and lingering crowd post-show testify to the band’s riveting live approach; the sold-out night was well earned and deserved.
Read on for Ellis’s take on the EP, his soon-to-debut acting career, and the promising future for Ax and the Hatchetmen.
LUNA: Ax and the Hatchetmen, thank you for taking the time to speak with The Luna Collective! On July 18, you released your third EP, Constant Change. Congratulations! For readers who haven’t listened yet, how would you describe the overall sound and sentiment the EP encapsulates?
ELLIS: Well, it's kind of all over the place. There's a song on there called “Victim” that's pretty old. I think it was written maybe in 2020, and then the rest of the stuff on it is relatively new. But in terms of theme, it's all over the place. There's a song about math called “7x9,” “Victim” is about dating a serial killer, and there's “Stay,” which is a breakup song. “Blurry Lights” is about drugs at the Van Gogh exhibit in Chicago, and not having necessarily the best time. The last song on there is “Hotel Room,” which is about what we're doing right now: traveling for a living. So it's kind of a collection of songs that we liked from the past couple years, with one old one that we had been wanting to put out, but it feels kind of random, and so that's why we called it Constant Change, because the only thing that we can really count on in this profession is change.
LUNA: I like that a lot. Before “Hotel Room,” “Blurry Lights,” and “Stay // Honestly” were tracks 3-5 on the EP, you released them as singles. How would you say the two new songs on the EP, “7x9” and “Victim,” either build off of your previous recent releases or diverge creatively?
ELLIS: I think they're pretty different from the rest of the songs done on the project. The other ones that we released as singles are more grounded in a real place; I would say they're all very personal, experience-based. And then “7x9” is a total just fun love song that includes math. We were really lucky on that song to have Rivers Cuomo, who sings in Weezer, too. It was a demo of his that we were sent, just the first half of the chorus, so we fleshed out the rest of the song. That was a really fun experience to be a part of and to write on. I've been listening to Weezer for my whole life. We were stoked to do that one, and it felt in the ballpark of things we've done before. There's a song called “Love Songs” that's very carefree and fun, and I like those kinds of things. They're fun to sing on stage. Asking the whole crowd, “Can I get your number?” is pretty fun as well. Then “Victim” is totally just made up: what if you were dating a serial killer and her next victim was you? That seemed kind of fun, and you didn't know that she was out killing people between dates. I think that those are more off the cuff, just having fun concepts, whereas the other tunes that were singles were a little more close to home.
LUNA: Is there a song on the EP that particularly showcases who you are as a band right now, or where you might like to go in future projects?
ELLIS: Yeah, I think “Hotel Room” is a pretty good indicator of the ballpark that we're aiming for, same with “Blurry Lights,” but we always want to keep some element of carefree fun, because, at the end of the day, we started as and we're still a garage band. We practice in my parents' garage, and we're all good friends from high school. So, having those fun, silly tunes that you don't have to think too much about, I would always like to keep. I think they're all an indicator of where we want to head in different ways.
LUNA: I love that a lot. Tell me more about your creative vision with the “7x9” music video, and what it was like filming it?
ELLIS: Well, it lent itself very well to a classroom. Luckily, my mom is a teacher, and it's summer, so we were able to jump into her school and do the video for a day. We came up with a quick, very unserious plot line of: you're trying to take a math test and every problem on the test is “7x9,” and nobody wants to do it. So we leave class when the teacher falls asleep, and we go out and try and have fun. We were trying to imagine what would go well with the song, and during the guitar solo and stuff, we could imagine the playground scene and spinning on a merry-go-round, and just really tried to keep it fun. I rushed-ordered a bunch of prep school uniforms on Amazon the day before we shot it, so that it could have a little bit of a vibe. And then we did a yearbook photo thing at the end that was a total tribute to “Freaks and Geeks,” the TV show. It was in the interest of a good time, and felt like it fit the video and song well.
LUNA: It totally did. It was so much fun. Your lyrics tend to be very spatial and detail-oriented. “Victim” has a strong lyrical narrative centered around the fictional concept of dating a serial killer. Tell me more about the songwriting process on this song, and where its inspiration came from, as the story is not personal or real.
ELLIS: [laughs] So the idea came from somewhere. I was talking to a girl a few years ago, and late at night, I dreamt that she had tried to stab her mom or something crazy. I didn't know if it was a dream or if it was real. So a couple of weeks later, I'm still talking to this person, and I'm like, Hey, did you try to do some crazy stuff to your mom? And she was like, No, that's insane. And I was like, okay, yeah, I must have been dreaming. That little blip made me think, well, what if you were dating a serial killer and didn't know about it? That led me down a total rabbit hole, creating a whole storyline where you don't know if this person's been up to … they're not very honest with you about what they're doing, and why they're getting home so late. In the pre-chorus, you find something in their car that's [suspicious], whether it's a rope or a weapon or something. She says she doesn't know what it's for. As the song progresses, you hear her on the phone talking about blood on her hands and stuff. I just really had fun with it. Towards the end, there's this build-up where you realize what she's been up to and that she was … the cops end up coming to her apartment, and you're there, and before they try and arrest her, she says she's going to kill you. So you jump out of her window and escape, leave your wallet, unfortunately, and then you see her also escaping beside you. She says, I promise I'll see you again, to keep it in a dark, mysterious place. It was really just fun. I think weed helped [laughs]. But yeah, it was just an idea that maybe I went a little too far with.
Photo by Harry Bearrows
LUNA: That's so much fun. I love that idea of taking something and being like, yeah, this would probably never actually happen, but let's just see where my mind goes. Did finishing this EP feel more like the end of a project, or will it become part of the momentum towards a full-length album?
ELLIS: It's definitely part of a momentum towards something bigger. Just because I don't know how much sense it makes as a project on its own. It's definitely leaning towards something, a bigger body of work that we're hoping to get out soon.
LUNA: That's super exciting.
ELLIS: Thank you. We're excited.
LUNA: As a Chicago-based band with backgrounds in jazz, how have you experienced those scenes influencing your approach to artistry and performance?
ELLIS: Everyone in the band was involved in some sort of jazz program growing up. We were all in our respective high school jazz bands. I found our trumpet player, Phil, through a conservatory that we both studied at, and then a bunch of us went off to college to study jazz as well, which we're not utilizing that much in our personal project here. But for me, it was mostly to have a palette of colors to choose from in terms of guitar and chords and voicings and stuff like that, just to help with songwriting. But our trumpet player, Phil, is really into it and is getting a degree in jazz trumpet. We try to keep some sort of improvisational aspect to our live shows, to where it feels new and exciting to us every time. There are a few songs that we open up and give some breath within to just do what we feel in that moment. There are influences and voicings that bleed through that come from that jazz background. Also, we have so many people in our band that the best thing studying jazz helped me with was knowing when not to play and when to just help provide an atmosphere, and let other people shine. I think it helps us be courteous of one another, so that nobody's stepping on each other, and everybody's trying to find their place to glue into in different sections.
LUNA: That's super important. Axel, can you tell me more about your upcoming role on “The Runarounds,” an Amazon Prime Video musical teen drama series set to release this September?
ELLIS: Yeah, totally stumbled into that. I have not been an actor ever before in my life, so it's been a crazy, fun experience to be a part of, and I'm super lucky to be in it. It started in 2020, so it's been going for a while now, the concept of it, but I just thought it was a cameo on Outer Banks to perform. So, we all signed up as a band. They were looking for bands ages 16 to 18 or something. I was that age at the time. We signed up, sent in some videos, and soon enough, I got on a Zoom with the director and some casting directors, and they were like, We're trying to 'One Direction' a band together, for lack of a better verb, and make a whole TV show around it. I was like, whoa, okay, I'm not an actor. And they were like, We don't care. We just want you to be able to play music. I was like, if there's anything I felt I could possibly even have a shot at acting out, it was band practice. We got to shoot the first season for it last year. Amazon bought it, and it's coming out this fall. I couldn't be more excited. It's about a band that just graduated high school, that's trying to make it and see if they can do the thing in the summer before everything gets real, and you have to go to college and all that.
Photo by Harry Bearrows
LUNA: That's crazy. So The Runarounds is a real band, and you guys have real shows. Is that going to continue even after the show itself comes out?
ELLIS: Absolutely. I mean, most of us are musicians first. There's one dude that had some experience in acting, but that's kind of what we all really love to do is play live. And so, we're gonna try and do that. We're gonna try and go on tour with it. I mean, we play music together, so why not expand upon that if we can? I’m looking forward to it. Redo The Monkees, why not?
LUNA: This fall, you’ll be headlining a tour in support of your new music. What can your audience expect from that string of shows, and what do you hope you will be learning and enjoying from your current summer tour supporting Fitz and the Tantrums that you want to take with you moving forward?
ELLIS: Well, we haven't done the first show yet for the Fitz tour, so I can't provide too much on that, except we're really excited to start. It's gonna be a blast. We haven't really done any kind of support tours ever before, so it should be really fun. There are some bigger rooms we've never played. We're all really excited to get out there and get after it. For the next tour, you can expect a lot of new music, a lot of stuff we've never played live before, which means we'll have to spend some time in the practice room, for sure. We try and improve and polish our show every time and make it new so that we're not recycling the same thing over and over again; it keeps it fun for us, and hopefully keeps it fun for the people attending the shows as well. But yeah, just a ton of new music and hopefully another project with it.
LUNA: Nice. Love that. Is there anything else you want to speak more about or introduce before we close?
ELLIS: Not really. I think you covered most of the bases in terms of what we've been up to lately and what's coming up. It should be a fun summer with this TV show releasing and then going on the road with our groups. Check out The Back Alley! It's Sal [our guitarist] and Hunter, our bass player, in another group. When I go do stuff with The Runarounds, they go do stuff with their group.
