Episode 37
Last week I told you we’d head to New England and see what became of ol’ Roy. Well, I lied. Sort of. I didn’t realize Halloween was only a week away. I can’t tell you what an odd sensation it is when you live life in a world where you produce music and stories that come out at a different time of year. While you guys were at the lake, I was already in full-on Halloween mode. Christmas songs? I usually record those right after the first of the year or in the spring. What am I working on now? Don’t ask.
Anyway, sorry for the curve ball. It just felt a little wrong to jump into Christmas music before Halloween, so Roy is staying on hold a little longer. He’ll get his Rhode Island chapter soon, I promise. Besides, I have a Halloween EP out, and this is probably the best week to tell you about it, right?
So, Halloween…
When I was a kid, I loved Halloween. I don’t really know why, but I did. I wasn’t all about dressing up. We were poor, so costumes were whatever Mom could put together from stuff laying around the house. One year I was a pumpkin: she traced one onto orange cardboard and put a string on it to drape over my shoulders. She saved it, because she repurposed things like that as Halloween decorations. (She loved Halloween.) Another year I was Frankenstein, with sprayed hair and bolts drawn on my neck in her leftover makeup. I was a ghost the year she found glow-in-the-dark makeup cheap at the grocery store. Dracula was always an easy one, and I think I was Dracula several times.
My mom, dad, and I all liked scary movies, and we watched them year round whenever they came on TV. (Yes, kids, you had to wait for something to air at a certain time to watch it. This was pre-internet, pre-VCR.) Channel 8 had a Friday night show after the news called The Plenty Scary Movie. Man, I loved that. The classic monsters were regular features: Dracula, Frankenstein, the Invisible Man. My dad would try to make popcorn, usually burn it, and we’d lay in front of the TV eating burnt popcorn and watching scary movies. Mom turned me on to The Blob, Invaders from Mars, and The Twilight Zone. She and I were always front and center for Ssssss and Island of Terror. If you’ve never seen those two, do yourself a favor and watch them, and let your kids watch them too. Scary movies can be a lot of fun for kids watching with their parents or guardians, lol.
You’d think loving all that would make me more into Halloween itself, but I don’t think it was the movies. I think it was the rush of excitement of the day. It’s compounded excitement. Every kid in class is either thrilled about going trick or treating or terrified of the spooks, and either way, it creates a vibe that’s unmistakable. It’s a lot like a kid on Christmas morning. To this day, I can close my eyes and go right back to one Halloween in the mid 1970s. I don’t know the full circumstances. It may have been our first year in Tulsa. My grandfather, who also lived in Tulsa, came over at dusk with a wheelbarrow. He and my dad proceeded to wheel me, whenever I needed a break, through what seemed like miles of our neighborhood and beyond. The air was crisp, I was happy, and the candy was flowing. By the end of the night, the wheelbarrow was full of candy. It was the perfect night. We never repeated it, but every year I got that same feeling of excitement. I still do, even though I haven’t gone trick or treating since I was 12.
By 13, I’d stopped dressing up for Halloween. For one thing, 13 was too old for a boy to be trick or treating back then. Parents would frown and make snide comments about your size (“Aren’t you a little big to be trick or treating?”). But I’d also started altering my appearance every day. I first bleached my hair around 12. My mom bought me some Sun In because I liked Robin Zander’s hair and she figured he probably used it. It mostly turned orange, but I was getting into punk and new wave by then, so orange wasn’t so bad. From 12 to 40, I bleached or colored my hair depending on my mood. Around then I picked up the old “Halloween is every day” concept, and I still abide by it. People would dress up as punks for Halloween, which I thought was stupid – why not dress that way every day? So, I’d go as an office worker. They’d ask why I didn’t dress up. I did. I’m you!
Anyway, as I got older and more isolated, I still felt that same excitement on Halloween. It’s like you hear old people say all the time: “I may look 70, but I still feel like a kid inside.” That’s so true. Despite my writing efforts in recent years, I feel more confident presenting emotion through music. So earlier this year, I set out on a mission to capture that feeling. I called it One Halloween.
The album cover is a photo of me on my first Halloween, which makes the title a bit of a double play. It documents one particular Halloween from when I was a kid, and it’s also Halloween number one for me. Get it? lol
I wanted it to work like the day itself: three songs, without concern for genre, one day, from the morning wait to after the porch lights go out.
“Wait Until Dark” starts on Halloween morning. You’re already dressed and ready to go, but Mom has other plans. School first. Then you have to wait until dark, because that’s when kids trick or treated back then. (Much safer times.) She told me that every single year. So you sit there all day watching the clock, buzzing with anticipation, and something else seems to be watching you too: a quiet presence at the edges of the day, patient, waiting right along with you. Finally you’re home, and Mom says it again: wait until dark. Then dinner comes, and the mood shifts. Something’s out there now, watching your family eat, calling you to come out and play. When I started working on it, I was picturing the opening of E.T. or Poltergeist, kids riding their bikes around a neighborhood on a morning full of hope and excitement. That needed to sound like a movie score, so I mixed orchestral sounds with synths to add atmosphere here and there.
“Trick or Treat” is the night itself, and it’s pure adrenaline. The costume is on, the bag is empty, and you hit the street running. Door to door, laughing your head off, sprinting to the next porch before the last one even closes, with the sugar already kicking in. Behind those doors the grown-ups are throwing their own party, popping up to drop candy in your bag before diving back into the dancing and drinking, but you barely notice. You’re too busy having the time of your life. It’s a new wave, surf-inspired rush of a song built for exactly that kind of chaos, the good kind, with no time to catch your breath. The lyrics couldn’t be simpler. Just shout it: Trick or Treat! Fair warning, you will be singing it.
“Beware the Great Pumpkin” closes out the day. It’s what happens after the porch lights go dark. The kids are in bed, sugar crashed, and the night isn’t quite finished with the day yet. This is the abstract, unsettled side of Halloween, the part nobody sees because they’re supposed to be asleep for it. It’s what I call a soundscape, more about capturing a mood than structured timing and orchestration. Along with my usual synth setup, I was trying out some new software from Sampleson. The very first sound is a sample of the last note of “Trick or Treat,” which I morphed into something of its own and ran through the whole song. You don’t play Sampleson products with keys. You use a mouse or controller to manipulate and morph the sounds, and every sound you get out of it is completely unique. They make sound-design tools, not song generators. So, I’m steering every sound by hand. Setting the scene that something is out there. And if you happen to catch a glimpse of the Great Pumpkin himself, consider yourself warned.
I also made a video for each of the songs, and yes, they are the dreaded AI slop. If you know my sense of humor, AI slop is right up my alley. Yes, I know there’s an unattached hand in one of them. It made me laugh, so I kept it. Follow me? Anyway, the Beware the Great Pumpkin video uses that same cover photo as its AI source, and the Wait Until Dark video started from a picture of me at around 6 or 7 years old. So if the kid in those looks somewhat familiar, that’s me. I made the videos to give you a little amusement if you are listening to the songs on YouTube, and I promise I don’t take my AI video skills too seriously. They’re just supposed to be fun and/or interesting. Simple as that.
The music is a different story. It was not made with AI. Sorry, no Suno. I wrote it all and played it all by hand. Links to those groovy AI videos are below. I hope you get a laugh and like the underlying songs.
Wait Until Dark: https://youtu.be/rJ4fcBnMP0k?si=kX5-B4jhuBJkm2U0
Trick or Treat: https://youtu.be/z8UYNfvyA2E?si=wWT8RSMcDn8nbB2s
Beware the Great Pumpkin: https://youtu.be/fE577ww36f0?si=bC4c12CTQ-UgD-HN
One Halloween is out now: Links to all of the major streamers can be found on the following page: One Halloween EP by Jeff Elder .
I hope you have as much fun listening to it and watching the videos as I had making them all. It really was a fun project and, and I have no regrets whether anybody likes it or not.
More road ahead next week. Try to make yours a good one.
Jeff
Audio credits: Intro/Outro music: Intro: Wait Until Dark by Jeff Elder, Outro: Beware the Great Pumpkin by Jeff Elder.
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