Layton Elliott: Music without limits

His youthful appearance and quiet soft spoken manner belie local musician Layton Elliott’s nearly six decades on this planet, his gravelly baritone and mean guitar skills.

Elliott really wanted a drum set when he was a young teen. What he got was a guitar from Montgomery Ward.

Disappointment quickly turned to fascination.

“I remember playing all day long,” Elliott said, “just to learn how to play. I had deep grooves in the ends of my fingers. When they started to bleed, I wrapped them with white tape and kept right on playing.

“I guess I fell immediately in love with the guitar.”

Practicing alone wasn’t enough so he formed a band with some high school friends. They would gather regularly at the Elochoman Grange to practice. He doesn’t remember the name of the band but he remembers them.

“Chris Ferguson, Jim Gorman, Jim Felton and Frank Struehy,” Elliott remembers. “But Dick Quigley had been practicing on his little brother’s drum set and one day he sat down at ours.”

Like many bands before them, one musician came in while another moved on.

Finally an opportunity to perform presented itself with a concert at the high school.

“The Talleyhos were playing,” Elliott said, “which was Don Talley and his family. Then The Variations, which was the Gunn family with Brian Mjelde on the drums.”

When it was their band’s turn to play, Elliott and his bass player, Ferguson decided to be cool. They brought their instruments close to the amp during an old Cream song called Politician for distortion.

“Some girl came over to me afterwards and said, ‘It was really great! It’s too bad you were having trouble with the feedback.’”

He laughed.

When his family moved from Skamokawa to Rosburg, he formed a band in Naselle.

“We called ourselves Columbia. It was Jerry and Floyd Wirkkala and my little brother Lance. On drums we had this double-jointed guy named David Bergquist. He could wrap his legs behind his head.”

Soon they were the school’s official jazz band.

Elliott wrote his first song in Walt LaFontaine’s typing class in 1971. He remembers it well.

“I was getting bored typing, so I typed a song.”

He’s been writing ever since. He’s submitted some of his work to an outfit in Nashville and though he’s gotten lots of listens to some of his songs, nothing has sold. Yet.

Elliott put out his first album in 2002 when he was living in Colorado. He was playing in bars and taverns and coffee houses and hanging out with other musicians. He got a gig playing for a guy that called himself Def Hippy.

“That was a lot of fun,” Elliott said. “I’d never thought of myself as a lead guitar player until then. But people started to show up to hear me play.”

Def Hippy didn’t like that. And soon it was Elliott’s turn to move on.

In the early 80’s, he and his brother Lance started the Moxie Brothers Blues Band. Their harpist was in Alcoholics Anonymous and would get them gigs at AA clubs all over Portland.

“We were getting pretty popular,” Elliott said. “We even played at the Crystal Ballroom once.”

The success led to an ambitious bid to play at the Blues Festival in Portland. They got booked.

They got booked to entertain the entertainment after the show. They, along with another band were the opening act for yet another headliner.

“My brother was set to go on vacation that night so we brought in another bass player,” Elliott said. “The headliner was tired, so we got pushed back until 11 o’clock.”

It got worse.

“Our stand in bass player was bored and tired of waiting so he went out and got drunk. We finally got up there to play and I look out at the audience and all I see are empty chairs.”

They all went home, he thought. “What the heck!”

That’s when his lead player elbowed him and pointed off to the side.

The seats were empty because their audience wanted to dance.

“This is what blues music is supposed to sound like!” someone shouted.

“They wanted us to keep playing,” Elliott smiled. “But we had only showed the drunken player so many songs. We had to stop.”

“That night was a real highlight,” he added.

Once in a while he will gather with his friends and play. For 15 years, he and some other locals played old Irish and Scottish songs in a band they called Celtic Air.

He studied music theory and composition for a year at what was then called Eastern Washington State College in Cheney. Eventually he went to business college and got a diploma in professional accounting administration. Now he drives the mail truck and gets paid to play live music in virtual worlds.

“Mostly I play online,” Elliott said. “I play live in virtual nightclubs. I can collect tips and pay that way. I have it converted into cash and sent to my Paypal account.”

His avatar has long black hair and resembles a pirate. His name is Kris Electricteeth and he performs on the screen while Elliott plays at home and transmits the live music to an internet music station.

Elliott’s wife, Pam, is learning to play the drums and frequently joins him.

“When I first found these virtual places, I would play a pirate. Then I heard that they had live music, so I decided I should learn how to do that.”

Because he’s learned to pick up a bass line while playing, it sounds like there is more than one instrument. In order to keep his employers happy he had to build an entire band.

“The music was live,” Layton explained, “but they had to believe it was live, so to believe it was live, I had to make up an entire band to explain why they were getting that much sound from one guitar.”

Now he hires other people to stand on the virtual stage, work the light show and interact with others in the virtual world.

He cites the Beatles, CSNY, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Johnny Cash as influences.

But he looks for inspiration in other places too.

“You don’t want to limit yourself. You just end up copying them. I wanted to do it myself and build my own sound.”

Elliott’s new album is called Over You. Except for a couple songs, everything else was recorded in his home studio.

“A lot of this album is country music,” Elliott said, “along with some blues.”

He plays the banjo, mandolin and the keyboard as well. Pam joined him on the drums for one song.

“It’s hard to get a drummer,” Elliott said. “It’s good to have somebody who really likes your music, as most of the time all they’re doing is a ‘boom, click’.”

“I add extras!” laughed Pam.

He and Pam have been married for 37 years. She studied nursing, but now plays music with him and makes jewelry. They have one daughter, Audra.

They will be playing at the Duck Inn on May 17 at 7 p.m. to celebrate the release of his new album. It will be available for purchase at the Skamokawa Resort and through CD Baby.