Shrunken Elvis Trust Each Other

Shrunken Elvis is the Nashville-based trio of Spencer Cullum, Michael Ruth — aka Rich Ruth — and Sean Thompson. The project emerged in 2022 after the three toured Europe together in support of Spencer’s solo record, and the result is their new self-titled record, which just came out last week on Western Vinyl. A couple weeks before the release, the three hopped on a Zoom call to reminisce about the making of it. 
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music

Spencer Cullum: Sorry I’m late. Am I late? 

Michael Ruth: Nah, you’re fine. We were just chopping it up, talking about soup. You ever order soup to go?

Spencer: No, I haven’t. Why would you do that?

Sean Thompson: Because they’ve got a whole system down! I do it all the time.

Michael: Where are you, Spencer? You’re in Boston?

Spencer: I’m in Boston, yeah.

Michael: Are you playing there tonight?

Spencer: Playing tonight and tomorrow. I just got a police escort, and it was pretty stupid. It was like, “Out my way! It’s a country emergency!” I kept on shouting it.

Sean: We got a police escort after one of the Mumford shows to get out of the amphitheater.

Spencer: Were people like, “Out my way, it’s a folk emergency!” 

Sean: [Laughs.] Yeah, exactly. It was a stomp-clap emergency. 

Michael: I have never gotten a police escort for my music.

Spencer: “Out my way, it’s an ambient emergency!” [Laughs.] How you been, Mikey? 

Michael: I’m feeling good. Kind of fried, but my tank is full. Got to bask in the Scandinavian summer bliss a bit. 

Spencer: What was the festival? Was it just all ambient music?

Michael: No, it was kind of everything. It’s called PLX. It’s a bit similar to Pickathon, or something like that. Kind of enchanted forest art installations, all night raves and such. There was experimental stuff, there was techno, there were artists from Africa and the Caribbean. 

Spencer: On an island.

Michael: Yeah, on this beautiful little island off the coast of southern Sweden.

Spencer: That’s amazing. Was there any acts that you dug? 

Michael: Yeah, I got to see Fennesz, who’s one of my ambient heroes. I talked to him for a while too. He told me all about working with Ryuichi Sakamoto. And then this jazz duo I really like called Bremer McCoy — they were kind of the whole reason I said yes to it, because I was like, Oh, this band is real and they’re doing it. 

Spencer: And where are you, Sean? You in Sound Emporium?

Sean: I’m at Sound Emporium, yeah. This is my first time here. It’s an amazing studio.

Spencer: Every time I’m there, all my equipment breaks.

Sean: Oh, no! [Laughs.] This is where your pedal steel and the amp broke?

Spencer: Everything breaks. And then they lend me stuff, and then that breaks. I think it’s because it’s on the other side of the river… But how is it?

Sean: My gear is currently working. Everything is in tune. The vibes are nice.

Spencer: So, is this what people will be into? Because the only Shrunken stuff we talk about is us bitching about stuff.

Michael: Yeah, should we just live stream our industry gossip? Is that what they want out of this? 

Sean: I will never work in any town ever again. 

Spencer: I feel like I should interview you guys.

Michael: The record’s coming out soon. It’s a good space to get in, maybe be a little reflective about this journey and the fact that it’s basically here.

Sean: I can’t believe it’s actually happening. I’m still kind of in shock that it’s happening at all.

Spencer: What was the review that Uncut [Magazine] put that it was a…?

Michael: “A refreshing lack of ambition.” 

Sean: [Laughs.] That’s a good song title. 

Spencer: I like that it’s been like a constant, refreshing lack of ambition. 

Michael: How do they know that I’m not ambitious?

Spencer: [Laughs.] How do they know that we’re all not ambitious?

Michael: How does a lack of ambition translate into an instrumental record? That’s the bigger question, I think.

Spencer: I do like that it doesn’t feel forced.

Michael: I think that’s probably it. I hope that’s what they’re getting at. 

Sean: I mean, it’s crazy how we have these projects that we really enjoy doing, and then this thing — that we still very much care about, and very much want to proceed with integrity, and is still the thing that we thought about the least — has been the smoothest running thing so far.

Spencer: Yeah, that is true. I still think now none of us really have any idea of how this whole thing works, this whole system — or even if there is a system. And it feels like, when you’re in our later age, it’s weird, the fact that we still don’t know what we’re doing, and the fact that that’s more appealing.

Michael: I think we’re all so wrapped up in our own worlds that it feels like a refreshing detour to just make something with your good friends and not overthink it. In this day and age, it just feels like people care so much.

Spencer: Yeah, and there’s this idea of, you always try and put out a record and be like, “I don’t care if people don’t like it, I don’t care what people think.” But you kind of do. Secretly, like, 40%, you really want validation. So I feel like the thing where there’s been a complete lack of validation, it’s like, “Well, I like it!”

Michael: Obviously we all put out solo records, and we all play with other people, so we know all the sides of things, but I think when we’re putting out solo music, even when you have a team of people that helped you make the record, it’s hard not to feel like you’re taking this pressure on your own, and it does feel a little bit isolating. You’re like, Does anybody care? Does anybody like this? But I think with this, to me, the validation feels like it’s already there because we made it together. That was the validating part. The fact that anybody will hear it and that a record label like Western Vinyl is putting it out, and there’s a platform like this to even talk about it, it feels amazing and it’s exciting. But I think that traditional quest for hoping people like the art you create feels less at the forefront for me with this record, because I know I really like it and it was very validating just writing and recording. 

Spencer: Yeah, I definitely think so.

Sean: It’s interesting because I just did a day of tracking for my next record yesterday. It’s going to be instrumental stuff, and it’s music that I’ve poured a lot of my energy into, and I’m certainly taking a leap doing something that I’ve never really done before. And the whole time that I was recording it and writing these songs, I’m like, Am I crazy? Does this make any sense at all? Is this compelling? It’s such a big unknown. And I think when you’re writing your own music that is under your name, there is this burden of, Is this what I am trying to make? 

Michael: Only having your own instincts to judge or evaluate what you’re making is hard. 

Sean: It’s scary. And I didn’t feel that at all with the Shrunken record. It was all so intuitive.

Michael: We already had a language and a structure to communicate musically. And I think I speak for all of us when I say we’re all pretty enamored by what the other person does, so when you sync all that up into one thing where we’re all this machine together, it’s a lot of fun. I trust it because I trust you guys and I trust myself. 

Spencer: It was also nice, the fact we’d done it in your studio. It felt like you’re not burdening an engineer—

Michael: I mean, you didn’t engineer it.

Spencer: [Laughs.] Yeah, that’s true, actually. 

Michael: [Laughs.] You could still compensate me… No, I’m just kidding. You’re 100% right, and I love having a workspace that I feel very comfortable in, and that I can also offer to my friends that we can work in and you’re not having to pay hundreds of dollars per day. Even though it would be really helpful for me…

Spencer: [Laughs.] Well, now we’ve gotta do the other one. Round two. 

Michael: I’ve been thinking about this a lot — I think that traveling was a foundational element to what Shrunken Elvis is, and what this music is and what our relationship is together. How do you guys find that travel influences and inspires what you do creatively? And how do you think that relates to this record specifically?

Sean: I think traveling, for me, is one of the few places where I can have that full naked inspiration feeling, where I have no other obligations but to be right there. I think that I can be opened up in a way that I probably wouldn’t normally be at home with obligations.

Michael: Yeah, definitely.

Spencer: I think touring, especially with certain gigs we do — even when we’ve done Hopscotch and Europe — I can’t write music on tour or anything, but improvising and doing certain shows, there are definitely moments in time of festering something. It feel like it festers an outcome, [like an idea] that you’ve always thought about and then you travel on tour and it moves on to the next stage. And I think that especially with Shrunken.

Michael: I think it’s interesting that that was sort of the foundation before it was the writing and recording the music. Usually, I feel like it’s the opposite: You write and record music, and then you travel around and play it. Whereas this time, we traveled around and played a lot of music together, and then it was like, “Oh, this works out really well. We should write a record,” in this fashion that we built out of limited resources, which was because it was only three of us. Especially my music would be hard to just sit down and play with three people on stringed instruments, so it was like, “How can we incorporate this electronic synthesizer-driven thing?” And I find that for me, traveling is kind of a through line of my life and my inspiration. 

Sean: I also think that being in the Passat and just getting to talk about music, having that active listening together and being able to vocalize that, was really helpful for us to understand where each other was coming from, even more so than we had before.

Michael: Realizing, too, how much overlap we all had in our taste — because we knew each other decently well before that tour, but we came out of that pretty bonded, I think. But a lot of that was, the experience of having toured with so many other people, I feel like oftentimes I’m more different than a lot of the people I’ve been in the van or a bus with. And that’s fine. But then this time, it was like, Oh, man, we’re all really similar in our music tastes and interests. We really aligned in such a natural way, which then transferred to writing and recording the music.

Spencer: Definitely. I liked how touring Europe in the daytime, on the day drives, it was our serious music that we would be into, like, “Oh, have you heard this record?” Like, I’d never heard that song “Cool in the Pool,” and I liked learning about that. But then the night drives, that was—

Michael: Geezer time.

Spencer: [Laughs.] Yeah. There was no restrictions, just the most embarrassing or cringe music.

Sean: Yeah. Good music is not allowed.

Spencer: Yeah, it was like, “We’ve gotta get from point A to point B and it doesn’t really matter to impress each other with what music we’re into. We just need Foreigner to get us there.”

Sean: It’s like a completely different art form.

Michael: In the daytime, we’d be listening to records while we drove, discussing the intricacies of Keith Jarrett and Cluster. And then at night, we’d be turning up Blue Öyster Cult as loud as it could go just to stay awake.

Spencer: Or some late ‘80s Queen, ‘80s Robert Palmer…

Sean: “Rooster.” 

Michael: We definitely snuffed the rooster. 

Sean: [Laughs.]

Michael: Maybe that’s most bands on tour. But it was refreshing. You know, we’ve all come from a lot of years of playing in other people’s bands, so I think philosophically before the music, we felt like we were kind of free from the constraints of other musicians telling us what to do and what to play and how to behave in the van and stuff. And then that whole mentality of, we could 100% be ourselves, I think that’s how the record was also made. It was easy to write and record this music.

Spencer: The Passat tour kind of set the whole feel of the record up, of being in a small station wagon and being vulnerable.

Michael: Yeah, and just making the best of what you have available, and still having a good time and finding fulfillment with your mates. 

Sean: I still think it’s hard to overstate how profound of an impact that tour had on me, and making me fall in love with instrumental music again, in a way that I had kind of gotten away from. It reignited a really different part of inspiration, and I felt like it gave me the permission to start writing instrumental music again, and in a more informed way. 

Spencer: Yeah. I guess when there isn’t any sort of pressure, you can just do what you want and feel really happy about it. Isn’t that the beginning of learning the guitar? Being 13 years old and just doing what you want, that is the ultimate joy of music, ain’t it? I think about that a lot. You guys made me feel like I was 13.

Sean: I try to carry that little bastard with me. I try to remember that, learning Cannibal Corpse riffs.

Spencer: That’s a lot cooler. I was learning “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by Crash Test Dummies. [Laughs.] I’ll tell you what, I was recently on this tour and I was like, “You guys gotta listen to this Crash Test Dummies record, it’s so good. It’s amazing and it still holds up.” I put it on, and apparently to other people, it doesn’t hold up.

Michael: You talking about God Shuffled His Feet?

Spencer: He knows it! Yeah.

Michael: I’ve only listened to “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” as an adult. I haven’t gone back to listen to the other songs.

Spencer: Do the whole record. It holds up.

Michael: It’s interesting to think about your little inner teenage self that was first learning guitar, and all that music you were listening to back then. Maybe the Shrunken journey and that trip helped rekindle breaking the walls down, and just not giving a shit anymore and saying, “Yeah, I used to love Korn and Slipknot and Alice in Chains.” The older I get, the more I’m in touch with that, and I think that’s an important thing. And I think the spirit of that is alive and well in how we’ve managed to approach making and releasing this music.

Spencer: I guess the older you get, you kind of lose your naivete, don’t you? It’s kind of nice that Shrunken puts it back in for you. Those are my last words.

Michael: “Shrunken puts it back in for you.”

Spencer: [Laughs.] Oh, dear.