This interview took place shortly after the band completed a two week summer 2001 tour with Vacation Bible School .  Just a note:  There are two Justin's here so I'm using their last names...

JES:  So, simple things first- the inception of the Elvi.  When did you guys get your start?

Chris:  This lineup has been together since late 97…

All:  Early 98..

Chris:  Early 98.

JES:  So this is not the original lineup?

Matt:  We had a really crappy bass player before.  We kicked him out and now we have (Boller).

Essenpreis:  We use to be a five piece too.

JES:  Did the bassist not work out initially or..

Boller:  He never really worked out but he was just available.

JES:  You guys still friends at all?

All:  Acquaintances.

Essenpreis:  He still pops his head up in the Lake County music scene every once in a while.

Matt:  Basically we were getting set up for our recording session for the tape, Channel Volume Sound Channel, and he just didn’t show up.

JES:  (To Boller) So was the transition (in to the Elvi) pretty easy?

Boller:  Yea, I’ve known these guys since the Elvi even started so I was familiar with all of the songs.

Essenpreis:  And he’s a better musician than either Chris or I.

Chris:  So that’s why we say in 1998 (began) our current lineup because it felt like it just really came together.

JES:  So you guys are all from the Lake County area?

Chris:  Yea, we all went to Warren High School .

JES:  So what else do you guys do besides (being in) the band?

Matt:  Work at Motorola as an engineer.

Boller:  This summer I’m a stripper…  stripping paint off of my parents house until I find a real job.

Chris:  I’m an engineer at Underwriters Laboratories.

Essenpreis:  I do graphic design.

Matt:  So pretty much other than Justin we have the dorkiest jobs.

Essenpreis:  Hey, my job’s pretty dorky so don’t sell me short.  (laughter)

JES:  So you guys have a pretty good history here in Lake County .  Do you have any favorite shows that are in your memory from the years that you’ve been playing around here?

Essenpreis:  Around here I’d have to say definitely the Gainsay, Local H show at 20 Below.  For a local show that was pretty exciting.

JES:  What kind of  local bands influenced you guys?

Boller:  Well, when I first started playing guitar I was in 8^th grade  It seemed like at the time there were a lot of metal bands like Prisoner, SOS, Stygian…

Essenpreis:  That was our first exposure to the local scene though.  There was a big metal scene early in high school for us.

Chris:  I went to a Gainsay show at the Gurnee American Legion.  That totally opened my eyes.  I was like wow there’s this group of kids; people besides (from) my school out here.  It was eye opening and thought it was cool to be in a band…

JES:  So do you guys have any favorite places that you have played?

Boller:  I always thought Beckman’s was a really bad ass place.

JES:  Quite a contrast from what was going on back then than what’s going on now as far as (local) music goes?

Essenpreis:  Yea.  Different in the fact that there isn’t any place to play obviously. When we got our start we were young and had places to play and had fun and good turnouts.  It worked out really well for us because we’re old enough now to figure it out on our own how to do shows.  Growing up we had that advantage that there were places to play.  We lost the venues but we gained the bands and the friendships.  We didn’t have that growing up.

JES:  Both Chris and Justin you guys head up the Lake County Record Collective?   I want to touch briefly on exactly what that is and how it came about.

Chris:  It pretty much started when we wanted to do that compilation (The Sounds of Urban Sprawl).  We had another project going for a while, another band, nothing ever came of it but we were practicing at the Edge.  The cool thing about the Edge (editors note:  The Edge is a now-defunct recording studio/practice spot in Libertyville , IL )  is that it was a gathering place for local musicians and we got to meet a lot of people.  We found out there were a lot of good bands in the area.  It seemed like there was a lot of good stuff coming out around that time and a lot of bands were coming out with a recording soon.  We thought it would be a good time to do a compilation CD.  We were like lets just not to a compilation; we have to keep working together.  When these albums come out we could help each other distribute them, promote each other’s shows.  It’s really succeeded.

JES:  What advise would you give other bands that are interested in starting up a collective of some sorts?

Chris:  Work your asses off.

JES:  I want to know if you guys have any preferences as to who designs your suits?  (laughter)

Essenpreis:  Cavaricci!

Boller:  A lot of the suits I wear are really big because they were once my grandfather’s who was a very stylish man so…

Chris:  Armani…

JES:  You guys actually wear that stuff?

All:  No!  (laughter)

Essenpreis:  My suits are dictated by size and the pink price tag at the thrift store.  (laughter)

Chris:  They’re all thrift store.

Essenpreis:  They smell like hell too.

JES:  How did that come about?

Matt:  Since the first show.

Chris:  It’s just a gimmick we came up with in the beginning and we were too stupid to get rid of it.  When we got together we thought we’d be funny and be the Elvi, you know, a bunch of Elvis's.  There was a costume shop going out of  business in Kenosha and they had these wild colored pastel suits for sale really cheap so we picked up about three of them and wore them.

Essenpreis:  We’ve since become more stylish… (laughter)

JES:  I’d like to talk a bit about your tour now.  It was in the last two weeks in July?

Chris:  Last week of June.

JES:  Which way did you guys go?

Chris:  We did a big loop.  We went down to Texas , across the southwest, California , up the Bay area, and then straight across back home.

JES:  You guys basically did the same route this year that you did last year?

Essenpreis:  Our last show was in L.A. and then we came back.

JES:  Did you guys do anything different this time around?

Chris:  We took ( Vacation Bible School ) with us!  Big mistake…  (laughter)

Essenpreis:  We had a bigger van this time and more shows.

JES:  What was the worse thing that happened?

Chris:  A show got cancelled.  We showed up and the place was closed.

Essenpreis:  I think it was the same time that weird guy exposed his shaved genitals to us.  (laughter)  That was the low point of the tour for me.  (laughter)

JES:  So what do you guys do when something like (canceling a show) happens?

Essenpreis:  Sit and bitch about it for the rest of the tour.

Matt:  We try and threaten the person who claimed the show was going to happen. (laughter)

Essenpreis:  It was a pretty bad situation because we had driven thirteen hours to get there overnight.  We pulled an all-nighter driving across the great state of Texas only to get there and the place was closed.

Chris:  For any bands out there- if that happens to you just go to another club…

JES:  What city and state was this in?

Chris:   El Paso , Texas .

JES:  Would you guys like to tour other parts of the states?

Chris:  Yea, we would love to go out east.

Boller:  Na, we don’t care about the Dakota’s.  (laughter)

Essenpreis:  A lot of work went into it.  Chris and Matt of VBS worked their asses off and I totally commend them.  I kind of bowed out of any part of booking shows because I know what a pain in the ass it is.  I give these guys full credit for working hard on it.

JES:  On a personal level, what did the tour do for you guys?

Boller:  It was really great to go out with VBS cause their all great guys.  You spend two weeks with seven other guys and there’s going to be some tension and probably say things we shouldn’t.  It think everybody did a good job of doing that if that was the case.  Everybody just kind of took their issues and let them go…

Chris:  Other than the fact that ( Vacation Bible School ) are just foul, smelly people… (laughter)

Matt:  Very offensive…

JES:  I would of never thought…

Essenpreis:  From a band titled Vacation Bible School you wouldn’t imagine they’d be such potty mouths.  (laughter)

Boller:  Before, they were such couth individuals believe it or not.  (laughter)

Matt:  The Captain corrupted me.

Essenpreis:  The Captain just corrupted everybody.  He’s one dirty SOB.

Matt:  Talk about a pervert…  (laughter)

JES:  I would of never of thought of the guy like that.  So what other juicy tidbits did you learn from the VBS guys?  Any dark secrets?

Boller:  They’re all really fucking whipped.  (hilarious laughter)

Matt:  The Captain is the worst.

Boller:  With Matt working at Motorola he has access to unlimited cell phone usage…

Matt:  I brought a phone with and I swear the Captain used it more than I did- at least twice a day.  He’s like, “Can I borrow your phone?” and I say, “alright,” and he says, “Five minutes!” and I’m like, “Sure.”  Then he goes off and hides somewhere and comes back an hour later.

Essenpreis:  He only started hiding after the second day when everyone became aware that he was on the phone for two hours a day.

JES:  What was the most memorable point of the tour?

Matt:  Overall the best show was the Denver show.  It made me think that wow maybe this was worth it.

JES:  The most important thing to bring on a two week tour of the band.

Boller:  A roll of toilet paper.

Chris:  Peanut butter for me.  (laughter)  You can’t wipe your ass with peanut butter though and that’s what keeps it from being perfect.  (laughter)

JES:  Yea, now the (Indestructible Suit) CD!  The title of the CD kind of reminds me of this guy I saw on TV once who invented this indestructible suit of sorts…  do you guys remember that?

Essenpreis:  Very clever.  You just pinned the tail on the donkey. (laughter)

JES:  Yea, I guess he was testing it against all kinds of danger- fire and stuff.  He wanted to test it against a grizzly bear.

Boller:  I laughed my ass off!  There’s this guy wearing this suit that’s like a road case you sit in.  They show people breaking two by fours over his head.  They show a car running into him at like thirty five miles an hour and he just flies back.

Essenpreis:  As a band we’re easily amused. Besides our classic monkey throwing feces analogy, the newest one was with this whole thing and being mauled by a bear.  That was kind of the conception of the suit.  We saw that on TV years ago too and thought it was hysterical.  We approached that for the song…

(Boller proceeds to do a rather impressive attacking bear imitation of which I stand completely amused with)

Essenpreis:  That was the original idea behind the song (Indestructible Suit).  Its funny because its also kind of lame…

Boller:  Well, its an inside joke.  Rather than having to explain your own inside joke to everybody and shove it down their throat you just kind of hope that a few people think it’s as funny as you do.  (laughter)

JES:  The disc kind of has a food theme around it.  Is that something that was planned out?

Essenpreis:  We always write what we think is funny or interesting and that’s basically any one of our songs.

JES:  So who is Emily?

Chris:  Emily is based on a true story.  My girlfriend went to school in Dekalb and I was staying with her one night.  It was nice out and we had the window open.  We were just getting to sleep and all of a sudden you hear this really loud “Emily… lets go!”  This yelling was going on for a while and some chick was probably wasted and they were trying to get her to leave.  We were working on this song at the same time and trying to come up with words.  I was like, “Emily?  Yea, it fits.”  (laughter)

JES:  So Justin, what has your success rate been with your forward flips?  Have they gone all the way around usually?

Essenpreis:  Oh, you mean my guitar flips?  My front flips have been going quite well.  I have the new one where I’m actually playing my guitar when I do my front flip.  That’s doing really well.

Chris:  Ever since the hip replacement surgery.  (laughter)

Essenpreis:  My “guitar around the world”  has been on a steady decline though.  (laughter)

Matt:  Once his strap broke and it went flying across the stage.  Twice.  (laughter)

Essenpreis:  I thought I fixed it!  I was wrong.

JES:  Chris, have you feared for your life (on stage) at times?

Chris:  Usually its like a rush when you’re up there.  There’s been near misses like guitars almost hitting me in the eye and stuff like that. (laughter)  One of these days we’re going to get totally demolished.

JES:  So the disc is out.  11 songs.  What’s next?

Boller:  Trying to get people to buy it.  (laughter)

JES:  If any one of you guys had an indestructible suit in your closet what would you want to do with it for one day?

Boller:  Run out in front of a truck or two.

Matt:  I think it would be cool to fall off of a cliff.

Boller:  The possibilities would be endless. (laughter)

JES:  Thanks guys.