Audra May Photography

It's not every day your favorite band uses your photo for their album cover! New Eels album out June 7th!

Darren Jessee somewhere in NY, 1999

Old film photos that I scanned today. This was the concert I went to when I was 19 years old. I drove from Rhode Island to Massachusetts to meet up with internet friends that I'd never met IRL. No cell phone. No GPS. I mapquested directions to some stranger's house. We then drove to New York.

"They suggested that when I performed, I should always be present, kind, and engaged. They implored me to always remember that the intention with which you play each note has an effect on the people listening. An audience's time, presence, and attention are great gifts to a performer. I too had a gift to share, but it wasn't worth anything if I wasn't mindful. I should never sleepwalk my way through playing music, skipping across each note as if each one was a step closer to getting the fuck out of there. It was far braver to actually care, they concluded- to savor each phrase, to give something of myself, no matter what kind of music it was." --Ben Folds from A Dream About Lightning Bugs

I thought it would be fun to combine photos into a gif so you could see what a concert is like from my perspective.

When I shot the Eels in 2018, I missed this shot completely. I was out of position with a telephoto lens. I wasn't about to miss it a second time. The time stamps on the photos tell me this all took place in less than a minute. You have less than a minute to make sure the levels are right, the first two frames show that I was way off, then you have to fight the stage lighting, hope the musicians continue to block the back light, go blind a couple of times when they move and eventually get crowded out by the other photographers in the pit. Oh, and hope the musicians look cool enough to post one of the shots. I thought the guitarist wouldn't like his hair looking that insane, but it turns out he did.