Elisa Flynn

Elisa Flynn grew up in Yonkers, NY, and after taking years of classical piano lessons, discovered the Clash, and her life was changed forever. She decided it was her destiny to play punk rock guitar, but had no idea how. (This was illustrated in her role as a founding member of noise rockers the Bunny Brains.) A few years later, she bought a $70 sparkly red copy of a Teisco del Rey guitar in a run-down Main Street music shop, and began her musical career in 90’s Danbury, CT, a small city wit...

Elisa Flynn grew up in Yonkers, NY, and after taking years of classical piano lessons, discovered the Clash, and her life was changed forever. She decided it was her destiny to play punk rock guitar, but had no idea how. (This was illustrated in her role as a founding member of noise rockers the Bunny Brains.) A few years later, she bought a $70 sparkly red copy of a Teisco del Rey guitar in a run-down Main Street music shop, and began her musical career in 90’s Danbury, CT, a small city with a robust local music scene. Learning as she went, she took up playing with a vengeance as a member of Freakbaby (later called Jet Jaguar), a roiling punk and free jazz-inspired combo, for 6 years. After moving to Brooklyn, Elisa spent 2 years in The Happy Ending as a guitarist and singer, but when the band split up, she took this as a sign to change direction and go solo. After taking voice lessons from Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), she took her stronger voice and headed out with an acoustic guitar and a suitcase full of effects pedals. Her first EP, Dimestore Mary came out in 2006, and was called a “collection of songs raw and rigid in execution,” by womenfolk.net, with “impatience, anger and frustration find their way into her smartly crafted, mid-80s style lo-fi songs,” by lucidculture.com and “the world needs more songs like this,” on americanauk.net. She has played solo shows in many New York City clubs in the last three years to growing audiences. Elisa Flynn's songs are like birds' nests--woven through with interesting and shiny bits. She collects situations and images the way other people might collect things, and then she turns them into songs that have sonic range and depth. Her voice is a big and wholly original soprano soaring over plaintive picking and vigorous strumming. In her lyrics, her dark sense of humor comes through in the story that makes up each song. In articulating the thoughts of a care-free serial killer, or conveying the secret terror of a woman in the Donner Party, or the thoughts of black birds flying towards the heavens, she shows her gift for articulating her characters' thoughts. Her first album, which she released at the beginning of 2009 on her own Cat in a Dress Records, is called “Songs About Birds & Ghosts,” in a sort of tribute to Talking Heads’ “Songs About Buildings and Food.” Recorded at Emandee Studio in Brooklyn by Mark Ospovat, it features Anders Griffen on drums, and Ospovat on bass.