Pedals can be a source of inspiration. But can they be the catalyst to start a band? The argument could be made that without a looper bassist Kristian Dunn and drummer Tim Fogarty would’ve never taken flight as El Ten Eleven. (The band is named after the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar airplane.)

“I knew I wanted to start a band—in my mind it was probably going to sound like El Ten Eleven—but I didn’t know exactly how I’d do it. I got Tim [Fogarty] to play drums and I thought I’d get a third person for keyboards,” recalls Dunn.

Fogarty wondered if Dunn had ever heard of a looper pedal. He hadn’t, so Dunn borrowed one from a friend and brought it to band practice. “We tried it, and right out of the gate our eyes lit up and we thought out loud, ‘Oh my god! Could we just do this with the two of us?!’”

Since 2002, the live-looping masterminds have taking to the skies performing their organic, net-free, high-wire act. (Even Fogarty loops electronic drum parts through Dunn’s Boomerang that runs into a Gallien-Krueger MB Fusion 800 and a GK 115 RBH cabinet that sits near Fogarty.) And to celebrate two decades of their clever, playfully poetic, post-rock instrumentals, they’ll release their ninth album, New Year’s Eve, on March 4, 2022 via Joyful Noise.

Before El Ten Eleven’s headlining show at Nashville’s Exit/In on January 29, juggling, tap-dancing, bass-playing Dunn gave PG’s Chris Kies 30-plus minutes to detail his cockpit. He explains how a late-night Genesis video influenced his doubleneck duality, illuminates why he always carries a marker, and then unlocks some expressive cheat codes with his pedalboard and signal chain.

[Brought to you by D’Addario XPND Pedalboard: https://ddar.io/xpnd.rr]

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