Elizabeth and the Catapult: have piano, will travel

(Credit: Verve Forecast)

When Elizabeth Ziman, singer-pianist for New York indie-pop trio Elizabeth and the Catapult, takes our call, she sounds like she’s at the bottom of a well. “I’m hanging out at my friend’s house right now,” she explains apologetically, “and there are people making noise in the living room…so I’m in her bathroom and there’s a really funny echo in here.”

Ziman, who grew up in Greenwich Village, is used to working in cramped spaces. According to the band’s bio on CDBaby.com (one of the only places you can find their self-released debut EP), the classically trained pianist wrote her first songs on an upright piano in a laundry room, with the dryer doubling as a metronome. But based on early response to Elizabeth and the Catapult’s debut album, “Taller Children,” Ziman and her bandmates—drummer Dan Molad and guitarist Pete Lalish—may have to get used to playing on bigger stages.

In recent months, the group—long a fixture on the Lower East Side music scene—has been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” iTunes’ “Next Big Thing” and Rolling Stone’s “Hype Monitor” (not to mention Metromix’s “Under the Radar”)—all setting the stage for their first big U.S. tour. Even Perez Hilton has hopped on the Catapult bandwagon. “We’re just now buying a van,” Ziman says with an excited laugh. “We’re on the cusp of a new chapter.”

Ziman, who had just celebrated her 27th birthday, stayed in her friend’s bathroom long enough to tell us about some of the band’s adventures in Omaha, where they recorded most of “Taller Children” (with producer Mike Mogis of Bright Eyes). She also revealed details on two of the band’s secret weapons for their tour: a rare (and heavy) portable piano and a highly versatile bass player.

Did you have a good birthday?
I actually had a really idyllic birthday. Usually there’s like a surprise party that really takes me off-guard, and then I try to be a good birthday girl and go along with it until, like, four in the morning. And this year was “Jurassic Park,” “Ghostbusters,” a bunch of close friends and a couple of beers. It was great.

You’re more into the low-key birthday celebration? Not staying out till the bars close?
Yeah, I’m gonna wait till, like, 40 before I go crazy again.

Normally you guys are a trio, but the last time I saw you perform, you had a bass player, as well. Will you have one on this tour?
Yeah, we have a bass player, who’s actually kind of my hero. He plays keys, he plays guitar, he plays bass, he has a beautiful, lovely voice. He plays saxophone—he just has so many tricks up his sleeve. So we’re just kind of gonna abuse him and see where it takes us. You know, just make him feel really, really scattered and ADD onstage.

I do think it’s interesting, given you’re a band that doesn’t have a full-time bass player, that quite a few of your songs have really great basslines.
I write based off of basslines. I should be a bass player, not a piano player. It’s really bizarre. I just learned bass for “Taller Children,” but I’m still not brave enough to do it onstage. But definitely my left piano hand is way too excited. It’s always based on my left piano hand.

Maybe that’s why you haven’t brought on a full-time bass player. You want to keep the bass parts all to yourself.
I think it’s a little bit of that and I think also it just so happens that the core of the band, we’re all best friends. So I think sometimes for bass players it’s a little bit like going into the—I don’t want to say “cool crowd,” because that’s literally the wrong word—but it’s kind of like coming into this fraternity or something.

There’s a lot of inside jokes going over their heads?
There’s so many, so many, so many inside jokes.

Can you give me an example? If there’s one you can actually explain.
Oh my god, I’m trying to think of one that’s not dirty. [Laughs] Well, Patty, my rabbit—we took her to Omaha…

Paddy?
Patty. Her name is Patty Moon; she’s black and has a white nose.

And she came to Omaha with you?
Yeah, we brought her because she’s like my main inspiration for everything I do right now in my life. I just actually did an article where they made me basically just write a diary entry about how much I love her—for Teen Vogue. [Laughs]

Wow, you’re gonna be responsible for thousands of teenaged girls going out and buying rabbits.
I know—unbelievable! So basically, the rabbit pooped all over Mike Mogis’ house. Like, everywhere—under every single piece of furniture, there was rabbit poop. And at the end of the session, he was like, “So did you clean up everything right?” And we were like, “Yeah, we think so.” And then we left—and he called a week later and was like, “There’s rabbit poop under every single bed in this house!” [Laughs] And we felt so bad. So now we just ask each other all the time if we’ve “cleaned up right”—and it just means, have we gone to the bathroom.

Well, hopefully you and Mike Mogis got along well, apart from the rabbit poop.
Oh, yeah yeah yeah. He’s amazing—and he was so incredibly respectful. He was very specifically concerned about having us be who we are…it felt like we really maintained our individuality at the same time as learning a lot from him.

Are you going to be able to bring an actual piano on this tour, or will you have to make due with a keyboard?
Yeah, It’s really interesting…we actually just bought a Helpinstill and there’s only like a couple of them in America. It’s basically a portable piano, but still pretty heavy—it’s about as heavy as a Rhodes would be. So I’m gonna give the boys lots of treats for helping me. I’ll constantly be buying them cookies. [Laughs] But it’s definitely worth it, because I’m just not a Wurly or a Rhodes player—it’s just not the [right] sound. I grew up as a classical pianist—it’s my instrument.

How did you transition from playing classical piano to the style of music that you play now?
Well, basically, I listened to a lot of En Vogue; I listened to a lot of C+C Music Factory. Write that down. [Laughs] No, I went to school for film scoring—to get a composition degree. And then a jazz singer [Patti Austin] came to the school looking for background vocalists. She was doing an Ella Fitzgerald tribute—[we played] Lincoln Center and all these crazy places. So I was listening to a lot more Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone and Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan—so that kind of mixed in with my classical roots. And then Danny and Pete, they have much more of an indie rock background; Pete was in a noise band. So all these different, varied, contrasting styles just kind of all met right in the middle.