BOYDEN—Eli Dykstra described his newly released album as “three years of hard work encapsulated in 53 minutes.”
The 19-year-old rock guitarist from Boyden dropped the 12-track record, “Devil & Angel,” on Oct. 31 — the first music release he has done under the solo moniker, “Dykstra.”
He said the songs on the album are ones that did not make the cut to be included on his 2019 record, “Time,” which he published under the artist name, “Eli Dykstra Rocks!”
It was not that Eli did not like them then but because he felt he had not yet perfected them.
“It took three years to perfect this album, so to see it come out — like I remember pulling it up on Spotify for the first time and seeing the album art on Spotify and it’s one of the greatest feelings of all time,” the guitar phenom said.
“It’s almost better than seeing the CDs is seeing it on iTunes and Spotify. And I think maybe that’s just because I grew up more in the digital age.”
He composed most of the music for the album in Iowa — and later demoed them in the Hawkeye State — but recorded, mixed and mastered the tracks in Nashville, TN, where he has resided since 2020 shortly after graduating from Boyden-Hull High School in Hull.
The title of the album refers to themes of good versus evil, heaven versus hell and the contrasting sounds of Eli’s musical repertoire.
The idea for that dichotomy originated when someone at a live show commented how he has a black guitar and a white one — or as they put it, “a devil guitar and an angel guitar.” As he was working on the album, Eli said it turned into a concept album of sorts unintentionally.
“If you read the song titles, it kind of flows like a story,” he said.
Eli Dykstra holds a CD copy of his recently released solo album, “Devil & Angel.”
The opening track is called, “Devil,” while a song halfway through is titled, “Purgatory,” and the closing song is “Angel.” The music also follows a similar thematic shift: The songs in the first half are heavier and angrier in sound, while the latter songs are lighter and more melodic.
Besides playing guitar, Eli is behind all the other instrumentals on the album — bass guitar, drums, violins, strings, piano and synth.
After Eli finished high school, he originally was set to enroll in the Apprentice Academy in Franklin, TN, a suburb of Nashville. The 16-week program teaches students, “the ins and outs of the music industry, recording and engineering and producing,” according to Eli.
The coronavirus pandemic canceled the fall 2020 program. Nonetheless, Eli decided to move to the Tennessee capital city to be closer to other professional musicians and expand his skills as a guitarist and songwriter.
He joked that a person could throw a brick into the Nashville sky, and it’d have a better chance of hitting a musician than a car. Living in the city the past 12 months has been one of the best years of his life professionally. He contrasted it to living in Iowa, where he felt his musical creativity had grown stagnant.
“Moving to Nashville, now I’m meeting with other musicians who are a million times better than I am,” he said. “It really pushed me to work harder and become better than what I ever was here, as far as my playing and my writing.”
In particular, he has been reconnecting with blues music — the genre in which he first began playing — and developing a more story-oriented songwriting approach thanks to the popularity of country music in that city.
Eli Dykstra plays out a note while jamming on his white, six-string B.C. Rich electric guitar.
His journey to the music-saturated metropolis was a chain reaction of events, starting with his involvement with the O’Keefe Music Foundation. Eli became involved with the Cincinnati-based foundation — which lets young musicians record their musical performances for free on video and post them online for exposure — about five years ago.
Through that experience, Eli was given the opportunity to record in a studio in Nashville. That experience sparked his interest in music production and he started recording his own music afterward. His first extended play (EP) record was self-titled as “Eli Dykstra Rocks!” and came out in 2018.
Through that initial recording experience, he met photographer Shawn Hudgins. He took the cover photo for Eli’s first EP as well as for “Devil & Angel” and was the one who told him about Apprentice Academy.
Eli enrolled in the academy in earnest earlier this fall and has about a month to go with it.
He was able to work with the instructor, Joe West, in West’s Nashville studio the past year before the program started. That hands-on experience gave him a leg up on the other academy students and helped influence the production work that went into his new album.
“I’ve loved every single minute of it. I love working in the studio. I love just learning. I’m like a sponge,” Eli said.
Although he enjoys living and working in Nashville, Eli said he still misses his home state and his family members who reside in N’West Iowa.
Eli Dykstra, a 19-year-old rock guitarist from Boyden, jams onstage at Bigs Bar in Sioux Falls, SD, during a live show last Saturday. He recently dropped a new, 12-track solo album called, “Devil & Angel.”
His mother, Jen, said the 14-hour distance from her lone child has been a difficult adjustment. She originally thought he might end up in a city that wasn’t so far away, such as Des Moines, Omaha, NE, or Minneapolis.
“I wish that he was closer, but I know he’s where he needs to be,” Jen said.
Eli and Macy Addis — with whom he’s in a two-person band called Backhand Blue — performed Saturday, Nov. 19, at Bigs Bar in Sioux Falls, SD. On Nov. 24, the duo were back in action playing at Rails Bar & Grill in Sanborn for the restaurant’s Thanksgiving Eve party.
Moving forward, Eli hopes to keep recording music in the studio, collaborating with other musical artists and touring the country to perform live shows.
“How exactly that’ll happen — I haven’t thought that far ahead, but it’s going to happen,” Eli said. “I know it. I’m going to make it happen.”
VOCAL TRACKS:
He doesn’t typically sing, but 19-year-old Boyden native Eli Dykstra provides vocals on the ninth track of his new album.
The song, “Where You Belong,” is a memorial for his paternal grandfather, Jake Dykstra of Sheldon, who died last year.
Eli recalled visiting his grandfather in the hospital with his parents before the guitarist moved to Nashville. Due to the pandemic, only one visitor was allowed at a time and Eli didn’t know that it would be the final time he’d see his grandpa.
Eli’s father, Dave, was the last person to see Jake. When he came out of the room, it was the first time Eli had ever seen his father tear up and therefore he knew the situation wasn’t good.
“We all hugged it out, and my dad said, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good of a man as he was,’” Eli said. “That really hit home.”
Eli could not fall asleep that night; instead, music started coming to him, so he grabbed his phone to write down lyrics. He later picked up his acoustic guitar to add instrumentals to his singing. The song is told through the point of view of Eli’s dad and explores the stages of grief, such as denial, anger, sadness and acceptance.
The words he wrote that night are the same as those on the final version, although he spent the next year workshopping about eight different iterations of the song before deciding on the one that worked.
“It’s probably my favorite song on the record just because it’s so personal and close to home. It’s a good memorial to the great man that he was,” Eli said.
The other songs on the albums with lyrics — “Wrestle with the Angels” and “Fall” — are sung by guest vocalists Dave Ruyle and Macy Addis respectively.
Ruyle is a member of a band called Black Box Warning while Addis is a friend of Eli’s he met through the O’Keefe Music Foundation.
Dykstra sent the lyrics to “Fall” to Addis and asked her to record herself singing. She sang it in one take and sent it back to him. That take is the one Eli wound up using for the final cut.
“There’s something so magical about it, when I first heard it,” Eli said. “We tried rerecording and couldn’t capture the energy of the original tape.”