Hi again,

I hope this past year hasn’t been too hard on you. It’s been a tough few years for so many people. I’ve learned a lot from people who have withstood great hardships and still managed to show me great compassion and kindness, and it’s these qualities that I’m always striving to show more of towards others. The past year hasn’t been all that tough for me compared to many people, but since you asked, it has not been uneventful.

Let’s see… After being cooped up in lockdown all those years and canceling tours, we finally went out and played shows for the first time in nearly four years last spring and I almost lost my mind during the early part of it. It was such a mind-fucking culture shock after being so isolated and in a completely different world all that time. But eventually I pulled it together and I think we ended up doing some of the best shows we’ve ever done. It was so great to see… people! And thank you to those who showed me kindness and understanding during its undertaking, and thank you The Chet, Big Al and Little Joe, the most kick ass band any singer could hope to be in the midst of.

Some months after the tour I had my first ever hospital experience. To make it this long without going to a hospital was a good run, indeed. Never doing anything halfway, when it finally came time to go to one, I made sure it was a doozy. The only good thing that came out of my father dying of a heart attack at age 51 was it taught me to stay on top of heart health. So I’ve had yearly scans to keep an eye on things, and it became apparent that, although I felt fine and had no symptoms, my aorta, the main artery that carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body, had an aneurysm and if I didn’t replace it soon it was bound to explode and make me feel symptoms of… death. Probably sometime in the next few months. This isn’t related to what happened to my father, but it was because of him that I found out about this.

Remember the actor John Ritter from the TV show Three’s Company (who was also fantastic in Bad Santa)? He had something like this. In his case his aorta dissected one day and he died at the age of 54. The big difference between his and my case is he had no idea he had the condition. So thank you to my father, Hugh Everett III, who gave me a parallel universe to presently reside in: one where I’m still alive.

I had open heart surgery. They cut through my pecs, sawed through my breastbone and stopped my heart on the table. They put in a new aorta. Either I made it, or I really am in a parallel universe now. Either way, all good. I was in the hospital for a week with really wonderful people helping me through it all. And I’m fine now, thanks to Dr.s Bowdish and Cohen making sure my heart started back up, and thanks to nurses Shannon, Trisha and Michelle in ICU and Doreen and all the other amazing nurses and doctors in DOU.

One night a new nurse was on duty and I was having a rough night and kept asking her for pain meds or anything to help me sleep. In the morning she told me she’d heard I was in a band and looked me up. She said, “I saw that your top song on Spotify was called ‘I Need Some Sleep’ and I said, ‘yep, that’s him!’”

So that was my year. Pretty good, I’d say. Oh and then there’s one other thing: there’s a new EELS album. That’s right. Now it’s EELS TIME!

It seems the whole open heart surgery thing hasn’t managed to slow me down. Somehow the creative juices just keep flowing. I recently discovered that the previous owner of our studio house was an older woman who’s grandfather was Mark Twain’s lawyer, and she found the original manuscript of Huckleberry Finn in the attic that is now our recording studio control room. The manuscript had a lot of missing material that wasn’t in the published book and has since been added to all new editions. So it’s probably not me. It’s this house. It’s a hotbed of creativity. It’s got stories seeping out of the attic.

Well, I guess that’s about it for now. Thanks for reading this and I hope you like the new music. I’m a lucky guy. I’m so glad I got to say hi again.

Sincerely,