About Ekendra Dasa

Eric Dailey aka Ekendra dasa grew up in the perpetually rainy upstate New York town of North Syracuse, which attracts only slightly fewer tourists each year than the planet Uranus. While growing up, he played in bands you’ve likely never heard of, such as TRED, Fungus, the Crestview Mouthcancer Ensemble, Dog Seven Nightmare, and the Fourth Cow. Obscurity had its advantages, one of which was the freedom to do just about any damn thing onstage without too many people complaining. Thus ED felt free to incorporate wildly innovative elements into his stage shows, such as dousing audiences with Pac Man cereal, encouraging guest singers to wear pumpkins on their heads, wrestling with watermelons, playing drums with giant plastic dinosaur thighbones, drinking unseemly quantities of Raspberry Ripple in between songs, and baking snacks during shows in a toaster oven ever-so-safely plugged into the auxiliary power outlet of his Fender Vibro-Verb amplifier.

Unsatisfied with the level of obscurity such esoteric practices brought him and his various stage personae, he decided to go one step further and take up the practices of Krishna consciousness, which for him included shaving his head, giving up all intoxication/meat-eating/illicit sex/gambling, rising at four a.m., chanting for hours every day on beads, approaching complete strangers in airports and encouraging them to purchase large, hardcover Bhagavad-gitas, and dancing on street corners while wearing billowing saffron robes.

While thus apparently safely bunkered down behind almost impenetrable, improbable, and society-repellant transcendental performance art camouflage, ED met fellow musician and Krishna devotee Ray Cappo, who had plans to start a band incorporating the hardcore punk music he’d become famous for in his band Youth of Today with lyrics heavy with Krishna conscious philosophy. Ekendra dasa jumped at the chance to embark on such a bizarre enterprise, and for the next four years he recorded and toured the world with “Krishna-core” act Shelter as drummer, bass player, van driver, and cook.

Hundreds and thousands of young, tattooed, suburban skateboard enthusiasts became inspired by Shelter to begin chanting Hare Krishna in their spare time in between high school classes and hardcore shows. Shelter’s own label, Equal Vision Records, went on to become one of the most successful independent record labels in the world. But ED began to keenly chafe at mainstream popularity’s attendant creative constraints. When Cappo (aka Raghunath dasa) refused to allow ED to wear pumpkins (or any other type of gourd) on his head during shows, Ekendra decided to take a break from music entirely.

While working odd jobs delivering veggie burgers in Cleveland, selling potpourri pies in Nashville, driving Korean oil paintings all over New England, serving as a priest at a Radha-Krishna temple in Philadelphia, or as a security guard in Fort Lauderdale, ED was writing and producing his own CDs, working in musical genres so esoteric and baffling they would surely alienate him from any possibility of popularity, such as “alternative theistic grungey honky tonk,” “spiritual psychology pop,” and “philoso-billy.”

Under the ever-so-slightly ostentatiously fallacious moniker “Ekendra dasa and the Planet Cow Orchestra,” he released two solo albums – God Project and 200 Proof Absolute Truth – the production of which involved recording drums, guitars and vocals in Florida, then mailing those tracks to friends in Ohio, San Francisco, and Boston for overdubs of fiddle, banjo, and saxophone.

Despite all expectations to remain hopelessly marginalized and avant-garde beyond belief, Ekendra dasa and the Planet Cow Orchestra’s debut CD, God Project, was voted one of the top DIY releases of 1999 by Performing Songwriter Magazine, who called it “one of the funniest, infectious slices of country and rockabilly you’re ever likely to hear.” ED’s CD #2, 200 Proof Absolute Truth, has been played on National Public Radio, most notably as soundtrack for weekly uber-helpfully rib-tickling automobile repair show Car Talk. Ekendra now receives so many requests from wedding planners to play his sweet and ghastly romantic ballad, “Maggot Poo Poo” that he cannot possibly count them all, and not even because his math skills are below par.

His third CD, Car toons (alternate title: “More Songs Related To The Operation Of Certain Types Of Motor Vehicles“) contains his most ambitious music to date. Produced by kirtan giant Badahari dasa, each of Car toons’ tunes are sprinkled with quirky electronic beats, sound effects, and even synthesizers, featuring longer songs and even longer song titles (“Don’t Make A Snide Remark In My General Direction,” “Why Aren’t There More Songs Like This On The Radio,” and “Give It Up For The Great Unknown Man Of Mystery,” to name just a few).

He and his wife — writer, musician and editor Tulasi-priya dasi — live in Florida, with their stuffed frog and metal dog.

Here’s a much more expanded version of the above story, courtesy of ISKCON News.