Elsah comes home

After Justin Hilbun’s memorial earlier this year, Neil Werries realized it was time to get back to his true love—music.

On May 31, Hilbun died in a car accident at the age of 29. A talented multi-instrumentalist, Hilbun played with several local and New Orleans-based musicians. Most notably, he was the lead singer and guitarist for The Way High Men. He was also a guitarist for Polly Pry and the one-time drummer for Judge Genius. He could play virtually every instrument. Scratch that; he was good at everything he tried.

Hilbun was also the drummer for Werries’ alt-country act Elsah. Hilbun seemed to fill every hour of free time with his friends and his music, and that resonated more with Werries after the funeral than ever before.

Away on a concert-rigging job for Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas at the time of the news of Hilbun’s accident, Werries came back home to Baton Rouge.

“Justin’s tragic death shook me to the foundation,” Werries says. “[At the memorial], it felt like we all needed a shoulder to cry on and help each other get through it.”

Hilbun’s death became a call to action.

“It was a wake-up call that told me, ‘Life is too short,’ I need to do what it is I love to do most—be with friends and write music,” Werries says. “That’s what Hilbun inspired in all of his friends.”

After a couple of beers with guitarist Glenn Harris, Werries made up his mind: Elsah would return.

The band, named after an Illinois town 40 minutes outside of St. Louis, started as a hobby for a bunch of guys Werries knew through his work at the hospital in St. Louis. They jammed, played a few gigs and even recorded some songs.

Werries was then offered what he felt was an “extraordinary amount of money” to work elsewhere in the medical field. “I chose Baton Rouge because Lucinda Williams had lived here,” he says. “And it seemed a lot more mysterious.”

Soon after the move, Werries felt at home. Surprised by the number of musicians in Baton Rouge, he quickly fell in with a group of likeminded local players.

“If I could find a person who could play guitar with me in Illinois, I was lucky,” Werries says.

It’s because of the connection Werries made with Hilbun and others in Baton Rouge that he never counted the city out, even while he worked in Las Vegas more recently. Moving back after Hilbun’s death was a simple decision.

“I went back to Vegas, packed up a flatbed trailer and drove straight here,” he says. “It was really no second-guessing. It was something I was very certain of.”

Since his return, he has reformed the band with Dan Thompson taking over on drums, Nick Buttita on bass and Glenn Harris and Sam Boykin on guitars. They have opened for The Toadies, scheduled a slate of new performances and even had a primetime slot at this year’s Ivanhoe Music Festival.

And on top of the 40 songs in the band’s catalog ready for a live performance, Werries is writing more tunes. One is called “WWJD,” which stands for “What Would Justin Do?”

“The song is pretty much a conversation with Justin,” Werries says. “It’s sort of some closure for the friends. Every time we play it, we’re able to burn off some of those feelings of remorse.”

One can only imagine Hilbun tipping his hat to the song and to Werries’ new feelings about his musical calling.

“Music is the only thing I’ve ever done that I’ve never gotten tired of. It never feels like work,” he says. “The fun that comes with playing with a band—it’s difficult to compare that to anything else.”

The hiatus is over. And this time around, it will take a lot more than an extraordinary amount of money to pull Werries’ guitar from his tightened grip and kick him off a Baton Rouge stage. elsah.net