Elise Trouw has spent most of her life counting.
As a child in rural Fallbrook, California, she could tell you exactly how many stairs were in her house – though she might skip one just to land on an even number. Before she had words for it, Elise was tracking the rhythm of the world: steps in multiples of four, chairs in symmetrical rows, piano notes practiced at 5am in precise sequence. Her parents eventually made her wait until 6am.
This early obsession with order and balance would later lead her to the drums, where everything clicked. “Drumming was like a physical manifestation of how my brain already worked,” she says now. “Counting subdivisions, staying locked into the groove – it just made sense to me.”
It also offered something else: protection. Behind the kit, she didn’t have to be the center of attention. She could participate without exposing too much.
That changed when she began to sing…
