Songfacts®:

• "Splash 1 (Now I'm Home)" was inspired by Janis Joplin and a meeting that nearly changed music history forever.
  
  In the song, Elevators frontman Rocky Erickson sings about encountering a woman with whom he feels a timeless, mystical connection. Finding her is like going home for the first time, and he intends to stay forever. The song is tender, psychedelic sweetness that never mentions any particular names, but it was inspired by an actual meeting with the actual Janis Joplin.
  
  It was 1966 and Joplin had successfully gotten clean after a nearly disastrous stay in San Francisco. She'd fled from the drugs and booze of the West Coast scene and sought refuge in her hometown of Port Arthur, Texas. She was sober and tentatively working her way back into the Austin music scene when she met Erickson. Upon seeing Joplin, Erickson was inspired with the lyrics, "I've seen your face before, I've known you all my life." He gave those lyrics to Clementine Hall, wife of Elevator Tommy Hall, and she wrote "Splash 1" around them.
  
  The Elevators and Joplin both shared top-shelf space in the Austin music scene and each respected the others' music, so much so that Tommy Hall asked Joplin to join the band. We know Joplin admired the Elevators, but we don't know exactly how seriously she took the proposal because shortly afterwards Big Brother and the Holding Company sent Travis Rivers to Austin to ask the psychedlic-blues-rock wailer to audition for the band.
  
  Joplin left on for San Francisco on May 30 and never looked back. Within less than four years, she would skyrocket into stardom, become a household name, and die from a likely heroin overdose – and we'll never know what might have been for her or for the world if she'd taken a detour with the Elevators.
• In 1988, Big Beat Records released a collection of live Elevators performances recorded at the Houston Music Theater on February 18, 1967. It included a performance of "Splash 1" and took its title, I've Seen Your Face Before, from the song's lyrics.
• The English band The Mighty Lemon Drops released a cover of "Spash 1" on their 1987 Out of Hand EP. In 2022 they also included it on their compilation album Inside Out: 1985-1990.
• The Art-rock band Bongwater covered "Splash 1" on their second album, Too Much Sleep.
• The band name is a joke on how many elevators don't have a 13th floor button due to triskaidekaphobia, a fear of the number 13. A lot of buildings just skip floor 13 and call it 14.