ERIC'S TRIP forever changes
"There are so many rumors about us," says Julie Dorion, bassist for Eric's
Trip. "People are saying that I've left the band. Some others are saying
that we'll never tour again and only release studio albums. I don't know
how they dream this stuff up.
"I'm still in the band. We will release our next album on September
27, but we won't tour again until next April or May," continues Dorion.
"You do know I'm pregnant, don't you?"
Last spring, when fans of Moncton-based quartet Eric's Trip first
heard that Dorion's relationship with bandmate Rick White had gone from
romantic to platonic, they got nervous. When Dorion got involved in another
relationship, and subsequently became pregnant, there was great wailing
gnashing of teeth. The demise of Eric's Trip, they feared, couldn't be far
behind.
After all, hadn't Eric's drummer Mark Gaudet suggested in a
television interview on Ear To The Ground last year that Julie and Rick's
relationship was special, and that he didn't know if the group would be the
same if that were to change?
And then, with the release of this past summer's EP The Gordon
Street Haunting, fans hardly got a chance to sigh their collective relief
before they heard "Departure Song," in which White sings the contents of a
"Dear John" letter to himself. "I'm going back to Ottawa, where everybody's
more like me," he sings. "I hope it make you feel as all alone."
Like the break-ups between Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance as
chronicled in Superchunk's Foolish album or Richard and Linda Thompson as
predicted by Shoot Out the Lights, it appears that the emotional rubble
from Dorion and White's relationship will dot the landscape of Eric's
Trip's songs at least as far as the next record.
Says Dorion, "We thought about waiting to release this album - Sub
Pop knew I was pregnant when they set the release date for the new record -
but it was important to Rick that we release these songs while they still
mean something to him." But isn't he concerned about the songs perhaps
meaning too much?
"I think Rick sometimes is like that," explains Dorion. "We know
what the songs are about, but sometimes I think people can figure out
everything about our lives from listening to our songs."
It seems like only yesterday that the buzz about Eric's Trip was
just beginning. Dorion talks about opening for Sonic Youth in Toronto like
it was a few months ago, not two years ago. Back then the band would record
itself in the basement of Rick White's parents house, releasing a number of
cassettes with names like Warm Girl and Caterpillars before recording four
songs for a seven-inch release by the Moncton based Naked in the Marsh
(NIM) imprint. Captured on that single is one of the rare occasions that
Eric's Trip has worked in a professional studio.
Recorded at Terry Pulliam's Soundmarket Studios, the band tried to
capture the honest, homespun feeling that it was used to from its basement
sessions. However, the Soundmarket experiment was unsuccessful. With the
exception of two songs, none of the material has ever seen the light of
day.
Eric's Trip's first wide-scale release came via the Sloan-owned
-and-operated murderecords label, which released the Peter EP the spring of
1993. The self-recorded six song release was sent back by the pressing
plant-not once but twice-asking if it was supposed to sound like this.
Inspired by Sebadoh's home-made records and Pavement's recorder
grot, Eric's Trip tends to release its material warts and all. White has
said in the past the band is superstitious when it comes to recording, so
often times whatever is captured while recording a track, background noise,
feedback, purring cats, inevitably makes the final mix.
From murder and Peter, it was on to Sub Pop and a maritime music
sampler, Never Mind the Molluscs, and the Songs About Chris EP. Then came
Eric's Trip's debut album, Love Tara.
Eric's Trip's forthcoming album, Forever Again, features 18-songs,
but Dorion admits "it's still only about 42 minutes long. It's not like we
write magnum opuses." This time the band completed the whole record
themselves, including the masters, which was left to Steve
Albini-accomplice Bob Weston on Eric's earlier Sub Pop products.
It sounds really good. We recorded on a new 8-track, one that uses
half-inch tape. We used to use quarter-inch.
This release continues the trend of guitarist Chris Thompson's
active contribution to the songwriting process. Over the past year Thompson
has released two cassettes, a seven-inch single and contributed several
tracks to compilation records by derivative and Sonic Unyon by his solo
project Moon Socket. And although many thought White was singing, it was
Thompson who scored one Love Tara's finest moments with "Frame."
"People used to think Rick was singing on "Frame," they only found
out from seeing us play live that is was Chris' song," admits Dorion.
Thompson's increasing vocal contributions to Eric's Trip material
like Gordon Street's "Never Grow" and the rapid release of his Moon Socket
material makes one question the impetus of his late-blooming songwriting
skills.
"Well Rick's pretty prolific," offers Dorion. "On the new record
Mark and I contribute one song each, Chris doesn't have a lot of
confidence," she continues."At first he wasn't writing a lot. When we
started out he would perform standing backwards. Even now he won't play his
songs sometimes, if he thinks he hasn't been singing well the past couple
of nights."
Touring seems to adversely affect the whole band. The bandmembers'
attitude is perhaps best summed up by the title of a song on a recent
Aussie-released Summershine single, "Trapped in New York in Room 605." An
article which ran in the Halifax Daily News announcing the band's singing
to Sub Pop was headlined "Escape from Moncton." It couldn't have been
farther from the truth. "Sub Pop knows we don't like touring. They are
happy as long as we do a little bit of promotion stuff like videos. Also,
Rick will be doing a tour of East Coast radio stations in October, I want
to go but I'll be seven months by then so I don't know.
We'll be playing at the Halifax Pop Explosion which should be good
because it's right around the time that our new record comes out so we'll
be able to play our new songs. We're funny that way because we don't like
to play songs unless they have been released. I think we've only played new
songs on the last tour we did."
Dorion's record label, Sappy Records, which in the past has put out
vinyl singles by her solo acoustic project Broken Girl and Eric's Trip
solo record alternatively referred to as the Stereo Mountain single and
Julie and the Porthole to Dimentia (sic) is currently on hiatus.
"Sappy is in a lull right now," she explains. "Everything is sold
out. I thought about reprinting stuff but I think I want to do something
new. There's a guy in the band Wooden Stars, who does solo stuff under the
name Snail House that I would like to release. I also hope to do a Broken
Girl album, but Sub Pop seems to want to put it out--well, they didn't
really say no when I mentioned it to them but I didn't really find out for
sure. I think I'll start recording it and let them listen to it before they
decide.
"Other than that, I'm doing a lot of swimming. I used to be a life
guard in high school, and the pool I used to work at offered me a job if I
get my accreditation back."
So while Dorion bones up on her CPR technique and the band fills
the time in-between recording and practising, fans of Eric's Trip will be
left to study its new Sub Pop record along with a couple of single releases
until next spring's proposed tour.
"We just got a letter from a label in Europe asking to put out a
single by us. I imagine we will do something for them," says Dorion. "You
know by next May, I think we actually might look forward to going on tour."
This interview was done by Christopher Waters and is from the magazine FILLER fall '95 no.1
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