Portland natives Blitzen Trapper have wowed audiences and critics alike with their difficult-to-pigeonhole music. We don the Furr and intrepidly cross the borders of their Wild Mountain Nation to find out more.
yourGigs (yG): Are you excited about the prospect of your first ever Australian visit? Do you have an idea of what to expect?
Eric Earley (EE): Definitely, we've never been before, it should be fun. I pretty much have no idea actually; I don't really know any Australian bands that are going on right now.
yG: How are you enjoying having the band at the point where they are able to tour the world like this? Was it something you ever hoped for initially?
EE: I didn't ever think I'd be playing Australia to be honest, it's great to be able to travel around and make music and meet people, it's an honour.
yG: Does the time it takes touring affect the band in terms of its ability to write and record songs?
EE: Yeah, it doesn't really affect that, but after this tour I'm going to take a lot of time off, probably about six months.
yG: How is the songwriting process for you? Do you need to be distraction free to be able to do it?
EE: I'm always writing when I get home, depending how long the break is, but I'm kind of always writing songs, so it's not as if it's a slow process. I usually just write a whole bunch of songs and pick out the good ones.
yG: What sort of songs are you coming up with for your next album and what do you hope to achieve in your upcoming time off?
EE: I guess I've written most of the songs already and just have to arrange them now. But I'm still writing songs and writing a lot of stuff on piano. But we'll see, I'm not really sure what it's going to end up being.
yG: How does the band's songwriting process work - do you usually take a song fully formed to the band?
EE: Usually I have it fully formed. Usually when I write a song, I think of all the parts at once anyway, or we just rearrange it live - it depends on the song.
yG: It seems from an outsider's view that Portland and the north-west of the US has a very strong music scene and seemingly a strong sense of community - have you found that's helped the band and finding likeminded people to play with?
EE: Yeah, there are a lot of cool bands here, and we've toured with a lot of bands from here. The scene is pretty great actually, there's definitely a lot of collaboration and touring together that goes on.
yG: Do you find it easy to write songs with other people?
EE: Nah, not so much, I have people come in on the records and record. Mostly it's getting friends with a string section to come on for a song, just stuff like that.
yG: Has Blitzen Trapper, getting to the level of success they have, given you the opportunity to play with some of your musical idols?
EE: Yeah, I played with Steve Malkmus, he was one of my idols as a kid - the Pavement reunion should be great. I played with Jeff Tweedy and Wilco, it's been great.
yG: A lot of attention has drawn towards your latest EP and single 'Black River Killer' do you think it's due to the fact that people always find something intriguing in the macabre?
EE: That's like an old tradition of writing murder ballads, I mean gangsta rap is founded on that kind of subject matter, so there's darkness in everybody and people are always drawn to it in certain ways, fascinated, horrified - it's romanticised, y'know.
yG: Do you subscribe to the theory that great suffering is needed to create great art with your songwriting?
EE: Yeah, I think so. I think everybody suffers in certain ways, some more than others; it's then being able to turn that into inspiration, or then being able to ride whatever it is you are going through and understand it and see it for what is it.
yG: After previously self-releasing much of your material, how did being picked up by Sub Pop affect the band?
EE: They have a lot of good press they do and pay for recording and stuff like that, and it enables us to tour more. But they are a good label, there are a lot of good bands on that label. Sub Pop is always a label that was respected and I've always liked a lot of their bands, and they're close by, so it made a lot of sense.
yG: Have you noticed different people getting into the band over time and especially recently?
EE: Yeah, we have a much wider audience. The audience is strange, it's all white guys, right down to high school girls. I think the music reaches a lot of different place from folk music down to hard rock, but it's just basically pop music so a lot of people connect with it.
yG: Which do you get more enjoyment from - playing live or recording?
EE: I enjoy both playing live is very repetitive so that can get boring. Recording is a one-time deal, y'know; you go in once and record a song. There's definitely pros and cons on both of them, but anything you do repetitiously starts to get boring after a while, so you've got to keep it interesting somehow. [That's why coming to Australia, and places I've been] is good.
yG: Do you have any unrealised musical ambitions?
EE: I just think an album at a time pretty much. Each album for me is different, and I like it to sound different, and have a different feel to it. So I'm just thinking of the next record and moving it in a different direction, so that's about it.
Catch a special Blitzen Trapper webisode about their upcoming Australian tour here.
Andy Ryan
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