Eric's Trip INTERVIEW ARCHIVE March 20, 1993 - Rotate This!, Records, Toronto, ON

Personnel

Interviewer(s)

Keith Sharp

Interviewee(s)

Mark Gaudet

Joyce Linehan

Rick White

Sources

Medium	Publisher	Date of Issue	Title	Transcript
Print	SoundCan Magazine Vol. 1, No. 4,	May 1993	ERIC'S TRIP Word Is Out	Yes

Transcript

It’s a Saturday afternoon in mid-March on Toronto’s trendy Queen Street. A van pulls up in front of the Rotate This record store and a youthful group of musicians pile out and drag their gear through the slush into a small room at the back of the shop.

Later they will perform a short set, mingle with their fans and hustle an assortment of cassettes and vinyl EPs before playing that night at the Rivoli club further down the street.

This is the life on the road for Moncton’s Eric’s Trip, a quartet of intense young musicians whose signing to Seattle’s Sub Pop label has positioned them in the forefront of the Maritimes’ alternative music explosion.

“When you spend your time driving from date to date in a van and promoting yourselves wherever you can, you’re not aware of being part of any scene,” confesses drummer Mark Gaudet as he uses his rationed expense money to scoop up bargain bagels at a nearby cafe. “But everywhere we go, our picture’s in the papers, we’re getting airplay and the press want to interview us, so the word is slowly getting out.”

A veteran of several bands from the Moncton area, Gaudet hooked up with guitarists Rick White and Chris Thompson and singer/bassist Julie Doiron after they had recorded and released three independent cassettes. Their name is coined from a track of Sonic Youth’s pivotal Daydream Nation release.

“We went down to play a couple of gigs in Halifax and got a good response from the crowd. At that point I thought to myself, we might be more than a little shit band from Moncton,” says Gaudet.

Sloan’s manager, Peter Rowan, was struck by their determination and intensity, and agreed to provide management and direction, a connection which became invaluable to their signing with Sub Pop, a label noted for being the springboard for the likes of Nirvana and Mudhoney.

The label’s Boston-based talent scout, Joyce Linehan, heard Sloan on a local campus radio station and tracked down Rowan only to find they had already signed to DGC (home to Sonic Youth & Guns N’ Roses). Becoming aware of Rowan’s other stable of Maritime acts (Jale, Hardship Post, and Eric’s Trip), Linehan combined a family visit to Yarmouth with a trip to see Eric’s Trip at the Double Deuce in Halifax.

“They really captured my heart,” says Linehan, in Toronto during Juno week to catch the indie action. “I called my boss, Jonathan Poneman, and asked him to give me the entire country. I was knocked out by the talent up here.”

Linehan says she was particularly impressed with the Trip’s songwriting and onstage energy. “They’re more punk than grunge, and it’s a direction that reflects where our label is heading,” she explains.

Not overly impressed, Eric’s Trip turned down the label’s initial offer, but reconsidered after Sub Pop upped the ante after being blown away by the group’s performance at a label-sponsored festival in Vermont.

“We didn’t want to get hooked up to any longterm deals or be just another band on the list of a major label’s roster,” explains White. “We don’t think our music is very accessible. We work better as an underground band, and Sub Pop is the right label for us. They give us distribution to all the major international markets, but it’s all very low key.”

Critics may view the band’s new Peter EP (Released in Canada on Sloan’s Murderecords) as raw and primitively recorded, but the band wouldn’t want it any other way.

“We’ve tried recording in a studio, but we weren’t particularly happy with the results. The tapes sounded really dense,” notes Gaudet. “For some reason, we’ve always sounded better in Rick White’s four-track basement studio. That’s where we recorded Peter.”

With the release of Peter and a four-song vinyl EP (Never Mind The Molluscs) featuring Eric’s Trip, Jale, Sloan, and another Moncton band, Idea du Nord, the Maritime indie scene is slowly working its way into the mainstream of alternative music.

“Playing with Sonic Youth in Toronto last year and touring with Sloan have obviously helped us get the word out, but we’re trying to be patient and build slowly,” says Gaudet. “We hear there’s a buzz about us in Vancouver and that’s exciting, but we want to do things on our terms. And that means not selling out to take any short cuts.”

© Keith Sharp/ SoundCan, 1993