ERIC"S TRIP INTERVIEW ARCHIVE June, 1993 - Moncton, New Brunswick

Personnel

Interviewer(s)

Marla Digiacomo

Interviewee(s)

Rick White

Julie Doiron

Chris Thompson

Mark Gaudet

Sources

Medium	Publisher	Date of Issue	Title	Transcript
Video	CBC	06/1993	Ear To The Ground	Yes

Transcript

Rick: This is our first demo - our 10-song tape that we put out by ourself to - we haven't even played a show when we put this out.

Julie: This is the first demo we brought into Denis from the record store, and this was released in December, 1990?

Rick: Yep.

Rick: This is our second one.

Julie: This is...

Rick: That's Catapillars. That was...We recorded that when.. That came out in April '91.

Julie: Yeah, it was pretty...

Rick: We made the covers at Chris' old work.

Rick: And that one we sold really cheap, and we sold a lot.

Julie: Yeah, three dollars. That was their best-seller.

Rick: At first we thought no one was getting our stuff. We were just getting reviews that were like, "this record sounds awful; The songs are okay, they're great but just sounds like it was recorded in like a basement." But people, we're getting reviews now, people are starting to really understand what we're trying to do, and we get these ones where they're totally into it, y'know. More than even we thought about some certain things, like...

Julie: Yeah.

Rick: It's really neat to talk to people about our stuff now at shows, cause they just get something.. some people get exactly what I was trying to put into it, into the recordings, and some people make up their own thing, which you kind of go "Wow! I've never thought of that" y'know?

Julie: Yeah...

Rick: I think it's just cause we like lo-fi recordings, and we like sounding like, kinda crappy, but, it's just cause we wanna do it at home and be really personal. Because, when we go into the studios, we seem to...

Julie: You're not as rushed at home...

Rick: It's not even the rushing that bothers me as much as just the fact that it's not at home - the whole idea that it's not in your room. It's not... I just like the feeling it gets; it gets something - something weird happens down there.

Julie: Yeah, plus you know where you did it, and there's so much more feeling, even for yourself, like, even if... I don't know, it's just...

Rick: Little things seem to happen, too...

Julie: So much different performance happens, too, at home, than when you're in a studio, and working with different people that you hardly know, and it's a lot easier to get out what you want to do than when you want to meet someone, and spend a couple days getting to know them before you can really do what you want to do.

Rick: We're going through a weird stage now, it was kinda...

Julie: Yeah.

Rick:... We didn't think so at the time, but now when I look back, it changed. The music changes a lot from the first record - but now we're trying to go back to like the first tape, and there's songs on our record for Sub Pop, that are from the first tape I guess, but we're tryna - we kinda play more like that again, now.

We kinda got more - what happened do you think for a while?

Julie: We started off the way we started off, and then we went through a faster - we used to play a little bit faster...

Rick: We used to play really fast.

Julie: And then we got Mark, and played faster. But it was like, really full. It just like, changed us totally when we got Mark, and now it seems like we've gotten back to where...

Rick: We didn't play faster with Mark, we just, we were all messed up.

Julie: No, we didn't play faster, but...

Chris: At first when we were in our older bands, we just made the cassettes ourselves. We recorded them ourselves, dubbed them all ourselves. And we just sold them to our friends. But then Denis came along, who owns Room 201 Records, and he said that he'd sell our cassettes, or anything that we wanted, for nothing. He wouldn't take any commission or anything. So, he helped us a lot, and a lot of people go there, that we don't even know, from like, different towns, and pick up our stuff.

Rick: So, we got Mark.

Julie: Yeah, in November, and then we recorded this in December, and released it in January of '92. Rick: We recorded it really quick, like, he had just been in the band for like a week, and we were already bringing the four-track over to practice.

Julie: He didn't know. He thought it was just 'cause Rick had gotten a new four-track, and Rick wanted to try it out.

Rick: When we' write a song, we'd record the drums on it, and then go home and add everything to it for some of them.

Julie: Yeah.

Rick: And then that came out, and we'd just surprise him like "Here!".

Julie: Eric's on the cover of this one.

Rick: Yeah, she's naked.

Julie: Yeah, and Eric I think..

Rick: We got slack for that.

Julie: Eric, I think started out in our Drowning eh, in our third demo? Somewhere she appeared, he appeared?

Julie: That's Warmgirl.

Rick: Then we went to Halifax and started playing shows there and we met Peter Rowan and Terry Pulliam, who's interested in recording us. He had recorded Sloan, did stuff with a lot of local bands and so we thought that was neat. It was like a 16-track, it was like "Wow!"

Julie: Yeah.

Rick: Then we thought it was y'know, kinda cool.

Rick: So then, we went in..

Julie: In March...

Rick: and we recorded three songs, and we ended up using two for our first seven-inch, which later got reissued, because it sold all out - but we put a new cover on it - just to be collector-vinyl-crazy people.

Julie: See, this is the same as this, but it's not.

Rick: But, different.

Julie: But it's a second press.

Rick: And this was our first t-shirt. design.

Julie: Our first mass-produced t-shirt design. One hundred and some.

Mark: Eric's our, fictional or non-fictional - our little guardian angel, which has been gracing Eric's Trip stuff, I'd say shortly after the release of Drowning, the third cassette that came out. I started seeing Eric on posters and stuff like that.

Rick: All I remember with us, is that I started evolving into this weird thing I kept drawing all the time?

Julie: Yeah, you were drawing it all the time, too, and I don't even know how it came about.

Rick: I was obsessed with it all of a sudden, and now it's more calmed down, since we know what she actually is and what she represents and all this stuff. But for a while, I was just drawing it everywhere. I would like to know what other people, that like us, think about, all that weird stuff, 'cause like...

Julie: Yeah...

Rick: ...we're totally into it, and might be a little weird.

Julie: So, this was supposed to be out in October '92.

Rick: We'd recorded that...

Julie: Yeah, we' recorded this...

Rick: In Halifax, originally, on the 16-track. It didn't work out very good, just for the reasons that it didn't sound...

Julie: The way we...

Rick: The way we wanted it to.

Julie: Yeah...

Rick: It sounded good, but...

Julie: So then we re-recorded it in Moncton, and we had recorded a demo at first but it wasn't supposed to... then yeah. That's what Sub Pop got, and then we re-recorded it to release this. So that was ready, like, September, and it should've been out in November, but it came out in March of '93. So, it was quite old for us.

Rick: How about this one? Are we still in order?

Julie: Oh, no! We're no longer in order. But anyways, this is Never Mind The Molluscs, and this is a four-band compilation, released on Sub Pop Records. It's two separate singles, so it's got the two Moncton bands on one single, and two Halifax bands on the other single.

Rick: Look at this picture.

Julie: And the two Moncton bands are Eric's Trip and Idee Du Nord.

Rick: That's Mark, and he's laying on top of Chris Murphy, from Sloan. Isn't that neat?

Julie: Yeah, and Bob Weston too, he's the one that produced.

Rick: We're the only band that's all here. This is Mark, and Julie, and Chris, and me.

Julie: Yep. And there's some jale girls in it, an Sloan, and Idee du Nord.

Rick: Yeah.

Julie: And that's jale, an Andrew.

Mark: Little Julie. Julie is kind of the little guardian angel to the band. Although Eric is too, but it seems that she can hold us together, that she's a good luck charm. I don't know if things would've happened quite as good without Julie, to tell you the truth. I know with Rick's sole talent with the songs and everything, but I just have a feeling that, as a team they're almost stronger, and all that. I hope they don't, never break up.

Rick: You just know how to go crazy. I don't know, you just, act really stupid and simple, but like, when you wanna be you're so smart.

Julie: That's my trick. (laughs)

Rick: This is like, everyone cries.

Julie: We don't want to do anything that will make it seem like we're out of control. As long as we know that we still have a say in things. I think that would be perfect.

Rick: Going slow and doing stuff at home, and not touring for too long, 'cause once it gets - like when we go out on the road, we're on the road now or whatever..

Rick & Julie: It's still fun, yeah.

Julie: But once it starts to be a habit, or once it starts to be really uncomfortable, or if we want to like, kill each other or anything like that then it would be no more fun.

Rick: Yeah, I think we can all agree that we don't want to go out for too long.

Julie: Yeah.

Rick: We'd just rather be here in Moncton, in our basements, sleeping, and recording little songs..

© Marla Digiacomo, 1993