Blitzen Trapper: Street Fighting Sunshine

By: Dennis Cook

Blitzen Trapper by Tyler Kolhoff

American Goldwing (released September 13 on Sub Pop) is flat out one of the best albums to hit in 2011. Okay, that’s out of the way for all the caffeinated, attention deficit folks. Blitzen Trapper’s sixth long-player is compulsively listenable, a shuffle inducing, sing-along-as-soon-as-you-learn-the-words affair that feels kinda classic right outta the gate. Never good to heap the “C” word on any new album but the Portland-based band, lead by singer-songwriter-guitarist Eric Earley, has conjured something with the gutsy headwind of say Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night mingled with Bringing It All Back Home Dylan-isms and the saucy walk of the Faces. It’s not as if these touchstones haven’t come up earlier with Blitzen Trapper but they’ve never made a record as nakedly enjoyable as American Goldwing before. That it loses none of Earley’s wicked observational insight or charming cynicism is all the better. And the guitars go to “11” in a few spots, which totally rocks.

Blitzen Trapper is about to head out on a national tour with the highly simpatico Dawes starting October 7th at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma, CA. You can find full tour dates here. We grabbed a few minutes of Eric Earley’s time before he hits the road to go over the latest from his band.

New Album

JamBase: There’s something that really reaches out from American Goldwing, a confidence and songs that one can really get down to. Can you talk a little about your approach to this album?

Eric Earley: Initially a lot of these songs were going to be a solo record or something because they’re very personal and a lot of the subject matter is about where I grew up, relationships I’ve been in and what not. A lot of these songs are very close to me, and maybe that comes through in the writing. And I wrote the songs pretty close together, so they’re all of a piece. At the same time, I was writing these songs pretty un-self-consciously. It’s the kind of music I like to listen to, the music I’m really comfortable playing. It’s the kind of music I grew up with and enjoy playing. For me, these songs are…what’s the word…easy or comfortable, I guess [laughs].

JamBase: When you’re putting out highly personal material, there’s a level of autobiography but you’re also trying to make music that’s universal for people when you put it on an album.

Eric Earley by Jesse Borrell

Eric Earley: The two go together. I think honesty has a lot to with people connecting with a record, so the more honest you are with yourself writing the songs the better. No one really knows what these songs are about but me, but people can tell if someone is writing music they care about, when they’re not just writing for their own ambitious gain.

I appreciate the lack of sentimentality to much of this new album and Blitzen Trapper in general. It never feels like you’re sugarcoating emotions.

[Laughs] That could be. It might just be my personality.

How do you find folks take that? Being a truth-teller doesn’t always go over well.

Whatever [laughs]. I don’t think of it as good or bad – it’s just the way you are as a person. I’m good at confrontation. I’m the guy that’s good at firing people or telling them what they don’t want to hear. Maybe I’m not good at it - maybe I just don’t care [laughs]. I think in songwriting that’s important. My favorite songwriters just say what they have to say without trying to put in words that don’t need to be there.

That’s something I’ve noticed about Blitzen Trapper as the band has evolved: There’s no fat on this music. You’ve pared things down to where everything has an intention and purpose – musically, lyrically – and it all dovetails really well. The leaner sound on American Goldwing gets to the listener in a more direct way.

Brian Koch by Jesse Borrell

If a song is good you need to do very little to it. In the past, my best work has been the stuff that’s simpler, more direct and to the point. So, with this record, I wanted to make an album where everything was to the point without a lot of extra stuff going on.

What’s the process of bringing your songs into the band? You mentioned this might have been a solo record initially, so what happens when you bring the tunes to the rest of the guys in Blitzen Trapper?

Really, this record was made by me and Brian [Koch], the drummer. There’s a lot of hard rock drumming and guitars on there. I’d bring him the songs and we’d flesh out the arrangements and record. Mike [VanPelt], the bass player, would come in and do his parts, and then it was Mike’s idea to have Tchad Blake mix it because he’s a big fan of his style. As far as the rest of the guys learning stuff, that has more to do with going on tour. But in the studio it was really Brian and I putting it together. I write by myself; I don’t write with the guys. I have what you’d call a solo writing style.

That quality of a single songwriter comes through in the end product. For all the artists you get compared to, I feel you have a distinctive voice of your own. Does it ever get a little old to be the “new Dylan” or any of the other iconic references people heap on you (present company included)?

Blitzen Trapper by Tyler Kolhoff

The thing I like about Dylan records is how they’re unique and show real thinking. If I’m equated with him I don’t find that to be a problem. Just the idea of writing lyrics that last and have meaning works for me. At the same time, I’d like to create a unique voice that’s my own. It’s hard. There’s so much music that’s come before. I don’t care who you are today, you’re still going to be compared to someone else.

That’s the whole dancing about architecture thing with music writing, where you’re writing about sounds and words and all the intertwined bits in music.

I like to purposefully throw in Dylan references because why not? He was copying Woody Guthrie so why can’t I copy him? [laughs].

That’s the classic nut of songwriting. That’s the bard that goes from town to town and the song changes along the way.

At the same time, I definitely like the hard rock more than Dylan or even Neil Young; though a guy like Neil Young is someone I aspire to be like because he pushed his music into really hard rock. For me, right now, that’s what I really like.

That’s my favorite stuff live with Blitzen Trapper. Some folks may not realize just how slamming this band is in the live setting. However, you also show off this folkie side live, so there’s this cool balance.

Blitzen Trapper by Christopher Nelson

I like to switch between the five-piece hard rock unit and just me and a guitar and harmonica. I think it’s interesting for crowds and it’s interesting for me. There’s no rules against that, right? But these days, we’re leaning towards the hard rock stuff and there’ll be a piece inside the set of the folk stuff. But it is a challenge for us [laughs]. For some people it just doesn’t make sense.

Well, it requires people to listen and be patient, which are two qualities you don’t see a lot of in live audiences. Even the ones that love you are often clinking glasses and chatting away. Are you finding as you move into this harder stuff that some of the older songs are coming back into the fold in a fresh way?

Yeah, but we’ve always done a lot of hard rock. With Furr, both the timing and the single, that pushed us more into a more folkie area. But we’re definitely pulling songs from Nation, and that stuff’s almost more punk than hard rock.

I love the clatter of a lot of Nation songs, the wildness of them.

Blitzen Trapper by Tyler Kolhoff

We have so many songs now, and even with an hour and a half set like we did on our last short tour, they’re still screaming out songs we’re not going to play anymore. We had four sets we were doing that were all really different, which is what makes it fun for us.

Playing harder also opens the door to cool cover tunes…

…which we’ve been doing! Last year, we were closing with [Led Zeppelin’s] “Good Times Bad Times.” That one’s great with all the solos and the crazy drums. Brian really pulls it off, too. The heart of rock ‘n’ roll is right there with Zeppelin.

I think a lot of us are excited for the pairing of Blitzen Trapper and Dawes on this upcoming fall tour. Just a perfect combo.

What’s funny is we don’t really know them. A lot of the bands we’ve toured with are friends, but this tour was really put together by our booking agent, who’s a really cool dude. I think it’s gonna be nice to hang out with these guys. We don’t know them but we appreciate their music. I’m looking forward to it.