QUOTE
Blitzen Trapper plays the music less traveled
Jeff Spevak • Staff music critic • February 19, 2009
Blitzen Trapper is a band that seems to write a lot of songs generated by long, lonely walks in the woods around the band's hometown of Portland, Ore. And lead singer Eric Early is a bit of a Mr. Natural type, with his interests in riding bikes and horses, and his preference in fishing for trout over salmon. For trout, he has to walk deep into the woods to find the most remote, trout-active creeks, where he can cast his fly in solitude.
So Blitzen Trapper appears to be the perfect rock band to answer this question: Does Bigfoot exist?
"Marty, the red-headed guy in the band," says lead singer Eric Early, referring to keyboardist Marty Marquis, "his father is a lawyer. You know that Bigfoot film? Marty's dad was the guy who represented him in court."
Wow, Marty's dad represented Bigfoot in court! Case closed!
But the legal argument for Bigfoot quickly falls apart. Marty's dad actually represented Roger Patterson, the guy who shot the famous 1967 footage of Bigfoot walking through woods in Washington state, not Sasquatch. As to whether this icon of eerie is real, Early is noncommittal.
"We kind of know it could exist," he says. "But. ... well, I'd like to think he does. There are a lot of mythical creatures out there. I'd like to think they all exist. I'm sure the story started with some kind of fact, like most stories."
Indeed, I hear Bigfoot in the music of Blitzen Trapper, which plays Tuesday at the Bug Jar. I hear darkness, and menace, and the solitude of vast stretches of nature. It is a rock band, but a rough-hewn, low-fi one that finds darker trails than most, with an indie-band's GPS for following the songs to where they lead. Blitzen Trapper put out an album in 2007, Wild Mountain Nation, that earned some critical attention, drawing an audience of "music-nerd type people, people actively seeking out unusual music," Early says. Last fall the band released Furr, drawing further applause. National Public Radio featured the band, and its audience expanded to, as Early puts it, "normal people."
Because everyone can relate to trees, right?
"I don't know if 'kinship' is the right word," Early says of any attempt to link Blitzen Trapper to vast, lonely, shrouded tracts of misty wilderness. Long pause. He changes his mind. "I guess that would be right," he confesses. "It's more of a feeling, the imagery of what I grew up with, and sort of what I know."
All stories may have a germ of fact to them, and all songs as well, although Early concedes he's never been raised by wolves, as was the main character in Furr's title track. Maybe it's just a tone. Early was homeless for about two years, living in an elderly telegraph building where, interestingly, the band later recorded Furr. Early sees no difference between the outsider feel of the fringe dwellers populating that area of Portland, with its tramps sleeping under the bridges, from the loneliness one experiences deep in the woods.
Blitzen Trapper's "Black River Killer," also from Furr, draws on memories Early has of one of his relatives. "He was a criminal, a drug addict," Early says. "I haven't seen him since I was 11, 12. I suppose he's dead now. He's not in the song any way you'd recognize, but the idea of him is in the song. He was a wily guy, always breaking out of jail."
If Early's relative is the mythical creature who drives that song, then Blitzen Trapper itself, and its songs, is a force of nature. Like the one encountered on the band's tour of the great plains of Canada, where the prairie winds sweep across the continent "for thousands of miles," Early says. "We got caught in this dust storm, it was crazy. You could barely go outside. There were a bunch of Harley bikers at this one place, they were taking cover. They'd been there for a week, their bikes were all gummed up from dust."
"War on Machines," another song from Furr, follows that theme. "What's the most powerful force on Earth?" Early asks. "Obviously, the weather and plant life. Slow, patient forces. As man, we build a lot of powerful machines and objects. But ultimately, there is no comparison."
But it's not walks in the deep woods that tell you this. Sure, you see the rusted hulks of abandoned vehicles, windshields long gone and tree trunks having punched their way up through the engine compartment. But more so, Early says, it's "walks in the city. You're in a city and you see things pushing up through cracks in cement. And you realize that, underneath all of this, is a huge, powerful force."
Jeff Spevak • Staff music critic • February 19, 2009
Blitzen Trapper is a band that seems to write a lot of songs generated by long, lonely walks in the woods around the band's hometown of Portland, Ore. And lead singer Eric Early is a bit of a Mr. Natural type, with his interests in riding bikes and horses, and his preference in fishing for trout over salmon. For trout, he has to walk deep into the woods to find the most remote, trout-active creeks, where he can cast his fly in solitude.
So Blitzen Trapper appears to be the perfect rock band to answer this question: Does Bigfoot exist?
"Marty, the red-headed guy in the band," says lead singer Eric Early, referring to keyboardist Marty Marquis, "his father is a lawyer. You know that Bigfoot film? Marty's dad was the guy who represented him in court."
Wow, Marty's dad represented Bigfoot in court! Case closed!
But the legal argument for Bigfoot quickly falls apart. Marty's dad actually represented Roger Patterson, the guy who shot the famous 1967 footage of Bigfoot walking through woods in Washington state, not Sasquatch. As to whether this icon of eerie is real, Early is noncommittal.
"We kind of know it could exist," he says. "But. ... well, I'd like to think he does. There are a lot of mythical creatures out there. I'd like to think they all exist. I'm sure the story started with some kind of fact, like most stories."
Indeed, I hear Bigfoot in the music of Blitzen Trapper, which plays Tuesday at the Bug Jar. I hear darkness, and menace, and the solitude of vast stretches of nature. It is a rock band, but a rough-hewn, low-fi one that finds darker trails than most, with an indie-band's GPS for following the songs to where they lead. Blitzen Trapper put out an album in 2007, Wild Mountain Nation, that earned some critical attention, drawing an audience of "music-nerd type people, people actively seeking out unusual music," Early says. Last fall the band released Furr, drawing further applause. National Public Radio featured the band, and its audience expanded to, as Early puts it, "normal people."
Because everyone can relate to trees, right?
"I don't know if 'kinship' is the right word," Early says of any attempt to link Blitzen Trapper to vast, lonely, shrouded tracts of misty wilderness. Long pause. He changes his mind. "I guess that would be right," he confesses. "It's more of a feeling, the imagery of what I grew up with, and sort of what I know."
All stories may have a germ of fact to them, and all songs as well, although Early concedes he's never been raised by wolves, as was the main character in Furr's title track. Maybe it's just a tone. Early was homeless for about two years, living in an elderly telegraph building where, interestingly, the band later recorded Furr. Early sees no difference between the outsider feel of the fringe dwellers populating that area of Portland, with its tramps sleeping under the bridges, from the loneliness one experiences deep in the woods.
Blitzen Trapper's "Black River Killer," also from Furr, draws on memories Early has of one of his relatives. "He was a criminal, a drug addict," Early says. "I haven't seen him since I was 11, 12. I suppose he's dead now. He's not in the song any way you'd recognize, but the idea of him is in the song. He was a wily guy, always breaking out of jail."
If Early's relative is the mythical creature who drives that song, then Blitzen Trapper itself, and its songs, is a force of nature. Like the one encountered on the band's tour of the great plains of Canada, where the prairie winds sweep across the continent "for thousands of miles," Early says. "We got caught in this dust storm, it was crazy. You could barely go outside. There were a bunch of Harley bikers at this one place, they were taking cover. They'd been there for a week, their bikes were all gummed up from dust."
"War on Machines," another song from Furr, follows that theme. "What's the most powerful force on Earth?" Early asks. "Obviously, the weather and plant life. Slow, patient forces. As man, we build a lot of powerful machines and objects. But ultimately, there is no comparison."
But it's not walks in the deep woods that tell you this. Sure, you see the rusted hulks of abandoned vehicles, windshields long gone and tree trunks having punched their way up through the engine compartment. But more so, Early says, it's "walks in the city. You're in a city and you see things pushing up through cracks in cement. And you realize that, underneath all of this, is a huge, powerful force."