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| Yep, just like he said. |
While I came a couple years late to the Blitzen Trapper party, I geeked out hard first and most to the same album that everyone else did: 2008’s Furr. In fact, that album deserves as much credit as any other for guiding me toward more rustic sounds. Which I have always resisted more than most genres…though it helped it was leavened with lots and lots of rock...
And now, a crash course on their story.
The Very Basics
“I always thought that Blitzen Trapper, the sort of classic lineup, was like a benevolent psychedelic street gang. Not a scary street gang.”
- Eric Johnson (of Fruit Bats), Talk House interview, 2020
Blitzen Trapper semi-officially formed circa 2000 under the name Garmonbozia and self-released three albums. Nearly all of the original (and surprisingly stable) line-up hailed from the “outskirts of Salem, Oregon,” and included: Eric Earley (guitar/harmonica/vocals/keys), Eric Menteer (guitar/keyboard), Brian Adrian Koch (drums/vocals/harmonica…a lot of harmonica), Michael Van Pelt (bass), Drew Laughery (keys), and Marty Marquis (guitar/keys/vocals/melodica); Marquis counts as the geographic outlier, hailing from Yakima, Washington, and the band became a five-piece when Laughery left around 2010 - e.g., after the tour supporting Destroyer of the Void. A couple songs carried over from the Garmonbozia period (~ 2000-2003; e.g., a proto-version of “Sadie,” “The All Girl Team,” and “Reno”), but the sound that made them famous hadn’t taken shape point. A quote in Wikipedia’s write-up describes Garmonbozia’s sound like so:
“Many of the Garmonbozia recordings are experimental prog-rock and psychedelic songs, more concerned with creating interesting soundscapes than the tighter rock/soul/country/pop crispness of their later albums.”
The band switched it’s name to Blitzen Trapper in 2003. When reflecting on those earliest days with Eric Johnson (see the Talk House interview), Earley agreed they were fortunate to come up in “a good time to wander your way into things,” aka, posting songs on a MySpace page and getting signed to a label. And now feels like a good time to confess that my greatest disappointment in reading about Blitzen Trapper came with learning that Earley did nearly all the songwriting and that he conceived albums as far back as American Goldwing as solo projects. Going the other way (and I lifted this from a recent Street Roots feature on (again) Earley): “Holy Smokes could have easily been billed as an Eric Earley solo record, but that’s been true of every Blitzen Trapper album, the band always functioning more as a live organism.” (Or, from the Talk House interview: “A lot of Blitzen Trapper was trying to navigate those two realities, the recordings and the band.”)
And now, a crash course on their story.
The Very Basics
“I always thought that Blitzen Trapper, the sort of classic lineup, was like a benevolent psychedelic street gang. Not a scary street gang.”
- Eric Johnson (of Fruit Bats), Talk House interview, 2020
Blitzen Trapper semi-officially formed circa 2000 under the name Garmonbozia and self-released three albums. Nearly all of the original (and surprisingly stable) line-up hailed from the “outskirts of Salem, Oregon,” and included: Eric Earley (guitar/harmonica/vocals/keys), Eric Menteer (guitar/keyboard), Brian Adrian Koch (drums/vocals/harmonica…a lot of harmonica), Michael Van Pelt (bass), Drew Laughery (keys), and Marty Marquis (guitar/keys/vocals/melodica); Marquis counts as the geographic outlier, hailing from Yakima, Washington, and the band became a five-piece when Laughery left around 2010 - e.g., after the tour supporting Destroyer of the Void. A couple songs carried over from the Garmonbozia period (~ 2000-2003; e.g., a proto-version of “Sadie,” “The All Girl Team,” and “Reno”), but the sound that made them famous hadn’t taken shape point. A quote in Wikipedia’s write-up describes Garmonbozia’s sound like so:
“Many of the Garmonbozia recordings are experimental prog-rock and psychedelic songs, more concerned with creating interesting soundscapes than the tighter rock/soul/country/pop crispness of their later albums.”
The band switched it’s name to Blitzen Trapper in 2003. When reflecting on those earliest days with Eric Johnson (see the Talk House interview), Earley agreed they were fortunate to come up in “a good time to wander your way into things,” aka, posting songs on a MySpace page and getting signed to a label. And now feels like a good time to confess that my greatest disappointment in reading about Blitzen Trapper came with learning that Earley did nearly all the songwriting and that he conceived albums as far back as American Goldwing as solo projects. Going the other way (and I lifted this from a recent Street Roots feature on (again) Earley): “Holy Smokes could have easily been billed as an Eric Earley solo record, but that’s been true of every Blitzen Trapper album, the band always functioning more as a live organism.” (Or, from the Talk House interview: “A lot of Blitzen Trapper was trying to navigate those two realities, the recordings and the band.”)
