Local Spotlight: Eric Braun
I’ve decided to try something new with this blog: interviews with hard-working musicians and artists of my own city, Calgary, Alberta. We’re an isolated city that’s often overlooked by touring acts, but we’ve still managed to cultivate a growing local music scene that I believe deserves attention.
Eric Braun is a multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter with a completely DIY approach to music. Being a self-described perfectionist when it comes to music, his upcoming album is one that he’s been working on for over a year, recording and mastering his own material, and he nearly considered scrapping it altogether. Instead, he finally decided to drop a single from the album (which you can hear above), and plans on releasing the whole album later this summer. Read the interview below in which we discuss burning towns, Apollo 11, and the difficulties of fitting in to the music scene.
How would you describe the style of your music?
I had a word for what it used to be, which was “wuss-rock”. Cause it was on the line of being folky, and I still wanted it to be a bit heavier, but it wasn’t like rocky enough that it was… cool. So I coined the term “wuss-rock” because it was sorta rock but only for wusses
This new track sounds like a step in a new direction. It sounds like a step forward for you both stylistically and production-wise
Yeah I think in the past I always had this desire to make things heavier, and I would do that to a point but then for past records it would get too much. I’d be like ‘okay well this is still a folk record so I can’t have this crazy, heavy guitar riff,’ whereas this one I went in intentionally saying ‘I want this to be heavier’ so I wasn’t held back by making sure it wasn’t too heavy
I find that it has a distinctly 90’s rock feel to it. Do you consider that era as a big influence on your songwriting?
Yeah, I think with most artists their style is an amalgamation of everyone that influenced them. So for me that was a lot of 90s bands. Specifically to this record that’s what I attempted to do, not necessarily like 100% intentionally, but even though all these different bands influenced me I tried to focus all that into what I wanted to sound like a late-90s rock record, so I would listen to a lot of that and then subconsciously that all just came through in writing the songs I think
Can you name any big influences on this record specifically? Are they mostly singer-songwriters too?
It’s really strange for me because I’m not a band. So my influences on this record as a drummer were from different bands than as a guitar player. So there are pieces of all these different bands. As a drummer I was really influenced by Death Cab For Cutie, whereas in the guitar riffs and the feel of the songs I was looking for, say, Mathew Good Band, but then there was kind of an emotion I was trying to get from Pearl Jam maybe. So all these different pieces of my musicianship, all those different parts were being influenced by different bands, so hopefully it came together as a weird mesh of all those things
What’s the story behind the lyrics on your new track, are they kind of personal or are they fictional?
It’s an interesting story, cause I don’t usually write songs about things. Most of my songs are either just a feeling, or the unfortunate reality of a lot of my songs is ‘this is a phrase of words that sounds really cool together’ so that becomes the chorus of the song. And that works out sometimes with famous bands, like you’ll be singing this cool chorus and wonder what it means when in reality it’s just like those words sounded cool together.
But for this one in particular, it is actually based on a story. There’s this town in Pennsylvania that had all these underground mines and one day there was a fire in those mines. So all this area under the city where all these mines were was on fire, and it burned up through the roads. And that happened a long time ago and it’s still burning today. So for most people it was like ‘your town is on fire’ and they moved away, but there’s still some people that live there. They’re just like, “well this is my town, I live here” but there’s smoke coming up from the roads and there’s these horrible fumes… and I just read this story and it’s crazy to hear about this fire that’s been burning there for so long; but for me the crazier thing is that these people just choose to live there. Their desire to stay in their homes outweighed any sense of… common sense; I don’t even know what you’d say (laughs). So that’s the story behind the song about these people who chose to stay behind even though their town is literally burning beneath their feet
What is it like to be a local musician in Calgary, AB? Is the music scene an enthusiastic one in Calgary?
It’s hard…
Well before you answer that question, do you play many live shows or is this something you mostly do for yourself?
Well for me, my joy is being in the studio, writing and recording. That’s where, if I did this for fun, that’s all I would do. But the reality is you can’t just do that, there has to be both sides of it for you. So I enjoy playing live, but because I care so much about how it sounds I put a lot of work into it. I can’t do it so often because it would just wear me out. I have to space out between my shows enough that I can prepare for each one, which is weird because that makes it harder to get better, it’s harder to get into a rhythm. For me I can’t do like 5 bad shows in a row and have a 6th good one; I feel like they all need to be perfect. That’s why it’s really hard in my own personal feelings of what shows should be like
I’ve done a few shows in Calgary. It’s hard because I was always kind of in between genres. I felt that my music always laid right in between the ‘chill enough to be played in the background at a coffee shop’ but dynamic enough that if you were actually listening it would be really interesting to you. So I kind of always sat in between that. Sometimes I would play where people were looking for music to be played in the background, but sometimes I want to play where people are genuinely there to hear good music and are really interested in that. Sometimes you’ll get only either one of those. So yeah I’ve played a few, but not knowing exactly what I wanted to produce as a musician made it hard to pick where to play, what to play and who to play with
And with your new song sounding more like a full band, that would demand either a live band to play with or perhaps maybe acoustic versions of the songs
Yeah, so that’s the hard part too, I still really like both of those and I think some artists do both of that really well at the same time. But as much as it’s easier for me to do it all by myself, which sounds funny, it’s harder because now I have to take that into consideration when I want to play live. I can’t do these songs on my own unless they sound really different; which I think I’d like to do for part of it. I’d like to do these songs as an acoustic set, but also if they’re to be played as they sound then they need to be with a band
Why do you find it easier to manage all of this by yourself?
It’s mostly that I never really had anyone, up until this point, who played in the genre that I was in. I never knew a drummer who played folk rock, whereas now this is just pretty basic, simple rock. To find a band now it’s pretty different because I’m not having to explain what this should sound like, it’s pretty obvious, it’s just rock. So up until now, when I write these songs as a person who plays all these different instruments I’m hearing things in my head as I’m writing. It’s harder to translate that to someone else than it is to just do it myself. You know what I mean? As I’m writing this rock song on an acoustic guitar, I’m picturing all the electric riffs that are going to happen, all the lead riffs, the bass line, the drums that I want to hear in the song, which is hard because that’s not how a band works. A band works where everyone takes their individual pieces and puts them together into something that’s one, whereas when I’m writing I’m already picturing all these things that are happening
Have you ever considered touring on your own?
I have, but it’s hard to be a touring musician in Canada, really just based on geography. If you’re starting out and you live in New York State there’s so many close cities to be able to tour effectively. You could do multiple shows in different cities, there’s a huge college scene that you could go city to city, easy trips between those, and it would spread really quickly around that area that you’re doing this tour. But here, there’s like 8 hours between major cities and not as much of a college scene, so it’s really just…
You take a lot of chances driving 8 hours to play at a coffee shop in another city
…based on hoping people will come by word of mouth, or having friends there or whatever it is, or it’s just promoted well. So it’s really hard to do. But once you do it and you start building up fan bases in each of those places then it can become like a routine thing where you do it all the time. But to start doing that is really, really hard (laughs). I think in Canada you have to do the weird small town bars. Like, you wouldn’t go into Saskatoon, you’d go to a tiny town outside of there where there’s a bunch of people in this local bar who just want to hang out and listen to music, because the cities are so business-focused it’s hard to find good places to play right in the city core
What’s the status on your new record? Does it have a title or a release date yet?
The title is “In Event of Moon Disaster.” My last record was a concept album where everything was tied into this one theme. But this one is a bit broader. It kind of just came down to the fact that I was really interested in space when I was writing this (laughs). When Apollo 11 went to the moon the only plan that they had for if things went wrong was they had a script for the President to read to the country that they weren’t coming home. There wasn’t like a ‘we’re sending people to help them’ or ‘we have some extra thing out there to help them get back’ it was just, ‘here’s how to tell everyone that these people are going to die.’ That was their only plan. I found that really interesting, so that kind of became the visual theme to me and sort of the overarching theme of the entire thing, although some of the songs didn’t necessarily take that to heart. In my mind it’s meant to be a message sent back from the people who’re maybe stranded out there. Like if they were stranded out there they’d just have to wait, what would that feel like?
Total helplessness?
Total helplessness (laughs), and not necessarily that dark, it’s not meant to be that dark, it just kind of bookends with that as far as the songs go. And I’m pretty close to finalizing a date that I can say is a release date. I think I’m looking at this summer. It’s hard because I haven’t done anything like this before. A lot of new challenges came up especially in the recording phase. It’s really easy to record an acoustic guitar and a voice and a really simple drum kit and put them all together, but this has layers and layers of electric guitars and effects and full drum kits and just lots of extra instruments that all have to come together and sound like a normal song. And it’s hard because in my brain I know exactly what I want it to sound like and I don’t think it will ever get there, so at some point I have to get it to ‘this sounds close enough to what I really, really want it to sound like’ and that’s when I’m done (laughs).