You never know what will happen at a Blitzen Trapper show.
So says Eric Earley, the band’s founding member, guitarist and vocalist.
“There’s always the stuff you have to play, the Top 10 stuff that people listen to,” he said. “Then we’ll throw some old stuff in and then some weird stuff that we like to play. But the set lists change every night.”
Fans will get a chance to hear one of Blitzen Trapper’s unique set lists when it opens Park City Institute‘s 2024 Concert on the Slopes summer series at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, July 9, at Canyons Village. Maine-based indie-folk singer-songwriter Louisa Stancioff, who is touring in support of her debut, “When We Were Looking,” will open the show. Tickets are available via parkcityinstitute.org/bsbn.
“It should be fun, and I’m looking forward to it,” Earley said.
Some of the new songs in the set will be culled from the band’s new album, “100’s of 1000’s, Millions of Billions,” which was released on Yep Roc Records in May, according to Earley.
“We had been working on the album for the past year or so,” he said. “It usually takes a couple of years for an album to happen. You write all the stuff and record it. Then the label deal will happen.”
Earley’s fascination with Buddhism inspired some of the compositions.
“I have done a lot of research for the past five or six years about the teachings and ideas,” he said. “The cosmology of it is really fascinating to me, and a lot of the songs come from that place.”
That’s not surprising because Earley said he usually comes up with ideas for songs from what he reads and where his head space is.
“I got interested in the ideas through Tibetan Buddhism,” he said. “It’s a very specific sect but a large and powerful one. I got into the vibe from there.”
Earley said psychotherapy introduced him to Buddhism.
“My therapist had me read some books that weren’t necessarily Dharma, but they drew from it, which I didn’t realize at that time,” he said. “Then I started reading the old scriptures and stuff, the stuff that is probably least read by people. And I found the stories were all so fascinating.”
The path eventually led Earley to meditation.
“I think for me that’s one of the most important things,” he said. “Just the practice of meditation is something to do every day like brushing your teeth. It’s like spiritual upkeep.”
Recording the album led to some collaborations, which included singer-songwriter Anna Tivel, as well as Eric D. Johnson of Fruit Bats, Earley said.
“Eric’s an old friend of ours, and we’ve toured with him and the Fruit Bats many times over the years,” he said. “He’s on the song ‘Planetarium,’ and when I recorded it, I sort of heard his banjo on it. So I sent him the track, and he ended up singing all the harmonies and did all the banjo on it. So, it worked out perfectly.”
“100’s of 1000’s, Millions of Billions” comes 21 years after the band released its self-titled album in 2003, and Earley still says he doesn’t know when a song is good enough to be called a Blitzen Trapper tune.
“Sometimes you never know — because there are times when I go, ‘Whoops, I shouldn’t have put it on there,'” he said with a laugh. “But I think for me, it’s usually when a song resonates with me, personally, and then resonates with people who are around me. So, I gauge it off of that.”
Since his current interests inspire the songs Earley writes, he said it’s safe to say full albums are musical snapshots of where he and the band are at certain points of time.
“Sometimes I listen back and find they are also weird snapshots of what’s to come in the future, too,” he said. “It’s like my subconscious taps into what I should be doing. Of course, I don’t know consciously what’s going on as the songwriting sometimes slips through the cracks.”
Earley feels like most songwriters experience similar situations.
“Ideas transcend time in a way, and they are just about the whole life movement in one motion kind of thing,” he said.
Looking back on his career, Earley didn’t think he or Blitzen Trapper would still be making music today.
“I thought I’d be done with touring four years ago,” he said. “I thought I was done, but then COVID happened literally after I had that thought. So I did stop touring for a few years.”
Earley said he may have subconsciously missed touring during that time.
“But I’m not sure,” he said with another laugh. “I think when you do something like that for so long it will always be with you.”
Regardless of what his spirit was telling him, Earley’s homelife made it possible for him to try playing live again.
“My daughter is older, and I felt comfortable about seeing what it would be like to get back on the road,” he said. “And I have since found that mostly it’s just an excuse to hang out with my friends, to be honest. I don’t have much ambition at this point other than hanging out with new people every night and playing some songs. You never quite know what’s going to happen at a Blitzen Trapper show, but we’ll try to take everyone into the cosmic sphere.”