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Music

Blitzen Trapper

BLITZEN TRAPPER with DAWES and BELLE BRIGADE at the Opera House (735 Queen East), Sunday (October 30), 7 pm. $18.50. HS, RT, SS, TM. Blitzen Trapper also play an in-store earlier at Sonic Boom (782 Bathurst), 2:30 pm. Free. See listing.


When he’s not racking up kilometres on the road playing Blitzen Trapper’s winning hybrid of classic rock, folk and alt-country, frontman Eric Earley is home in Portland living a relatively normal existence with all the amenities of regular life.

But it wasn’t always this way. Prior to BT’s breakthrough Wild Mountain Nation in 2007, Earley was literally living on the streets. He carried a weapon for protection and occasionally slept by a river. And he recalls this era not with a shudder but with a hint of fondness.

“There’s a certain freedom in getting rid of everything and living on your wits,” he says from Kentucky, two weeks into a seven-week tour. “There’s a certain energy to that lifestyle.

“I have an apartment now and a motorcycle and car. I have sort of a regular life. It’s good. It’s different. I’m a different person now, maybe, but I can still be nostalgic about the different lives I’ve led.”

The theme of living nomadically creeps up repeatedly during Blitzen’s switched-on new album, American Goldwing (Sub Pop), whose title refers to a Honda cruising motorcycle.

Earley writes lyrics about wandering characters constantly on the move, as in the Stonesy title track or Stranger In A Strange Land, with its early Dylan leanings. He also explores the pain of a string of losing relationships and the death of someone near to him, which he declines to discuss. The album is so personal, in fact, that he initially considered it a solo outing before bringing in the band.

It also buzzes with screeching guitar riffs and the occasional falsetto rock vocal that would make Tom Scholz proud. For this, Earley’s often been called “70s-rock-obsessed.”

“I like classic rock because it has a certain masculinity and blue-collar authenticity. Those bands don’t care about shit. They just like to play and shred.”

music@nowtoronto.com

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