Eric Campuzano is one of the most compelling artists in the industry. The reason is simple: he has played (or plays now) in some of the best bands, and instead of maintaining the status quo, he has started two of his own record labels in order to play, record, and sign the type of music that he likes and wants to pursue and promote. For those who don’t know Eric, he was the bassist for The Prayer Chain, the now defunct Southern Californian band that arrived on the scene back in 1991. The Prayer Chain gained immediate attention with fans in the edgier, alternative scene and remained one of the most cherished fan-appreciated acts in the underground for several years. The Prayer Chain put out several great albums including their genre bending (and definitively unique) offering Mercury, which still tops many top 10 lists to this day.
Eric is a busy guy, besides being one of the founding members of Northern Records, he recently started a great new label call Subdivision which has some of the best acts that I have heard in recent months. In addition to the labels, he also plays in Stranger Kings, Cush, CVSC and is a husband and father to two kids. Let’s not forget either about The Lassie Foundation and releasing two solo projects as Charity Empressa. For Eric, I’m sure there is not enough time in one day.
I was really excited to have a conversation with Eric and talk to him about music past, present and future. He is a down to earth guy that says just what he means and there was zero pre-tense with anything which is always refreshing. So, I hope that you, the reader, enjoy the interview. Let’s just go ahead and jump straight in!
With the Subdivision label that was just created, what are the long term goals for the label? Are you guys planning on releasing tracks individually as you have been, or will you also offer full length releases?
With Subdivision… well, none of us have the time to release a proper full length anymore and it is just a way to facilitate the projects that we are working on. It also gives them the opportunity to be released without the pressure of being on a label. Some of these tracks can’t be on Northern Records just because they might just be “one offs” here and there. So, this is just us being us… and with the last project CVSC, that song might not have been released ever because we just don’t have the time to do anything else. That’s why we started Subdivision… just to have a place to release whatever we have going on, a few songs a year from ourselves and our friends.
Will Subdivision ever release these tracks collectively on a disc as a hard copy?
Well, that’s the premise of Subdivision… for Northern Records to be involved there has to be a proper record and we want to support those bands properly. On Northern we have Telegram, Set To Sea and Monarch right now, and we make full lengths for them, we do the best we can for them. Subdivision is where we’ll get together and put out one or two songs a year. Ideally everyone wants to put out a full length or an e.p. Stranger Kings is working on an e.p. right now, so to answer your question, ideally yes.
Who is on Subdivision right now?
Stranger Kings, Leslie Dupree Grimaud, CVSC, Sound Galley, Cameraphone and hopefully in the next two or three months we will have a couple of more acts on there. One is Andy and some people he has been working with, but I don’t know when anything will drop so I don’t want to say anything about it yet. (ed. note – since this interview originally took place, JBAP and Sungrazerr have been added to the roster)
Musically, who would your influences be?
Everything? I don’t know, it’s so broad you know. For Stranger Kings I guess we are influenced by The Cure, My Bloody Valentine, Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil and that type of stuff. For me personally I love everything from Guided By Voices to Jesus and The Mary Chain, from Girls Against Boys to The Big Pink. I listen to allot of music and some of its dated, but I try and talk to my friends and learn about new music because I do find myself falling into that trap and listening to the stuff that I love from 20 years ago. It’s always exciting to find new bands, like I’m really into The Big Pink right now.
Any chance that we will hear anything again from Charity Empressa?
I’ve started and stopped that so many times… probably not man, I mean I still have plans to do one more thing with it and then be done with it. Doing drone music is such a one way street, ya know? That’s why the second e.p. was a little more fun, because I branched out a little bit, but it’s really so one dimensional. It takes hours to make that music and it has to be spontaneous and from the heart, and to be honest I don’t have enough time to sit there for hours and play around with one or two notes.
You have 2 kids correct?
Yeah, 14 and 9 years…When I did the first Charity Empressa record my daughter was 3 and I had plenty of time to sit there, play around and twist knobs, but now it’s taking them to school, picking them up from school, going to Tae- Kwon-Do, doing homework (and I still hate homework) and with doing all the different things there’s just no time.
Anything new in the pipeline with Lassie Foundation? What’s going on there?
After we did that Three Wheel e.p. we started working on more stuff, but ya know it just fell apart again. So there’s nothing on tap there and really to be honest, I don’t know how much any of us want to work with each other anymore. There’s a musical disconnect that happened with that a year or two ago. I don’t see a Lassie record ever coming out again, I’m not going to say we’re broken up, but I don’t really see any interest in us working together again in that paradigm. That’s not to say that me and Wayne won’t write something, or Jeff and Wayne or me and Jeff, whatever, but I think under that moniker there’s no value or interest to it, I think it ran its course. Now, that’s just my take on it, if you talked to Wayne or Jeff you might get a different opinion.
Jeff is on tour with Smashing Pumpkins right now and he teaches at UCLA, so his time is very limited. Wayne has a full time job as a copy editor. For us to get together there would have to be something of real value, and right now I don’t think any of us are getting real value from working with each other as Lassie Foundation.
Does Cush have anything happening in the future?
Me and Andy have a lot of music done, we just can’t find anyone to sing on it. We kind of sabotaged ourselves really, because when Knott sang on the first one, then everyone kind of thought he would be singing… and that fell apart which was too bad because he was perfect for the band. Both Andy and I really wished it had worked out with him, but it didn’t and we were left sitting on probably 20 really good music ideas. It’s hard to find a good singer and the music really demands a good singer. I wish we could have made a second proper record with Mike, everyone really likes the first one, but the second one would have been knock-down awesome!
Talking about the Prayer Chain, each release was such a progression musically from the previous album, which album do you feel was the strongest release and why? (ed. note – could I ask a dumber question?)
Obviously I would think its Mercury. Mercury was the opportunity to really just do what we wanted to do. We were influenced by certain bands, but we weren’t hijacking any other band on that release. That was just me, Andy, Wayne and Tim, and probably the most pure musical thing I’ve ever made, and I would argue to say that those guys probably would say the same thing.
The Prayer Chain was a forerunner in the Christian music scene… what kind of obstacles did you guys have to overcome as a band to make the kind of music you did?
I think bands like Undercover, Altar Boys, The Choir and Common Bond already broke down those walls and allowed us to be a Christian rock band. I think then bands like Prayer Chain, Mortal, SF59, etc. made it more relevant because we were able to make music, not just evangelical music. Those bands broke down everything for us, and I owe everything to those bands that I just mentioned. They allowed many of us to become artists where the music was paramount and we didn’t have to go out there and do altar calls anymore. That was exciting for us, and I guess our biggest hurdle was to become a national act. You know, we played our asses off, we toured our asses off and I think that basically set up stuff for the TnN artists to take that roadmap that we forged and become bigger and more successful then we were. I don’t know if that answers your question, but really our biggest hurdle was finding places to play and tour nationally. It was a success ya know, and I’m stoked that Plankeye and other TnN artists got to jump on that train and do it even bigger.
Yeah, it’s definitely a different scene these days…
Yeah, it is a different scene now, back then we had to do everything ourselves. We had a manger, but we had to book our own tours…
It’s different in that respect, but it’s also different from the aspect of what was/wasn’t okay then and now. I think you’ve mentioned it before, but you summed it up perfectly when you said that in the early days Christian music was evangelical by nature, and then other acts broke down that barrier and allowed artists to be artists and make music. I also think as far as the Prayer Chain goes, when you guys started out there were things that you couldn’t say then that you could say now. It was a completely different scene, the industry is so different now.
Yeah, I mean we were supposed to be opening up for Petra, we had played a couple of shows with them and we got kicked off immediately. We just didn’t fit that paradigm at the time.
I would say visually and lyrically that Prayer Chain was much harder than most of the other bands at that time. I can’t remember the name of the song right now, but on the Whirlpool album there was the song about the kid who was gay and just wanted acceptance by the church. That was really pushing the boundaries back of what was and wasn’t acceptable back in the early 90’s.
The song is called “Some Love.” and it would be interesting to talk to everyone in the band and see if they still have the same opinion about that song. Some people get more liberal or conservative because we’re older now, and at the time we were just fighting to be accepted by the church. It’s kind of like with the whole Petra thing, I guess they thought we were too controversial and we were not redefining but asking the question like what is wrong with us, or what’s wrong with the gay guy coming to church, or the girl who had the abortion…aren’t they loved by Christ? Why are we ostracizing them? Let’s embrace Christ’s grace you know? That’s where we were coming from at the time, and I guess if people like you remember it then it was a good song and a good message. I believe it was also about this thing of I just want God, that’s all I want ya know… I want to fall down at the face of the cross, why are you putting all these boundaries on me?
Have you heard the new Choir album? Hindalong’s lyrics have some people talking which is good I think, it brings issues to the front that need to be discussed and gives people the ability to talk about them.
Steve Hindalong was a huge influence on me lyrically when we were working on Neverland Sessions which later became the Whirlpool e.p. I had one lyric on there where he asked me, “Eric, what is this lyric?” I said, “What do you mean man, it’s cool”, and he said , “Eric, this lyric is devoid of value and meaning, please go rewrite it.” Right there I realized, even though that hurt a lot, I have one opportunity to honor God by doing something poignant and great, so there’s no time for vapid lyrics. Ever since he told me that I’ve worked really, really hard on my lyrics. That’s probably why everything past Shawl really just comes out.
I’ll ask you this question and I’m not asking about drama or anything of that nature, but why did the Prayer Chain break up? Was it just time to call it quits?
We actually decided to break up after the Shawl record, but we had one more record that we were committed to with Reunion, and we wanted to honor that commitment. That’s really why we just went for it on Mercury. I guess it really took two or three years after that to break up, but it had just run its course. We just grew a part, we weren’t on the same page anymore so it was time to call it a day.
What are you listening to right now?
I’m immersing myself in the old Cure stuff, the old Bauhaus stuff. I’m kind of retarding my development a little bit and going back to the bands that I took for granted and I was just a fan of, now I’m going back and being a listener of them. Herb Grimaud has exposed me to all that stuff and we talk about it all the time. So, I am spending time really listening and not just being a fan.
Vinyl, CD or digital and why?
Honestly, I kind of like cassette tapes. For example I have this Jesus and Mary Chain on vinyl, cassette and CD. I guess because it is what my ear grew up listening to, I like cassette tapes. I love the fidelity of tapes and I’m not a big fan of CD’s at all because there’s so much room on there that the EQ is so hyper and so loud… there’s no definition and no body, it’s just loud. I guess that what proponents of vinyl are after, there’s only so much room to have an EQ range… for me cassette tapes are just really cool. I still four track on cassette sometimes, I like that little hiss that’s in there.
Is there a piece of art, literature or film that you find particularly inspiring?
I guess as far as literature I would say Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I guess for movies, Cinema Paradiso. A lot of Mercury was based on Cinema Paradiso, that’s where the line ‘It takes years to get there, it takes years to get back’ comes from. I’ve read Mere Christianity about a dozen times and it never gets old ya know, and the same thing with Cinema Paradiso… but I love The Hangover also. (laughter) I’m just a regular guy, I guess maybe I have a little bit of culture, but really I’m not cultured at all. I don’t read literature, I don’t subscribe to various art forms and stuff, I just love what I love and I won’t make any bones about it.
Top 5 early alternative Christian records?
1) God Rules by Undercover – There are some cool songs on there, and that’s when I became a Christian so it has some special meaning.
2) When Your A Rebel by the Altar Boys
3) 4-4-1 – The first record which was titled 4-4-1
4) The Choir stuff was always a big influence. There are certain songs on each record that slay me, but I guess I would have to say Circle Slide as a complete release.
5) The first 2 Common Bond records were awesome… oh, and the first Lifesavors record Us Kids. There are some songs on the Lifesavers record A Kiss of Life that I still listen to today and they just kill me… like the song “Highway To Zion,” or the ballad “See Me Fall.” Mike Knott hit it out of the ballpark when he wrote “See Me Fall.”
So, here are all the links to Eric’s various projects and labels. Just a note, when you check out the Subdivision link, definitely click on the “cool or lame” tab, its fun to check out and you can also leave your vote and thoughts.
- Subdivision Theory website
- Northern Records website
- Lassie Foundation website
- The Prayer Chain website
Leave a Reply