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Erase Errata: Moral indie crusaders

Erase Errata, the all-girl San Francisco-based indie punk rock outfit, toured Australia promoting their third album, Nightlife, in November. Bass player Ellie Erickson took time out with Erin Riley to discuss inspiration, owl fetishes and why politics matters.

December 2006

Erin: Erase Errata is quite an unusual name for a band – how did you come up with it?

Ellie: Our old guitarist Sarah, who left about one and a half years ago now. She was a writing major and she heard it in class one time and thought it sounded great. We later found out it was a lyric from a Kraft song. But we didn’t know that at the time.

Erin: Tell me about writing and recording your new record, Nightlife. Did you approach it differently to previous recordings? Do you still stand by the “ready-set-go” approach to song writing?

Ellie: It was a strange time for us because just after Sarah left we still had lots of gigs booked and Jenny didn’t want to do Sarah’s guitar parts. So we got a new singer so Jenny could focus on her own guitar parts, but that didn’t work out and the guy didn’t work out as a singer. We wrote six songs with him and Jenny wrote some new melodies and once they were written we recorded them. They turned out really terrible so we tried re-mixing them, but ended up just throwing it all away. We went back into the studio about a year and a half ago in Sacramento and recorded about seven or eight songs. It took us a while to mix them and when we’d finished that, we went and recorded more songs in Oakland. We finally finished everything in February.

Erin: What’s with all the owls on your record covers? Who’s got the fetish?

Ellie: Having owls on the record covers was never a conscious thing. On the second record we had a song called ‘Owls’ and I think owls just appeal to us in general. For the second we just told the artist to do whatever and Bianca did the artwork for Nightlife. I guess it’s good to have a bit of continuity.

Erin: I haven’t seen you guys live yet but from what I’ve gathered you all seem to have quite a bit of fun onstage, some jumping about and all that. Do you see Erase Errata as a kind of performance art as well as a band?

Ellie: I think we see ourselves as a band. Jenny does a bit of performance art though. I think all bands are a performance in some respects. We don’t consciously get into character if that’s what you mean.

Erin: I was looking at old interviews with you guys and I found one from 2001 where you were talking about future plans and one of the things you said was that “the furthest we can think is, we want to go to Europe.” How does it feel now that you’ve done so much touring?

Ellie: Well, now that we’ve got a trip to Australia planned we’ve reached all of our goals. We always wanted to travel to Japan and we’ve done that already and Australia was the place we have always wanted to tour. 

It’s really hard to be a band out of the US. Huge companies control the music industry and censorship is rife. Before this record we were under contract to a European label that never supported us touring Australia.

Erin: ‘Your Single Tax Dollar’ has a fairly clear message. What was the one issue that really compelled you to write the song?

Ellie: We’ve had a lot of feedback from radio stations that refuse to play it actually, which is incredibly disappointing. Jenny wrote all the lyrics and the first time I heard it was when we were recording it in Sacramento. I think it was probably a response to most of the articles ever written in The New York Times. I know that really stirs up some emotions in Jenny.

Erin: Do you feel that the current political climate has become so dire that such forward social commentaries are necessary?

Ellie: For me it’s necessary to at least tell people that there are other opinions out there, not just of those in charge. A lot of people these days are opposed to what is going on but aren’t active about social change. I guess as musicians we feel it’s a duty to be vocal about things that we’re passionate about.

Erin: Are you active in other ways, besides just playing political songs?

Ellie: Where I work at the moment we have a program for kids with parents in jail. We’re all activists in different ways.

Erin: I love the song ‘Rider’. What inspired you to expose Red State double standards and hypocrisy?

Ellie: I haven’t really talked to Jenny about it that much. It’s all about getting vigilante justice. She’s from Texas. I think that says it all.

Erin: Politics, while always present, seem more explicit on this record. Was this a deliberate decision – somehow a comment on the climate we’re now living in?

Ellie: I’m not exactly sure because Jenny writes all the lyrics. I guess you want the music to be what people believe in, and because those are issues which affect us the most and make us so angry it’s what we tend to write our songs about.

Erin: You’re like these indie moral crusaders with a social and political conscience. How do you see yourselves?

Ellie: I think we’re just a band that happens to be speaking out about issues that are important politically. It’d be nice to have people with the same political views as us.

Erin: What records are you listening to at the moment?

Ellie: Let’s see. Oh lots of stuff, quite a bit of 60s psychedelic stuff and that new Knife album Silent Shout.

Erin: I’ve read that San Francisco and The Bay area are real cultural and musical melting pots. What breeds such a place do you think?

Ellie: First of all, it is absolutely beautiful. It’s huge and has such radical cultural heritage. Haight Asbury, the arts and hippie culture. There are some fantastic social programs in operation. I guess it’s much easier to be an artist here than in other big cities. While the dot-com boom stuffed things up a bit things are back to normal now. San Francisco has a long history of producing great musicians and artists. I have friends in New York and Los Angeles and because most of the major music labels, magazines and bands are based there they have a lot more exposure and are promoted a lot more. In San Francisco, everyone is here for the music and not the big bucks.

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