|
Event
ITG Presents: Trapper Schoepp at Argyle Brewing Company's Cambridge Depot
The ITG Presents concert series is pleased to welcome back Trapper Schoepp to Argyle Brewing Company's Cambridge Depot on March 29, 2023.
- - -
About Trapper Schoepp:
In 2019, Milwaukees Trapper Schoepp hit a songwriters jackpot: a co-write
with Bob Dylan. And the circumstances were wildy serendipitous. On the day
Dylan entered Columbia Studios in 1961 to begin recording his first studio
album, he wrote a song about Wisconsin. The lyric sheet sat unseen with a
former roommate, and was later unearthed and put up for auction at $30,000.
Schoepp saw the story and seized the opportunity to set music to words. After
Schoepps effort, he was granted Dylans approval to jointly publish the song.
This 57-year-collaboration--On, Wisconsin--led to features in Rolling Stone
and Billboard, an album called Primetime Illusion produced by Wilcos Patrick
Sansone, and nearly a hundred international tour dates. But other ventures in
the singer-songwriter's life werent as fulfilling.
Schoepp spent the summer prior to the release of Primetime Illusion at the
Hotel Astor, a historic 1920s hotel he describes as having the air of a haunting
Stephen King novel. Indulging in the spookiness of his transient lodgings,
Schoepp went on a ghost tour of Milwaukee, and as the specters saw fit, the tour
ended back at the very hotel where he was staying. The guide shared the story
of a 1935 fire that claimed the lives of a nurse and her patient, a deaf man who
did not wake to the nurses pounding at his door. With creative liberties,
Schoepp reimagined their story into Hotel Astor.
Schoepp explores themes of ghosts and rebirth, springtime and renewal on his
album, May Day - out 5/21/21 on Grand Phony Records. May Day is an
ancient holiday that celebrates the arrival of springtime, the natural world and
also workers rights. Its also my birthday, Schoepp says with a laugh. After
this trying winter, we found solace in making an album for the spring.
May Day, the halfway point between the spring equinox and the summer
solstice, has historically been observed with dancing and singing around a
maypole. Schoepps album cover features a Roaring Twenties era photo of
women dancing around a maypole alongside the Washington Monument, which
was found in a Library of Congress archive by his brother and bassist/singer,
Tanner Schoepp, and adapted into album art by designer, Daniel Murphy (Bon
Iver, The War On Drugs).
I was born on the first day, fifth month called May/Im here today to say I need
you in the worst way, Schoepp sings in the opening title track. Against a
driving Springsteen-esque beat, Schoepp tells a transcontinental tale inspired by
an untenable living situation he faced weeks before departing on a European
tour. I woke up with a frantic sense of urgency the morning the piano movers
came. I finished May Day as they were pulling up, thinking I owed it to the
piano to write one more song on it.
Weeks later on tour in Paris, Schoepp penned Paris Syndrome, an acoustic
ballad inspired by a rare but real psychiatric condition that afflicts tourists when
the City of Lights does not meet their expectations. I thought the condition was
partly tragic, partly humorous - which is something I gravitate toward in my
songs, Schoepp said.
The music of May Day is both a celebration of more hopeful times and a
reflection of a darker past, often using the natural world as a motif. As Schoepp
sings in the lost-at-sea, acoustic ballad, Yellow Moon: Amidst a sea of
emotion/A life led in perpetual motion/After many months lost at sea/I learned
loneliness is a part of being free. The minor key piano rocker River Called
Disaster expresses the feeling of being broken down by the compulsion for
more - its music video sees Schoepp lighting a piano on fire.
Echoes of bluesmen like Screamin Jay Hawkins, are heard in the slide-guitar
driven Little Drop of Medicine - which is set in the Garden of Eden. Go to
the garden, thats where it starts/With body and blood, flesh and heart,
Schoepp sings. I was alone, you were what I was missing/Then that serpent
spoke, and baby we listened.
The 10-track album was recorded near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, amidst the
pandemic and citywide protests for racial equity. In between vocal takes, I
stepped outside in my surgical mask and saw a fleet of military Humvees driving
by the studio to a protest. Helicopters overhead. Surreal and scary for the people
taking to the streets to stand up against police brutality.
The album was produced by Schoepp and his longtime friend, Ian Olvera, whom
he bonded with as a teen over AOL Instant Messenger after trading bootlegs on
a Bob Dylan message board. The two ended up meeting in person while front
row at a concert, not recognizing one another from their online kinship until
after the concert. They remained musical comrades and Olvera engineered
Schoepps 2019 album, Primetime Illusion. Olvera took on the multiple roles of
producer, engineer and multi-instrumentalist on May Day as part of an effort to
keep the sessions socially isolated. He was a one-man machine and were
certainly indebted to him for the warm tone of May Day, Schoepp said. There
were some experimental turns in songs like Something About You and I Am a
Rider that Ian really sculpted.
On May Day, Schoepp and band defy the limitations of standard-issue
Americana by hopping genres and experimenting with drum machines, modular
synths, and droning guitars. The record finds Schoepp handling vocals, acoustic
guitar, and, for the first time on an album, piano. Hes accompanied by his
touring band: his brother and musical-foil, Tanner Schoepp (electric bass and
vocal harmonies), Matt Smith (slide and electric guitar) and Jacob Bicknase
(drums). In ordinary times, we wouldve gone to the basement to get the
arrangements right but we worked remotely, slowly exchanging musical ideas
via modest home studio setups, Schoepp said of the atypical pre-production
process.
Following the cancellation of a lengthy European tour, Schoepp and his brother
weathered the early stages of lockdown by working on May Day and doing live
streams for socially conscious organizations like Guitars 4 Vets, Harmony 4
Hope and RAINN.
He also began selling out of a t-shirt he made years back that simply says This
Isnt Fun Anymore. Schoepp overheard a boy cry out the phrase on an
amusement park ride called The Scat, which inspired the sentiment for the lyric,
and later the shirt. The song The Scat was later used as the theme song for
The Onions A Very Fatal Murder podcast and in a trailer for HBOs Perry
Mason series.
Having spent the last half decade getting home just in time to leave again,
playing countless dates, and sharing stages with such like-minded Americana
mainstays as The Wallflowers, The Jayhawks, Frank Turner, and Old 97s,
Schoepp hopes to take to the road again when its safe. Until then, Schoepp will
be promoting May Day through drive-in concerts, live streaming and small,
socially distanced events.
For all the darkness surrounding May Day, Schoepp hopes it will be a respite
for listeners he was unable to reach on the road. The pandemic devastated the
live music industry but the need to be transported through song remained. I
hope May Day offers that sort of escape.
|
|
 |
LocationArgyle Brewing Company's Cambridge Depot (View)
6 Broad Street
Cambridge, NY 12816
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: Yes! |
| Non-Smoking: No |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
|
Contact
| Owner: In The Groove |
| On BPT Since: Apr 24, 2013 |
| |
| In The Groove Bookings and Promotion |
|
|
