http://www.myspace.com/trapperschoepp
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/lived-and-moved/id345682589
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/trapperschoepp2
"Lived and Moved"
My name is Trapper Schoepp, and I’m a 19-year old songwriter from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My band, Trapper Schoepp & The Shades, is a young independent rock-n-roll band that enjoys the camaraderie of making music.
Our sophomore release, Lived and Moved, was recorded over a two-week period at Howl Street Studios in Milwaukee, and produced by Justin Perkins (Cory Chisel, Screeching Weasel, The Wildbirds). I began writing the first track, “Let Me Know,” in 2006, and finished the last track, “Breeze,” while in the studio last August. During that stretch of time, I graduated from high school, moved 300 miles south to Milwaukee, and experienced relocation blues, hence the record’s seemingly literal title. My intention was to create a straightforward album that reflected candidly on this period of my life.
In this age of digital vastness, the album as an art form is losing significance, and we wanted to create a cohesive work that culminates through song sequence. Upon reflection, I feel like this album plays as a kind of morning-to-night experience, an effect I subconsciously sought, perhaps. At the beginning of the record, I sing of morning aftermath: a plea for reassurance, “let me know you’re here,” is later coupled with a “goodbye note signed in ink.” The fourth track off the album is “Zero,” a song in which the chorus –“add it up and all you get is zero”—features a great vocal harmony line by my brother Tanner, and ends in a waltz-like instrumental.
The centerpiece of the record is “Thought I Knew,” a song about overcoming self-doubt in a relationship turned bitter. I particularly like the bellowing organ in this song, performed by my good friend Ian Olvera, who also plays lap steel on the subsequent song, “Driving All Night,” a more country-tinged track. Because most of the band lives in Milwaukee, while lead guitarist David Boigenzahn lives in Eau Claire, we’ve had some reflective times literally driving all night (well, most of it) along I-94; I thought we could commemorate those feelings in a song. As the record ends with “Breeze,” the lyrics describe a hypothetical car accident –“and if I crashed my car into the ditch at half past dawn”—only to end with a wall of chaotic feedback.
We’ve started incorporating “The Shades” into our band name, and I really like what that moniker conveys. In a literal sense, shades cast darkness, offering refuge from the sunlight, and although it is an abstraction, I indentify this concept with songwriting. There’s something remedial about trying to pull meanings from our shaded, ambiguous thoughts, and writing music becomes cathartic. The progression of this album also reflects our new name, and the songs become progressively darker in subject and sound. Also, the photo we used on the album cover, taken by Ben Gucciardi, depicts a series of light poles against a sky of regressing blue, conveying a sense of chromatic softness.
And as much as I'm inspired as a songwriter by my favorite artists—Bruce Springsteen, Gram Parsons, The Replacements, Wilco—they only show up, if at all, in the music. I’ve tried to find my own voice in these songs, and am still working hard at that. The resonance of rock and roll has stirred me as I become a musician, and I’m grateful to be sharing this record with you. Turn it up.
