Chris shows off his origami skills

The miniscule size of TT the Bear’s Place makes it nearly impossible to avoid bumping into members of the band you’re there to see, and you can frequently catch the headliners warming up on the pool table before their set in between cheap beers and routine trips to check up on the merch table.  The night that my friends and I went to see Canadian folk outfit Rock Plaza Central was no exception to this rule, as Chris Eaton, the frontman and individual responsible for organizing the talents of the five people we saw onstage that night, was bouncing back and forth between the sidewalk and the inside of the venue for various interviews and to say hi to a few friends.  I had noticed his hunter green cowboy shirt embroidered with poppies on the collarbone before our official introduction, but Chris’ warmth and contagious enthusiasm for music, Canada and all things Rock Plaza Central left a far more lasting impression than his sick fashion sense.

Rock Plaza Central’s latest album, At The Moment Of Our Most Needing, dropped on June 16th and you can catch the Canadian folk rock group out on the road until autumn hits.   If you’re interested in finding out how Rock Plaza Central’s eclectic sound came to be, what the band’s plans are for the future, and why, exactly, Chris feels the need to punch out that pretty-haired dude from Felicity, keep readin’ on.

-Hilary Hughes

OPENING ACT: THE TEAPARTY 10

Before we get into some intimate questions and answers, let’s get the ball rolling with a few off-the-wall inquiries.

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

The only breakfast cereal I eat is Vector.  Do you guys have Vector in the States?  Maybe that’s why it’s fun, then.  It’s not even- on the box I think, it’s not called a cereal and I don’t think they’re allowed to call it a cereal for some weird reason, but it’s a “meal replacement”.  It’s really just soy clusters and some other things.  It’s kind of a granola kind of thing- it tastes like Frosted Flakes but it’s better for you.  It’s supposed to be for athletes or something, but I eat it because it tastes like Frosted Flakes.

Who would you rather punch in the face: Long Duk Dong from “Sixteen Candles”, or Mouth from “The Goonies?”

I don’t remember what mouth was like in “The Goonies”; all I remember is… what’s the fat kid’s name?  Chunk?  That’s all I remember is the Truffle Shuffle from that whole movie!  Long Duk Dong… I suppose probably Corey Feldman’s character because he was kind of a jerk.  I once said something about punching out Scott Speedman.  Felicity must’ve been really big or something… And then the next night after I said it, Scott Speedman was sitting RIGHT in front of me at this play!  He’s from Canada.  So, I was at this play and he was sitting right in front of me, and I’m going, “Awww what am I going to do!? Now I have to!”  I should’ve just gone up to him and said, “Excuse me, I told somebody I had to punch you in the face.  Can I just very softly…?”

If you were a kitchen appliance, what would you be?

A blender.  I don’t know any other kitchen appliances.

You go to bed, you wake up, and you go into the bathroom to brush your teeth… And you realize that you’ve morphed into one of Jim Henson’s Muppets overnight.  Which Muppet are you?

I don’t understand the question!  What do I look like in the morning, or who would I love to be? When I was a kid for mother’s day I bought my mother Muppet mugs and my favorite Muppet – and it’s remarkable that they wouldn’t make a Muppet mug for this guy – was Beauregard, who was the janitor on the Muppet show.  For me at the time the guy was great.  The Swedish Chef’s all right.  If you actually lived in Sweden you’d know that he’s obviously not Swedish.  He’s Norwegian.  The Swedes all know his accent is totally Norwegian.

Okay, so you go out, get hammered or stoned or what have you, you black out, and you wake up the next only to realize that in your inebriated state you went out and got tattooed.  What’d you get?

“The plane!  The plane!”  That’s an old bad dumb joke.  That quote’s from Tatu from Fantasy Island.

What’s your standard “I’M GONNA DANCE AROUND MY APARTMENT IN MY SKIVVIES!” song?  Think along the lines of “Risky Business.”

I think I just did this the other day too so I’m trying to remember what it was.  Maybe something by Led Zeppelin or something… Any Zeppelin box set, how ‘bout that?  I’d just go all day long.

Would you rather be a sumo wrestler or a rodeo clown?

Rodeo clown.  My initial response was rodeo clown, just because maybe I have some actual skills that would actually allow me to do that.  Rodeo clowns just run away, right? I’m all right at running away.  But sumo wrestlers get to eat anything they want, right?

If you were a cheese, what kind of cheese would you be?

I would be Saint Agure.  It’s a blue cheese that’s kind of got a strong taste that most people don’t like, but those who do can appreciate it.

If you were a style of facial hair, what would you be?

What’s the one with long sideburns and a mustache?  Mutton chops with- a mustache with two lines going down, with the chops.  I want to call it a Lemmy.

What’s your favorite word?

I got this CD once at this store in the $2 bin of this young guy who was totally trying to be Tom Waits, and that was one of the lyrics: “I would like to know you Jennifer / What’s your favorite word? / I like Ocelot, Lily and Nectarine / First, second and third.”  Ocelot is a pretty good word.  Lily and nectarine aren’t that great, but ocelot is a really good word.  I’ll go with ocelot.  That’s a good hats-off to Craig Davies, wherever he is.

THE MAIN EVENT: THE TPB ROCK PLAZA CENTRAL INTERVIEW

First and foremost, hi!  What’s your deal?  Where are you from, and where’s the rest of the band from?

Yikes!  My name is Chris, and I play in Rock Plaza Central.  The touring band for this tour is comprised of five of us and, I mean, everyone’s playing a lot of different things.  Scott Maynard is playing many things and Fiona Stewart is playing many things and Donald Murray is playing many things… but not the bass, and Andrew Innanen is playing drums.  Do you guys know that rhyme, “I know a man who’s named was Finnegan?”  I’m always talking about whiskers on Andrew’s “chin-a-nin”.  He doesn’t find it funny anymore.

Tell me the story of how Rock Plaza Central came to be.  Can you take me through how you all met and how you all came to make music together?

I mean, the name existed before the band you’ll see tonight came together.  I was playing a lot of shows, not ever playing them solo but showing up solo, and seeing if members of the audience would want to join me for the night and just improvising on whatever on songs I had written.  One night, three people who are now in the band came with me and opened up for three other people who then came to be in the band as well. There was this one show we did where we had an improv choir and that failed.   There were some moments that were shining stars in complete blackness otherwise.  At the end of the first show we played together, people came up and said, “You guys are so tight!  How long have you been playing together?” and I was like “Uh, I don’t know that guys name….” I’m sure people thought it was a joke, but seriously, I didn’t have any idea who “that guy” was at first.  As we started the first song, we just said, “Hey, do you guys wanna come up?  If you wanna come up and play, come up and play.”  The middle of the song they came up and never left, and we became a band and recorded about a month later.

Let’s talk about your discography.  Can you bring me through the brief history of Rock Plaza Central from your first album up to where we are now?

There’s a really old album that we don’t ever talk about, it’s the first album, and that’s like, ten years old.  With this group, The World of Sound was recorded about a month after we did that first show, and we didn’t get to even practice anything for it, we just said, “That’s great! Let’s record.” So, we booked some time and then showed up and the six songs we did that night we played again, and then I had 600 ideas, so I just taped everything live off the floor.  I think we added a few harmonies and horns later, but mostly the album is just live off the floor in one take.  We were there for two days.  Then we did Are We Not Horses? a few years later, and spent pretty much the same amount of time doing it.  We have a record coming out on June 16th called At the Moment of Our Most Needing.

Who are your influences, musically, creatively and otherwise?  Who do you credit a lot of your creativity to when it comes to writing?

My mom. (Laughs)  The band- because we don’t practice or at least in the beginning we didn’t practice very much, we’d get together and hang out and kind of play music and stuff- But we don’t usually go into it like, “we’re gonna learn the songs or have an idea of where they’re gonna go.”   In performances, they go wherever.  There’s anywhere from five to eight people playing the show pulling it in different directions and it somehow goes to this one place.  Influence is a really hard [question] because we can’t agree to listen to anything in the band.  They don’t wanna listen to what I wanna listen to…

Well, let’s talk about that.  Who do you like to listen to?

Oh, I don’t know.  Most of the stuff I listen to that I really like I listen to at home and it probably wouldn’t communicate very well in an auto stereo or something. I like Smog a lot.  (Laughs)

Who’s on your Recently Added list on your iPod?

I don’t have an iPod yet!  I’m totally behind the times!

Do you have a DiscMan?  A WalkMan?

No, I don’t have anything!  I don’t like to listen to anything when I’m outside.

Why’s that?

I like listening to people talk.  I’m a chronic eavesdropper.  I should probably get an iPod to fake it and get hearing aids to amplify other people’s conversations.  At home, I know that for the last few weeks I’ve been listening to a lot of Jim Guthrie.  Royal City, do you guys know Royal City?  He’s a Canadian guy, and I’ve been listening to his first album, his solo album, ENDLESSLY lately, just over and over and over.  That, and Betty Davis, not the actress; there’s a singer who’s married to Miles Davis, which is where the Davis comes from.  She’s amazing, just really funky.  I listen to stuff that doesn’t sound like us.  We’ve been listening to a lot of classic rock in the band.  The US has many great classic rock stations.

WROR in Boston is great, you should listen to that while you’re hear, though they do tend to play Buffalo Springfield/CCR on a loop…

The States I think in generally does have better classic rock stations than we do [in Canada].

Is there any iconic Canadian classic rock?

Rush.  Is that classic rock? Or prog rock?  Bachman Turner Overdrive, is that classic rock?  They’re obviously Canadian.  And the Guess Who.  Burton Cummings, what a wicked voice that guy’s got!

What about Rock Plaza Central’s creative process?  Is it a collaborative effort to write music or do you write the majority of the lyrics and the songs?  Can you take me through your songwriting and how it changes once you’re in the studio?

I write the lyrics, although often members of the band will say other things and I’ll be like, “Oh yeah!  That’s awesome, let’s keep that.”  I think I’ve developed some sort of veto on the lyrics, anyway.  The music tends to start off with some kind of melody that I have in my head but I haven’t played yet on anything, so it’s trying to figure out the chords and what goes around with it.  Everyone does what they want to do.  It’s interesting; the first time we play a song, which can often happen at a show, we’ll just, I’ll just launch into something I’ve had in my head and people will try to figure out the chords, and most of the time it works pretty well.  The last time we were in Boston we did a song that is on the new record, but it wasn’t the same at all when we played it.  It was one of the first times we ever played it.

What’s your favorite song to play live? Do you have a general favorite amongst all of you?

Right now there’s two songs from the new record that I personally love to play live: “Don’t You Believe the Words of a Handsome Man”, which we played for the first time in Boston, actually, and then “The World is Good Enough”. I’ve been playing a lot more banjo lately, and the banjo patterns in those songs are really fun for me to play.  Those are the songs where we really rock out.

I definitely want to talk about your relationship with your Boston fans and how it’s been for you playing here.  Do you remember the first big gig you played here?  Where was it, and when?

The first time I came to Boston when I was probably 10: My dad took me to watch the Boston Red Sox play.  I think they may have been playing the Yankees.   It was a big deal.  We’d come to Boston pretty frequently when I was a kid; we’d just hop the bus in New Brunswick and come down and watch baseball games because, I mean, it’s closer than going to Toronto or Montreal or anything.  It was a neat experience for us.  The first time we played Boston as a band was right after Are We Not Horses? came out.  I can’t remember the venue, but it was a fun show.  We had really just started touring far a-field from Toronto, and on that trip we had done a bunch of shows in Canada and then down to Boston, and then we were going to New York, and for some reason our one trombone player couldn’t play that one show in Boston.  We brought the trombone up on stage, and while everyone was playing what they were normally playing, I walked around and put the trombone up to the [audience members’] lips so they blew while I did the notes.  The song just went on forever, but it was this really awesome thing…  As far as touring goes we’ve kind of scaled down to a 5-piece for the most part, and we kept bringing those instruments, and so we kept playing more electric guitar, more trombone, more banjo, more, uh, we didn’t pick up the accordion too much, but… (Laughs) We all started playing things that we didn’t normally play.  I never really played banjo before that.

Do you have any favorite acts that are local around here?  Do you have any favorite bands that hail from Boston that you really like?

Oh my God.  I just saw The Grownup Noise inside and they were great.  I never know where bands are from.  Who’s big in Boston right now?  What was that band that had that song, that really, really old tune, “Dirty Water”?  Whenever we come to Boston we start singing it in the van.  “Oh, Boston, you’re my home!”  We keep thinking we should cover it.  Every time we come to Boston, we keep thinking we should learn it and play it here.

People would just throw themselves at you!  So after learning “Dirty Water”, what’s up next for Rock Plaza Central?

The record comes out on June 16th, and then it’s touring time, yeah.  We’re gonna play all summer, I guess.

Do you have any crazy stories from the tour bus so far?

Not this tour! The last tour we were on, the last show, we got in a big car accident on the last day.  We flipped the van outside Saskatoon during a big ice storm.  It’s been weird to get back into it.  It was fine, no one was hurt, no instruments were damaged; it’s remarkable, really, I don’t know.  It’s kind of freaky to get back on the road after that.

A couple of months from now or six months from now, will you be going back into the studio?

Well, no, not yet. I don’t like touring very much.  I like playing a lot, and I like meeting people and stuff, but actually getting on the road is not my thing.  I would rather tour for a very short period of time and go back and record an album and come out with an album each year instead of tour for two years and then record.  I think my plan is to maybe write some new stuff and record in the fall and then go out on the road again next year and sort of do this every summer.  Winter’s the worst [for touring]! (Laughs)