Life of Waste: Doc. 1

Introduction:

Sup, everyone? My name is Eric Chubb, and I'm thrilled to join the Sorry State team. Getting an opportunity to work at my favorite store is extremely humbling (to say the least). But enough of the sappy stuff, here's a little about me:

I recently moved to Raleigh from Greensboro where I had been living for about 6 years. However, I was born and raised in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Falls Church, VA. It was during my time in Greensboro that I played in my first touring bands, started booking shows, and put out too many cassettes to count. It was also during this time that I met Daniel, Jeff and Seth. Our bands would play together often and Sorry State put out my band's demo back in 2013 (or something like that).

There were a few reasons for my departure from Greensboro, however the biggest reason was to be closer to my partner here in Raleigh. Love is wild! So, for the past few months I have been bouncing around working different jobs (one of which was as a butcher, which I soon discovered was not the trade for me), exploring the town and finding ways to make Raleigh my new home. Don't get me wrong, I end up driving my ass down 40 west to Greensboro at least once a week for band practice or to see friends or whatever, but I'm definitely getting my sea legs here in Raleigh.

NOVA beginnings:

As for my introduction to punk, I owe most of my musical upbringing to my older brother, Cory. I have a very distinct memory of Cory listening to Green Day's Warning on CD when I was about 7, and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world that they said "fuck" in the song "Minority." That's my go-to story when people ask me about how I got into punk (and Green Day is still my favorite band tbh). During my early teenage years, I'd always tag along with my brother (in our parents Dodge Ram conversion van that they would let Cory use) to his band's gigs around town at community centers or in someone's mom's basement. Moving forward, I'm not sure how it happened, but it was this time that I became obsessed with street punk. I think for my 11th birthday I had requested a Casualties CD (if I remember correctly it was Die Hards?), which Cory reluctantly got for me even though he thought it was some street punk BS. I jammed that freakin' CD almost every day of middle school!

As I got older and Cory moved away for college, I began to dive a little deeper into punk and hardcore. As you can imagine being from a D.C. suburb, bands like Minor Threat and Bad Brains were huge for me. Cory had burned me a copy of Bad Brains S/T on CD that soon became one of my most listened to albums. Once I was old enough for my parents to let me take the metro into the city I started getting more into the local scene, where (at the time) bands like Coke Bust and Sick Fix reigned supreme. Punk houses like The Corpse Fortress and the 3rd St. Co-op were where I spent a lot of time smoking cigarettes and getting into trouble.

Me drumming for the Feed in 2009(?). 

Throughout my high school years I was playing in a kinda screamy punk band (we were once described as Pg. Ninety-Nirvana, if that paints a picture...). Once some of us got drivers licenses we were able to drive into the city to play shows and met a lot of my friends who I'm still close with today. Below is a link to our tape that we put out in 2010:

I think I was very lucky that my parents had a strange trust in punk and understood it as a good influence on me (for better or worse). For instance, my friend Paul and I would take the metro into the city on a school night when we were 15 to go see a basement show somewhere in northeast and my parents generally had the attitude of, "as long as you wake up for school tomorrow we don't care." So, I was able to get away with more than a lot of other punks my age did. My parents were so supportive of my love of music that on occasion I would lie to my parents and say I was going to a show, but instead go to some dumb high school party around the corner because I knew they would ask WAY more questions about that (sorry, Ma!). I still feel kinda guilty about that...

North Carolina:

After graduating from high school in 2011, almost all of my friends moved to Richmond (it was just the thing you did if you were into punk and wanted to get away from NOVA) and I made a bold decision to move to Greensboro to attend Guilford College. In my first year or two of college I spent most of my time on campus. I would go to a show here and there, but it took a while for me to finally put myself out there and start a new band. At the time there was show house in Greensboro called the Buttery Day Ranch where most of the DIY gigs happened in town (or at least the ones I was interested in). After a while of meeting people and pestering them to play music with me, I played in my first band since moving called Holder's Scar. It was also around this time that I began booking shows for my friends' bands when they would come through town in an attempt to recreate the thriving hardcore punk scene I grew up in. Not too long after Holder's Scar had put out our demo, I got together with some new friends in town to start a band called Wriggle. Wriggle was a fun band for me because it sounded way different than anything I had ever played before and opened up a lot of avenues to explore new music.

As the years went by, my friends and I started a DIY space in Greensboro where we would practice and host shows. Moreover, my roommates and I would host shows in our TINY living room that could hardly fit twenty people. I started more bands (ie. Bad Eric, Menthol, Louse, and too many other short lived projects to count) and was able to book tours by cashing in on favors from out of town bands that I booked in Greensboro. Looking back on it, it feels like I was on tour for about half of the year in 2016 (wild times). Recently, I have been taking a breather from booking and touring to focus on other facets of my life, but dang I miss traveling around and playing gigs with my friends. Here's hoping to get back on the road in 2018!

Bad Eric live at The Neo Tokyo Command Center (my living room) in May of 2015. Photo by Kyra Collins.

Most of those old Greensboro bands broke up, but I have a few new projects in the works that I'm sure I'll share with y'all in future posts :)

Thanks for reading! Seeing as this is my first blog post with Sorry State, I wanted to keep it relatively brief and just share a little about who I am and where I come from. When reading over this post before I publish it, I feel like there is so much room to expand, but perhaps I'll share more stories another time.

Next time I'll include some record reviews and anecdotes about gigs and other events coming up.

Cya soon,

E. Chubb