I was recently wondering how many original demo recordings i have for Eric's Trip songs. I knew i had a few at least, so i started digging through all my DAT, CDR and cassette masters to figure out how many exactly existed. I dug up more than i thought, and though there may be still a few in hiding, this is a pretty good collection.

With Eric's Trip, especially in the early days up to "Love Tara", i didn't really record solo demos of the songs that i wrote for the band. I would write them and work them out with Julie and the other guys before we recorded. So the first recorded version of many of those songs is the one that got released. I did end up finding a couple though. FOLLOW and MY ROOM were recorded in a mostly acoustic form on 4track cassette and mixed to stereo cassette at my folks house in Autumn 1992. I found FOLLOW on a better quality master tape than MY ROOM, but i'm kinda digging the hiss on the latter. I also found a neat casio demo of SMOKE that i forgot all about from February 93. Though that song was considered for "Love Tara", Eric's Trip didn't end up recording it until March 95.

No more demos for "Love Tara" tunes were found but a couple for the "Gordon Street Haunting" ep were. I'M SO NEAR HERE was recorded in November 93 with Chris Thompson playing the two drum tracks. We did it at his folks house and it's cute hearing us laughing after the drums got out of time with each other at the end. YOU'RE ALWAYS RIGHT was recorded in December 93. Different than the pumped up version Eric's Trip would end up recording soon after but still quite similar. THIS WAY OUT, which ended up being done for the "Forever Again" album, was recorded on the same night. All three songs were recorded on 4track cassette and mixed to stereo cassette.

By the time i started writing more songs for "Forever Again" in spring 94, i had acquired our 1/2 inch 8track set up and a DAT machine for mixing down to. The sound quality of my recordings improved a lot and since I had also moved out of my folks house, a lot more recording was being done in general. Though some of the Eric's Trip stuff i wrote wasn't demoed, i found four songs that were. GIRLFRIEND from March 94 and NEW LOVE, WAITING ALL DAY, DECEMBER 93 from April 94. I started recording all the songs for my first "Elevator to Hell" LP in this time as well, and since i was living in an apartment with Chris Thompson, i got him to record drum tracks for me occasionally. I wasn't too good on a drum kit yet and mostly just played percussion on my recordings with boxes and toy cymbals. Chris plays on WAITING ALL DAY and DECEMBER 93 as well as a few songs that appeared on the "Elevator to Hell" LP.

I found nine demos i had done for the "Purple Blue" LP though three of them i didn't include here because they have already been released. I actually did two separate demos of SIXTEEN HOURS, the 2nd version appeared on the Elevator to Hell "Part 3" EP, and demos of HOURLY and UNIVERSE were used on the Elevator to Hell "Parts 4+5" cassette. Check out my Bandcamp upload of that to hear those tracks. The other six songs are here though, BEACH, LIGHTHOUSE and ONE FLOOR BELOW recorded in February 95, SPACESHIP OPENING, and the first demo version of SIXTEEN HOURS which is slower and synthier, recorded in May 95.

SUN COMING UP was the last song i wrote for Eric's Trip, it was demoed in August 95. It's maybe my favourite from that album. The lyrics captured how i was feeling about my old band at the time and i think it's a nice one to end this set with as well.

I hope you enjoy hearing this collection, i like gathering old stuff together like this for safe keeping. The cover photo was
taken by Marc Bones LeBlanc in early 95.
Thanks for the ongoing support.
Love Rick