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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2008 > September > 15 > Entry
Interview with Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby
Meet Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby, who played Emo’s Saturday night and released a new record on Monday. In the late ‘70s Eric Goulden, one of the original artists on the pioneer U.K. punk/new wave label Stiff Records, got noticed for a self-deprecating, offbeat working-class sense of humor and heart-on-sleeve vocals on singles like “Whole Wide World,” “Take the Cash” and “Walking on the Surface of the Moon.” Rigby, a native of Pittsburgh and erstwhile New Yorker, is the onetime mod housewife who’s developed a loyal following through steady touring in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland behind a series of critically raved-about albums showcasing her dry wit and hard-won wisdom in songs about the myriad aspects of relationships, the struggle to remain relevant when you’re over 30 (or 40), dead-end jobs and the occasional fashion tip. These two veterans of the indie-music wars have had their share of ups and downs, and both blend cynicism with romanticism (or, if you prefer, they’re both romantics blessed with a healthy sense of realism and an ability to laugh at the absurdity of life).
Rigby and Goulden first met at a club in northern England in 2001, connected for keeps three years later at a gig in New Jersey, moved to a small village in northwest France early last year and, last April, got married. Over about a year, they recorded and produced a self-titled album at home, by themselves, that - to complete the circle - was released Monday on a resurrected Stiff Records (under new ownership these days). You’d do well to pick up a copy of “Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby,” because in tandem they’ve created a hybrid of their distinctive styles, plus a third dimension owing to a creative rebirth fired by both parties being fans of each other’s work, and delighting in the firing of mutual sparks and throwing random chords at the wall to see what sticks.
There are more hits and misses on the CD, whose eclectic tone includes bits suggesting everyone from the Beach Boys and Bangles to early ‘70s Britrock, Robyn Hitchcock and neo-psychedelia. And, in a first for at least Rigby, the music is as important as the lyrics; she layers harmonies to dazzling effect. That, plus Goulden’s expert hand with electronics and sampling, results in a dense yet fluid ambiance that keeps listeners engaged and guessing. It’s not far off the best work either artist has produced.
“You have to find something to get you going, or get you excited (to) keep doing this,” says Rigby, on the phone from the road somewhere in the vicinity of Modesto, Calif. “I think that working with Eric gave me that new enthusiasm, having someone to kind of pull for. I definitely felt, toward the end of my last record, that I’d just gotten a certain aspect of songwriting down and I wished I could - not start over again, but find a different way to express myself that wasn’t so focused on the lyrics, because those will come anyway.
“I definitely like to let Eric move things along. The way I’ve made records in the past has been pretty linear: setting out a period of time, getting songs, putting down basic tracks and putting things on top. He really did sound like a painter in the studio.”
Goulden needs no warm-up or prompting to get going, either on stage or on the phone with a complete stranger; he starts our conversation with hilarious, profane riffs on the questionable behavior of people he encountered in a bar the other night as well as some guy in the audience who called for a song Amy once wrote about her ex-husband (“Doesn’t he see me here, standing next to her?!”).
Do they get a sense of how many in the audience are Eric people or Amy people? “I guess there’s an overlap, maybe a lot more than you would think,” Rigby says. “Sometimes it’s like they’re meeting the new boyfriend or something and they’re kind of like, ‘huh,’ or vice versa, like I’m the new girlfriend and they might not be disposed to liking me. But they’ll come around, I think, as we play together.”
Is the double act a one-off event, or do they plan to pursue new projects, musically, as a couple?
“I feel like we’re a band,” Rigby says. “I feel like it took us a record to even get going. As we were doing it, we were figuring out how we worked together.” They’ve already started work on another album, she adds.
For these newlyweds, touring together is a license to enjoy each other’s company while making a living. “I love being with Amy,” Goulden says. “I suppose (one reason) I stopped touring with bands was economic. The other thing is, you’re hanging out with people that, apart from playing music, you’re not into the same things at all. You just get to the point where you want to obliterate yourself. I enjoyed the solo touring more, but it’s very lonely.” Now, he adds, “the touring is fun, we can do things together.”
Like a working vacation?
“My whole life’s been a working vacation, really. I always think, how much longer am I going to get away with this?”
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