Christopher
Gobo Pierce: Musician, songwriter, recording
engineer, producer, husband, father, pal.
I met him back in 1990 at ABC No Rio, as the
sweaty, wild-haired drummer of The A.G.’s
from Maine. He stayed behind the drumkit when
the A.G.’s morphed into Sinkhole, at
the same time moving to guitar and frontman
in his own band, Boston’s Doc Hopper.
In the mid-Nineties, he relocated to New Brunswick,
where he started his Technical Ecstasy recording
studio. Short stints in Deadguy and Drag The
River followed. In recent years, he’s
produced records by the Ergs, For Science,
Hunchback, The Measure (SA), and plenty of
other local bands, as well as returning to
the stage as the frontman of the Groucho Marxists.
People who know him (and Chris knows everybody
in punk rock, it seems) love him for his constant
smile, his unending enthusiasm about music,
and his endless energy. These days, Chris
lives with his wife Liz and their new son
Gibson in the suburbs, makes records with
his friends in the basement, and rocks out
with the band when he can. The Groucho Marxists
recently released their first full-length
CD, and I caught up with Chris at the Court
Tavern for a chat about his career, New Brunswick,
and punk rock.
Q: If we talk about your whole life, we’ll
be here for hours. So let’s start about
the time you moved to New Brunswick. What
year did Doc Hopper win The Rumble (the annual
Boston battle-of-the-bands contest sponsored
by WBCN?)
Chris: 1995.
Q: I remember it was basically right after
Dookie hit it big. You were sort
of the token punk band in Boston that year.
Chris: Ha ha, yeah. But it was 10 years after
Gang Green (had won) so it was okay.
Q: And then after being named the best band
in Boston, you left town.
Chris: It was a year later, 1996, when I
moved down here. How that happened was...
Doc Hopper came down to New Brunswick a lot
to play shows. We were good friends with Deadguy
so we always had a place to stay. And then
I met Liz (now Mrs. Pierce). When I didn’t
really have a place to live in Boston anymore
and I really wasn’t doing much, I started
to hang out in New Brunswick a lot. So I figured
I might as well move here. What’s cool
about New Brunswick it that it’s small,
it’s almost like my hometown in Maine.
Except with the entire music scene of Boston
squished into it. Especially back then. You
could just really tell that it had a tighter
knit scene than Boston, and I just liked being
able to walk everywhere.
Q: And back in ’95-’96, New Brunswick
was still rockin’. Kids today probably
don’t even know how many music venues
the city had. Besides the Court, which is
the only club still here, there was the Melody
Bar, the Roxy, the Budapest Cafe, Plum Street
Pub, the Bowl-O-Drome, Down Under…
Chris: Yeah. All the bars were still going.
Right after I moved here, the Roxy closed
down, but every other bar in town had bands.
So that appealed to me, and then meeting my
wife. That was a pretty strong draw. Without
having a solid place to live in Boston, I
just started coming down to New Brunswick
to hang out with Liz. At first I was just
crashing here, but by the end of the summer,
I started to think, well, I’ve been
here a month or two now, maybe I should just
get a job or something and stay. Once I found
a job, that was it: I guess I live in New
Jersey now! By that point, all my stuff was
at my parents’ house in Maine. When
I was back in Boston, I was sleeping in our
rehearsal space and that went on for like
six months, and that stopped being fun pretty
quick.
Doc Hopper at the
Court Tavern
Photo by Chris Poppe
Q: When did Technical Ecstasy Studio start?
Chris: I think that was in April of ’97.
I had been down here about a year, and then
I started the studio.
Q: Had you done that kind of stuff in New
England?
Chris: Nope. Not at all. The main goal at
first was to start a recording studio. Then
I was introduced to the concept of hourly
rehearsals, because they don’t really
have that in Boston. In Boston they have these
huge buildings where bands rent monthly. So
I saw this hourly thing, and I thought, that’s
kind of easy. You just get a couple of sets
of gear and people pay you per hour? Sweet!
Jim from Deadguy had a rehearsal space in
Red Bank and I’d practice there, so
I thought that New Brunswick needed a place
like that. It was a perfect opportunity. And
then, with the rehearsal space came my instant
clientele for the recording studio. All I
wanted to do was make records with my friends.
The rehearsal space thing meant I could actually
pay the rent before the studio got going.
Q: How much training had you had?
Chris: When I was in high school, I took
a class at the local college. They had a weird
little 8-track studio and I took a class then.
And I had a four-track at home. Then right
after high school, I went out to the Recording
Workshop in Ohio and took a five-week program
there. But there really weren’t any
recording studios in Maine, so that next summer
is when we moved to Boston. And then it was
just a matter of hanging out with every one
of my friends’ bands when they were
in a studio. Besides Doc Hopper and Sinkhole,
if anybody I knew was making a record, I was
like, I’m going to the studio with you.
Garden Variety came and did a record, Rorshach
did a couple of records, and I was always
that pest who had to be there in the studio
watching everything. Then we found the studio
where we recorded Ask Your Mom, and
they would rent it out without making you
pay for an engineer. They’d just give
you the keys and say, okay, have fun. So Doc
Hopper made a lot of records there and I got
to do everything myself. So then it was like,
okay, I guess I know enough to make a record
now.
Q: So what was the first Technical Ecstasy
production?
Chris: I had just set my shit up and recorded
Deadguy doing Black Sabbath’s “Electric
Funeral.” But Jim (Baglino) had already
quit, so I was playing bass and guitar.
And then the first paying thing I did was
the first song that Nora did, a song called
“Ugly.” It was a totally different
lineup than the Nora most people got to know,
but it was still Chris Ross and Mike Olender,
and that record just sounded terrible. I remember
Chris Ross saying, gee, that sounded kinda
bad. And I was like, well, I just set the
room up for you guys yesterday because you
needed to get this done, but (laughs)…
Yeah, it did sound kind of bad.
Q: Since you brought up the name Chris Ross,
I want to talk a little about the fact that
even back during the period when New Brunswick
had several venues doing all-ages shows, kids
were still doing basement shows. Chris Ross
had a house at 67 Handy Street that had a
lot of famous shows in the basement.
Chris: Yeah, Chris Ross originally booked
Doc Hopper at the Court Tavern for an all-ages
matinee, and then he would also have us play
Handy Street. So we’d get to play twice
in one weekend and it was awesome. Because
playing in bars is fun, but playing at Handy
Street was even more fun. That house was awesome.
What was cool about Handy Street is that,
in Boston we’d play basement shows,
but there wasn’t the same intensity.
It was more like you were playing a party
in Boston, not playing a show. Whereas down
here, that’s the venue. Like, of course
we’re going to see Doc Hopper in a basement,
where else are we going to go? So the people
who are going would actually be going for
the show, not just to drink the keg beer and
party. Whereas in Boston, we would play basement
shows but it was always our B.U. friends getting
drunk and being like, whoooo, let’s
break stuff. Boston generally always had a
more violent scene than New Jersey. Every
time we played a Boston show, something would
wind up getting broken or a fight would break
out or something.
Chris and Gibson
Q: It’s during this period when you
wound up being recruited to fill the opening
in Deadguy. Let’s talk about them a
minute. That is a band that didn’t release
a whole lot of records, but it seems like
they had a huge impact on the hardcore scene.
Chris: Yeah, that’s very true. Deadguy
wound up much better known than the other
two bands I played in. Even today, there are
still people around here who only know me
as… "yeaaahhh, he was in Deadguy."
When I work at the Guitar Center, hardcore
thug kids will come in and point to me and
tell their friends, “yeah, he’s
from Deadguy.” What’s funny is
that I was only in that band for like nine
months. I join my favorite bands and then
they break up. First Deadguy and then Drag
The River (laughs)
Q: First time I saw Deadguy was at ABC No
Rio, since Rorshach had played there all the
time. They really were amazing.
Chris: ABC No Rio was such an amazing place.
I’m really glad that Doc Hopper got
to play there a bunch of times. The first
time I played there was 1990 with The A.G.’s.
They had just started doing the hardcore shows
with Mike Bullshit, and everything was down
in the basement, just really crappy and dirty
and dark. No stage, no nothing. Then all the
different eras: I remember going there with
NoFX the next year and they had just built
the stage, with the pole in the center of
it, where you could barely move. Then the
bigger stage, then everything moved upstairs
where it was a little nicer and they got a
better sound system. And I remember taking
a shit in all the different bathrooms they
had there. The first one was like a giant
stone throne with a curtain around it. And
you could see right through the floor into
the basement.
It’s just amazing how much that neighborhood
has changed too. Back in, like, 1990, the
show would get done, you’d pack your
van, and you’d get the fuck out of it.
Because you didn’t want to get caught
on Rivington Street after dark. That neighborhood
was scary.
Chris w/ Doc Hopper,
outside ABC No Rio - 1995
Q: I’m always telling people stories
about the heroin dealers on the corners. That
neighborhood is so gentrified now, it’s
almost impossible to believe how scary it
used to be.
Chris: We would come down there and we were
just stupid kids from New England, we’d
walk around and go, oh, this doesn’t
seem that bad. And all our friends from New
York would be like, ‘look, just get
in your van and get out of here. You do not
want to be here after dark.’ ‘Well,
we think we lost our friend.’ ‘Fuck
him, just leave, leave him behind, you do
NOT want to be down here after dark.’
Q: Of course New Brunswick has changed a
lot over the years too. You moved here after
the biggest of the Johnson & Johnson excavations.
Pete Ventantonio has some good stories about
when he first moved to New Brunswick and entire
city blocks would get torn down and paved
over to make room for J&J.
Chris: Yeah I saw some of it but a lot of
it happened before I got here. There’s
a great scene in the 7 Seconds movie “New
Wind” where they come back to town on
tour and there’s just this huge empty
space where that whole strip of buildings
used to be on Albany Street.
Q: What if anything has stayed the same since
you’ve been here?
Chris: What’s stayed the same? Even
when I first came to town in ’96, people
were saying that it was the end of an era
and things were dying out. Even then, it was
a call to arms, people were saying, we have
to fight city hall or they’ll destroy
everything that’s cool and artistic
about New Brunswick. Even then, people were
trying to fly the flag of that. And now, the
Court is the only place in town that does
anything artistic anymore. All the clubs are
gone, the bars don’t have bands anymore.
It’s ironic, because people didn’t
jump on that soon enough. And now the Court
really is the only place left.
Q: But… it seems like nature abhors
a vaccum. There are how many kids in town
doing basement shows now?
Chris: There are many more now than there
used to be. It always seemed like there were
one or two spots, and there’d be shows
there until the cops closed them down or the
kid doing shows graduated and moved out. But
now it seems like there are a bunch of spaces
that are being used for shows and actually
sticking around. Really good spaces that they’ve
held on to. And that’s great, because
it’s hard. I know it’s hard. It’s
like a $500 fine for a noise summons, and
you have to go to court, and it’s a
huge pain in the nuts. So the kids who are
doing the shows are really putting their ass
on the line.
Q: It really seems to me like New Brunswick
was awesome in the late Nineties, then it
went through a fallow period when there wasn’t
much going on, and now in the last few years,
there are tons of great bands here again.
Chris: Yeah, there’re definitely a
lot of bands who have been rockin’ out
down here.
Q: And you’ve played a role in that,
having recorded many of them.
Chris: (smiling) Well, I try. Having been
here and having known a lot of these people
for ten years, it helps. I’ve recorded
nearly every one of Fid’s bands.
Q: And all the For Science records. You even
played in For Science in a while and they
haven’t broken up yet.
Chris: Give them time. (laughs) I’ve
given them the Curse Of The A.G.’s.
Now they’ll never get away from it.
Chris in Groucho
Marxists
Photo by Melissa Siclari
Q: How did the Groucho Marxists come together?
That’s almost a New Brunswick supergroup.
You plucked your bass player out of retirement.
Chris: Yeah, sort of. I was recording the
last Stuntcocks record, and that’s Austin
and Brian. I had been hanging out with Austin
for a while, and Doc Hopper played a few shows
with his old band Boss Jim Gettys. And at
one of those shows, Austin said, You know
what, we should play together. And it was
at the end of Doc Hopper, so I said, yeah,
I kinda want to do a new band, so that would
work out. He’s a fucking monster on
drums so of course I wanted to play with him.
And Brian and I had already been getting along
really well, so I went with those guys. At
first we had Justin from Mazeffect playing
with us, but that only lasted a few months.
And then Gary was working with Ray Kubian
from True Love, and Ray told me, I work with
this kid who plays bass, and he loves the
Descendents. Well, that was all I needed to
hear. I need a bassist and that’s the
pre-requisite! So Ray hooked us up and Gary
jammed with us once, and it was like, this
is perfect, this kid is in our band.
Q: Gary told me that at that point, he hadn’t
touched the bass in four years.
Chris: Yeah, he hadn’t played since
the Selzers. So it was just perfect luck.
These guys are all monsters.
Q: Gary hasn’t hooked you up with that
Strokes tour yet though. (Gary’s ex-bandmate
in the Selzers manages the Strokes.)
Chris: (laughs) Yeah, well…. That connection
is kind of wacky.
Q: The thing about the Groucho Marxists is
that you guys definitely work at your own
pace. The new record took, what, three years?
Chris: (laughs) Uh, yeah, I’m a little
slow.
Q: Well, you’re juggling a lot of things.
You’ve got a wife, a job, the studio,
now you’ve got a son...
Chris: I have a problem focusing. It’s
hard to take out the little bit of time for
all the stupid shit I want to do, with all
this other stuff going on.
Q: Somebody not like us – you know,
a normal person - might just say, well, why
don’t you just give up the band?
Chris: Because I love it. It’s a total
labor of love at this point. I have no delusions
of grandeur of being plucked from obscurity
and making millions from my band. But man,
for that 30 minutes that I get to jump around
on a stage, it’s just so much fun…
It recharges me, and makes me feel alive,
and as long as I can have someone else put
my records out for me, that’s really
all I want to do. I’m totally okay making
a thousand CD’s and selling those. Just
as long as I get to keep doing it.
Q: Is it performing, or recording, or just
hanging out with the guys in the band…?
Chris: It’s all of it. If I wanted
to, I could just make records on my own. I
can play all the parts. I make demos like
that all the time. But I love the façade
of the band. I love the gang mentality, the
‘us against them’ that happens
when you’re doing that. There’s
something about it. That’s my ‘bowling
team’… I’ve got my band.
And it’s just such a labor of love.
I don’t just sit down and try to pump
out songs like I used to. When it happens,
then that’s the pace we work at. We
all have real jobs so we all have the same
amount of time to spend on the band, so that
works out well. There’s not one member
who wants to do more, and it’s not that
often that I’m trying to get those guys
to do stuff that they don’t want to
do. We all have the same commitment level.
So we can keep going at this snail’s
pace for as long as we need to. If I couldn’t
do this, I’d go crazy. I’d be
a real angry guy. Even if I haven’t
played drums in a while, I’ll start
to get the twitches and I’ll start tapping
on things way too much. And Liz will say,
is there something wrong with you? And I’ll
say, I haven’t played drums in a while.
I have drummer’s disease.
Q: Your wife Liz, by the way, probably should
be nominated for sainthood.
Chris: She is quite a sport. She has put
up with all of my bands, all of my friends
that are in bands. All of the bands that come
through the studio. She puts up with all of
it. She is a wonderful, wonderful woman.
Q: Well, she knows who she fell in love with.
And you wouldn’t be that guy if you
weren’t doing music.
Chris: Probably not. That’s very true.
And you know what? Liz has great taste in
music. When I met her, she had the right records,
she liked all the same bands in town that
I liked. She wasn’t a big Deadguy fan
and she hasn’t always like all the same
crazy shit that I like, but she likes everything
else. She likes Drag The River, so she didn’t
mind when I was running off to Colorado to
play some shows. She’s cool with it.
I wouldn’t have been able to do everything
I’ve done without her there.
Q: Is the studio back up and running? I know
you had to take some time off for a while
when Gibson was born.
Chris: Oh yeah. I do that nights and weekends.
I can pick and choose what bands I want to
work with, I don’t have to just take
phone calls. I don’t even advertise
or have a phone number for the studio anymore.
If you can get in touch with me, usually it’s
just through a friend of a friend. So I can
be sort of elusive and elitist about that
when I want to be. My goal has always been
to make records with my friends, and that’s
pretty much what I’m doing now. It’s
funny because my first studio space was huge,
it was 6,000 square feet. Then the second
studio was a thousand square feet. And now,
I like not having to pay an extra set of rent
on it, and just having it downstairs. It means
I can be really picky and just do what I want
and nothing more or less.
Photo by Melissa
Siclari
Q: How much do you think the Ergs have had
to do with the revival of the music scene
in New Brunswick?
Chris: I think a lot. I knew the Ergs as
those kids who came to see Doc Hopper in the
basements, because that was the only place
they could get into. And they were the kids
who would sing along to Black Flag with us.
They were those kids who wore glasses and
knew all the Black Flag songs. But once they
came to me as the Ergs, back around 2003 or
so, and told me they wanted to record, instantly
I was so excited. I was like, this is so fucking
awesome. Their encyclopedic knowledge of SST
Records was amazing. They had a great musical
pedigree and I was excited from the first
minute to work with them. And then they just
fucking rocked. I was so reinvigorated just
from working with them, and just working with
a band that rocks so much. They knew their
shit, they could play their instruments, they
were just into it in a way I hadn’t
seen in a while. And being around people like
that, it can’t help but spark the same
thing in other people. Bands definitely want
to be better just seeing a band like the Ergs.
The first time I saw them, I though, wow,
I need to get my shit together, I can’t
be slacking anymore with these kids around.
There was one week where they were like, hey,
you were in the AG’s and Sinkhole, you
should be our drummer and Mikey will just
sing. So we jammed one time, and after trying
to play half of side one of DorkRock, I quit.
I was like, I can’t play this fast,
I will die and I will make your band suck.
You guys are like one thinking entity, and
no one can fuck with that. And hopefully they
can keep that up. They really need a manager,
but most managers suck. I wish I had the contacts
so I could manage them. But if I managed them,
they’d be cursed and break up and be
fucked forever. (laughs) They need a good
manager to teach them how to do things. They
are good enough to be the next Green Day.
I don’t see why not.
Find out more at myspace.com/thegrouchomarxists
and myspace.com/christophergobopierce
for info on Technical Ecstasy.
Sinkhole is going to begin offering its entire
back catalog for free Internet download. Start
here with Groping
For Trout.
Thanks to Mrs. Liz Pierce, Melissa "Jerkface"
Siclari, & Chris Poppe for the photos.
