Dunis, Indra
Erase Errata
Issue #29
Guitarist-vocalist Jenny Hoyston converses on the political slant of the San Francisco band’s new album
By Beth Capper
Published: September 1st, 2006 | 12:00am
On June 31, I joined Chicago Critical Mass. The sole intention is to stop traffic, in part to reclaim the streets for bicyclists and pedestrians, and in part to protest the environmental damage caused by gas-guzzling cars and SUVs. I rode freely below the foreboding skyscrapers downtown — usually a gauntlet for bicyclists — serenaded by the circular clunking and whirring of racheting gears and the sharp chiming of soft bells. I sped past drivers stopped dead at intersections, some looking disgruntled and weary from another delay in their daily work routines, others cheering, beeping horns, and waving out of their car windows. Amid the vibrant calamity surrounding me, the lines of a song called “Pedal Revolution” by Paradise Island — a solo project from Erase Errata’s Jenny Hoyston — went around and around in my head, mimicking the motion of my turning wheels, “That sucks for the Bushes / Junior and senior / Look at this bicycle / It doesn’t need your oil.”
Music — at least, the kind of music available to mainstream consciousness — is less political than it used to be. Few musicians seem to have the integrity or motivation anymore to channel their political concerns into a jaunty, propulsive art-pop song or to combine entertainment with a message, helping to educate and politicize audiences, or in the very least, to make them stop and think. Hoyston believes she doesn’t have a choice. “I think that the kind of things I write about for Erase Errata records are things that I’m thinking about obsessively, and to a certain extent, my solo stuff is the same way,” she says, on the phone from her mom’s house in Freeport, Texas. And with Erase Errata’s latest album, Nightlife (Kill Rock Stars) — along with a Paradise Island EP titled Seeing Spots (Latitudes), and a collaborative album with Iowa-based singer-songwriter William Eliott Whitmore called Hallways of Always (Southern) — Hoyston has been creatively and politically active.
Nightlife is a powerful and defiant comeback from a band that has been on hiatus for the past two years. It builds on the groundwork Erase Errata had laid for themselves with 2001’s Other Animals and 2003’s At Crystal Palace, combining danceable start-stop indie with the avant-garde leanings prevalent in noise music and NYC no wave. But Nightlife is also more frenzied — more urgent, like a call to action. The song “Tax Dollar,” which Erase Errata recently completed a video for, utilizes galvanic bass lines and jarring, tumultuous guitar with cacophonous, pounding drum beats. Hoyston’s signature vocals — so integral to the Erase Errata sound — edge along, as uneasy and ominous as the subject matter she is tackling in her lyrics.
“I think [‘Tax Dollar’] is one of the more powerful political statements that I’m making on this record,” Hoyston says. “We’re all obliged to pay federal income tax or we go to jail, and I’m not telling anyone to go to jail, but to definitely think that when you’re paying federal taxes you are contributing to the killing of people overseas. I’d like to stimulate that in a few people who aren’t necessarily thinking about things that way. I believe that people who have the means should pay taxes, but I don’t like being obliged to donate to a process that only seems to benefit people looking for oil pipelines.”
After guitarist Sara Jaffe left in 2004, Erase Errata took some time off to figure out whether they wanted to continue making music together — a process, which, Hoyston says, was difficult to assimilate. “Sara was such an important part of the band and it really felt like we’d lost a limb. It was hard to figure out what we were going to do and if we wanted to do anything. Creatively, I think we all felt like we had been pushing some boundaries and there was definitely the question of whether we still wanted to be doing what we were doing even before Sara left.”
When the band started playing together as a three-piece, however — and with Hoyston moving from playing trumpet to guitar — something new began to emerge. “It was kind of the same band but totally different. There was the same emphasis on improvisation, and the same tactics, which were starting to hit a brick wall with Sara — but suddenly there was something new when I was playing guitar. Not better by any means, just new and different. I think we realized then that we weren’t done.”
Although Erase Errata have achieved a certain level of success in the indie underground, they still have to work day jobs to support themselves and their artistic endeavors. “There was a period of time when we were first a band where we all prioritized the band over everything else,” Hoyston says. “We would go into debt for the band and we didn’t mind completely starving. But, at this point — I’m 33 and I’ll be 34 soon — I’m just trying to make sure I make my living and pay my rent.”
Hoyston works as a sound engineer at a club in San Francisco. Like most jobs, sound engineering is extremely male-dominated.
“Being a sound engineer is pretty crappy work,” Hoyston says. “And on the other end of the spectrum, I’ve certainly had my share of really jerky sound guys. There’s not much you can do about it except be a competent musician who knows how to work her equipment and who teaches him a lesson. Over time he’s going to deal with more and more female musicians who are very competent and he’s going to realize and be embarrassed that he acted that way. Or maybe not. So screw him. Who cares about his miserable life? He’s a sound guy — I know what it’s like: night after night, shitty band.”
Hoyston lives in a warehouse in Oakland, just outside of San Francisco, where she puts on live shows and where she also takes in artists and musicians who want to live in a big city but can’t afford to pay the increasingly inflating rent prices. “I take in a lot of wayward musicians,” she says. “I wouldn’t say I was operating a slop house, but it’s definitely a place where people can come and stay if they’re trying to move out and if they’re doing things that I think are important, or if they’re young queer kids who come from a really bad place and want to try and make a better life for themselves.”
Hoyston lives her life in accordance with her politics, embracing the community around her, and trying to promote change on a local level. She carries this attitude through into the music she makes. However, despite protesting against her government, Hoyston wants to make it clear that she is not anti-American. “I absolutely love my country. I’m not the kind of person that’s like, ‘I’m moving to Canada.’ That’s totally not my style,” she says. “I would rather stay here and see things get better, and do things to make it better. I want to try and live my life as an example and hopefully to influence people. I really think that things can turn around. There’s very little that we can do as far as big steps, but I don’t think that we’re completely lost.”
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