Since We Last Saw You ... 

• Courtesy Photo

Ask Eric Earley, frontman of Blitzen Trapper, how his music will sound or translate to a live setting, or how his new touring band will compare with the classic Blitzen Trapper lineup that toured for nearly two decades together, and you won't get an answer. Earley literally is only beginning to figure out those answers himself as he embarks on his first tour in three years.

Yes, a few things have changed since fans last saw Earley and Blitzen Trapper. Some of his former bandmates are no longer working with Earley—or any other touring act, for that matter. While Earley always wrote the band's songs and recorded most of the instruments himself on albums, the live lineup of Erik Menteer (guitar), Marty Marquis (guitar), Michael Van Pelt (bass) and Brian Adrian Koch (drums) had stayed intact from 2000 up to the band's 2018 tour marking the 10th anniversary of the album Furr. Now, things are more fluid with the live band.

"We'll have a four-piece band for each tour, slightly different lineups, some familiar faces and some not," Earley said.

And Earley's own life has changed quite a bit since 2019, when he recorded the latest Blitzen Trapper album, Holy Smokes Future Jokes. For much of that time, he has been spending his days, first as a case worker and more recently a housing specialist at a homeless shelter in his home town or Portland, Ore.

His work with the homeless actually began before he made Holy Smokes. He had friends in a local organization that worked with the homeless and took a job at a winter shelter. "I wasn't touring as much and I needed some more income, so I started doing night shifts at a winter shelter," Earley said. "Then when the winter shelter shut down in the spring of that year (2019), then I made Holy Smokes and I did a European tour, I believe. That was the last tour that I've done. That was in the summer, and then in the fall I started working at a 24-7 homeless shelter. And then COVID hit, and I just stayed there. I just kind of fell into it in a certain way."

With three-plus years of experience in the field, Earley has found his work helping the homeless put their lives on track to be rewarding and even enjoyable.

"I think that in ways, my personality is good for this kind of work," Earley said. "I (can do) this kind of work just because I'm able to detach and not get ... I mean, the tendency in social work is that you get second-hand drama heavily. So to be able to deal with that or detach from it or however you can deal with it (is good). In three years, I don't feel like I'm even close to burnout or anything, which is a very real reality in this work."

Now he's taking a break from his work with the homeless to tour and reconnect with the sizable audience that has been drawn to Blitzen Trapper's music, which has grown from the ramshackle mix of folk, psychedelic rock and pop of early albums like 2007's Wild Mountain Nation into a more focused, but still distinctive blend of those styles.

Holy Smokes Future Jokes is another appealing Blitzen Trapper album. This time around, Earley fashions a more relaxed sound by frequently employing finger-picked guitar and plenty of acoustic instrumentation. This sound accentuates the inviting vocal melodies of songs like "Don't Let Me Run," "Baptismal," "Sons and Unwed Mothers" and the title song and immediately sounds like the work of Blitzen Trapper.

What isn't immediately apparent with Holy Smokes Future Jokes is the fairly weighty inspiration behind many of the lyrics. In the time leading up to making the album, Earley had read the Tibetan Book of the Dead and become fascinated by the book's discussion of bardos, the transitional states between life on earth, death and rebirth into an eternal state of nirvana. The connection to the Tibetan Book of the Dead isn't that apparent in the lyrics themselves—which was the point, according to Earley.

"I didn't really want to tie in too heavily to that," he said. "It was more just a lot of the feelings and ideas. I mean, I quote directly from it (the Tibetan Book of the Dead) in several songs, but yeah, I think that the lyrics are just really my more codified surrealistic kind of storytelling as opposed to sort of the direct approach. So yeah, for me it was not important what the focal point was when I was making the record. But then when I'm doing interviews, then I can talk about what the focal point was. It's interesting. But you don't necessarily need to know to listen to the record in any way."

Blitzen Trapper play the historic Egyptian Theatre (328 Main St, Park City) Wednesday, June 22-Friday, June 24, with nightly performances at 8 p.m. Visit parkcityshows.com for tickets and additional info.