Hello magical friends, especially my patrons whose support lets me do these episodes. I’m your hostwitch Bess and the first interview of 2024 is with Errand of Mercy!
I know you’re excited to hear what he has to say, but first up is the music.
Here’s Azkaban is Burning with “The Graveyard Rap Battle.”
~*~
That was “The Graveyard Rap Battle” by Azkaban is Burning [lyrics], Striking Down Diggory with “What’s Your Patronus?,” and “The Colors of Solitude” from Slytherin.
“The Graveyard Rap Battle” was a special request from my wonderful patron Geoff who dedicates it to Myles Kane, saying “thanks for teaching me the ways of the force!”
And now, here’s Eron of Errand of Mercy!
Welcome to the show, Eron, of Errand of Mercy.
Eron: Hello. Thanks for having me.
It is so wonderful to see you. We met a lifetime ago and haven’t seen each other in years.
Eron: Yeah, it feels like a totally different life’s lifetime. Like I feel like… I am a completely different person now, but like I’m not, it’s just been forever.
Our, uh, friendship seems like a pretty good place to start ’cause I always start with your history with wizard rock.
Eron: Yeah, totally. Um, so I was looking back at stuff to get ready for this conversation and I think I actually started playing music in like 2015, which is so long ago. I remember I was going to school with my friend, uh, Lena, who was the Butterbeer Experience at one point. Um, and I remember she started to get really big in wizard rock and I like, totally thought she was a huge dork and made fun of her. And I was like “what is wrong with you? Why are you doing this dorky stuff? You should do like real music and get paid!” And she was like “screw you. Uh, I’m gonna do what I want.” And then, which was as it turns out, a totally great call, um, because then she started to get really, um, big and like get a lot of attention and get more paid gigs.
And now I think she’s a Broadway like score composer. So she ended up like totally having a big break and everything, but it looked like she was just having so much fun. And I remember going from being really crotchety about it to being like “Hmm, I could do that.” And I was such a big nerd and I was too like anxious or scared about sharing my own personal stuff and songwriting and writing songs about other things seemed like a great way to express myself without having to talk about my own boring messed up life. So it just clicked and I started writing music and performing in like 2015. Um, I started playing like little coffee shops and things around my town and library shows and friends’ houses. And I hosted some shows with some other wizard rock people at my house, which was a ton of fun and started playing at Ithaca’s Wizarding Weekend.
And um, and then I just had a really, really good time. Played at a couple of conventions and you know, also did costumes and all that kind of stuff. Um, and then I decided to go on tour, which was crazy and super fun. Um, my life was kind of falling apart because I had realized that I was transgender and I needed to do something about it, but I didn’t know what, so I decided to get in a van and drive around and play a bunch of shows and procrastinate on that process as long as I could. And it was great <laugh>. Um, so I think that was the fall of 2017 or like the late summer and that’s when I met you, I think. And a ton of other people, um, made some really great friends. I met some of my online friends who I had never seen in real life before.
Um, it was a lot of fun. And then I did a little bit here and there in like 2018 and I think my like real life-life got kind of busy. I started volunteering a lot, doing some, um, activism stuff and then I needed money. So I worked three jobs for a while, which was really hard. And then I got a promotion at one of those jobs. Um, and I just kind of stopped doing as much music stuff and focused more on working and stuff like that. But, um, it’s been really nice to keep in touch with people and stay connected to my, my nerd friends, many of whom I still get to talk to. And I’m not on social media as much anymore, but it’s nice to know that they’re just a few clicks away If I want to say hi.
That’s a heck of a rollercoaster.
Eron: <laugh> Yeah.
I love your starting point though. Most people when they come on they say “I heard a Harry and the Potter song” or “this weird band, Draco and the Malfoys, were coming to town” and yours is not only a band that we don’t get very often as the initial introduction, but also an actual person you knew IRL.
Eron: Yeah. And I was a total grump about it at the beginning, which is how I started off with many things in my life. But fortunately <laugh> Lena was very patient with me and was very nice about it and kind of showed me that it was actually a really amazing space with lots of sweet people in it.
Your band name I think also has a similarly interesting journey, uh, ‘Errand of Mercy.’
Eron: Yeah, that’s right. Um, I actually started… So I used to use LiveJournal a lot when I was an angsty teenager. Um, now I’m an angsty old person, but slightly less angsty and more hopeful. Um, and I would post like my, my silly costume pictures and my fan fiction and all that stuff. And so my handle was Errand of Mercy, which was my favorite episode of Star Trek when I was a kid. I loved it. And it was kind of a dumb episode, but it was fun because they got to wear funny little outfits and there was this sort of like anti-colonial narrative that went way over my head as a kid, but as an adult I was like “oh, that’s cool.” And so I just liked the way it sounded. I thought it was really classy sounding. So I made it my name on LiveJournal and then people started calling me ‘Errand’ for short.
And then when I transitioned I realized that I needed a new name and I was like “okay, well what am I gonna do?” So I spent a good year and a half like picking different names and, and thinking about it really hard and trying to find something that would be, um, kind of neutral on first blush, but had the option to be more masculine if I wanted it to be. And at the time I was still, you know, I was pre hormones, I was pre-top surgery. I wasn’t really walking around in the world trying to be a man. And I kind of stumbled into that too, like many things in my life where I was like “no, no, no, I’m non-binary. I’m just gonna be neutral and that’s all I want. I don’t wanna be a man. Men are gross.” And so I settled on this name Acheron, which could be shortened to Eron.
Um, and it was like this kind of cheesy, you know, homage to my little gothy teenager self. So Acheron is like a tributary of the river Styx, which is like a real, it’s a real river in Greece. Um, and I don’t have any Greek in me at all, like totally stupid, uh, edgy teenager stuff. Um, but I was like “you know what? I don’t want a name that connects to my actual family because they’re terrible, so here we go.” And so I went with that and I just decided to make my old LiveJournal name into my like actual legal name. And I added a middle name Deucalion, which is the son of Prometheus and the Myth of Prometheus, which was an homage to Frankenstein. I love Frankenstein. And when I was transitioning, I definitely felt a lot of resonance with that story of like kind of being horrified by your own body and like wanting to be loved, but being really misunderstood and harmed by society and being really off about it.
Um, and so I, I decided that that was gonna be my name. So it’s kind of funny that it, it just turned from a silly fandom nickname into like my actual legal name that’s, you know, on my driver’s license now. And I feel like it fits. It’s funny that like people don’t necessarily know from hearing it if it’s Eron E-R-I-N or A-A-R-O-N and it’s actually neither, but then I can make it sound fancy when I want to and be like “no, it’s Acheron.” And like, it’s just a fun like, sort of realization of all those parts of me of like the dorky, nerd, goth kid and then being like a grownup now and just having this full circle moment, um, encapsulated in there, which is kind of fun.
A lot of our wizard rockers have stage names and uh, I imagine it’s very nice that your stage name is one that you’ll easily recognize if if someone calls you in a crowd.
Eron: Yeah, totally.
So you’ve mentioned a wide ranging variety of interests and that music has sort of fallen to the wayside for the moment. Are you creating other geeky fandom things these days?
Eron: Yeah.
I noticed a bug chart in the background.
Eron: Oh yeah. So that, that’s actually just a random, uh, decor item. But I work in museums now, so I’m a big fan of like the preserved uh, taxonomies of stuff and I just, I love that kind of stuff. It also, it definitely comes from like, I was super into Snape as a teenager and in my early twenties doing my music, that was like a big part of my persona. Um, it was one of my favorite costumes and also like the way that I figured out I was trans was by dressing up as male characters and being like “why is this so great?” So I definitely still have a soft spot for like potions and bugs and stuff like that. But yeah, I, I haven’t been doing too much music. I did a little bit during the pandemic. I actually didn’t lose my job during the pandemic, although most of my team got laid off.
I was knocked down to part-time, which was better than totally getting laid off, but still kind of rough. So I did do a little bit of music. I started writing some more music that was about me, um, which was a lot harder to do than writing about fictional stuff. And a lot of that has not ever made it out into the world. I hope that it will at some point, but it’s taken me a while to find my voice again. My voice changed a lot when I started taking T, which is really cool. And like, I’m super grateful. I feel like I, I sound like myself now, but one of the things I really liked about my old voice was my singing voice. And it’s different now. It’s still cool, but it’s gonna take a while and some like discipline and practice to get it to be usable for performing in like the ways that I want to use it.
So I’ve, I’ve taken a few lessons here and there to try to get my, my head around it again. But it’s definitely something I haven’t put in as much effort as I would like to. Um, but I am still big into costumes. I don’t really do cons as much ’cause I was just so broke for such a long time. <laugh> that going to conventions just became impossible and I actually got rid of my car like three years ago and so I walk and bike everywhere mostly for money and health reasons, but it’s just, I live in a city where that’s doable and it’s kind of cool. But then taking random trips all over the country kind of became less of a priority for me. But I’m still dressing up and going to events in town. I haven’t been sewing too much, but I love putting costumes together.
Um, and some of my friends that I made in, in wizard rock who like make props or masks or things like that I’ve still been in touch with. Um, and I also started running tabletop games during the pandemic because the games I was in–not your game, your game was a ton of fun–but I was in a couple of games where I just kept thinking like “I could do this better than the person who’s running this game”. No shade to them. But I was just like “well I’ve never done this before.” And I was getting into more of a management role at work and I was like “you know, I bet I could manage a game. It can’t be that different than managing a bunch of people at work.” So I started running uh, Vampire the Masquerade games and I have one game that’s been running for three years that’s set in my town, which is a lot of fun ’cause I’ve lived here a long time and there’s a lot of weird trivia and stuff that I get to use.
Um, and one game is set in Edinburgh, which is also a lot of fun ’cause there’s so much cool folklore and random fairytales and magic and stuff like that. Yeah. And I’ve been hosting some events in my town, like some DIY shows, not wizard rock, but random music art stuff. And um, some like parties and things for the queer community, which is a lot of fun. Um, and a lot of those people are kind of the same ilk of people as my wizard rock friends. It’s just more organizing around the town that we’re in and different holidays and events and stuff rather than a, a fan interest.
So you said costumes but you didn’t specify whom. Are you, you still Snape-ing around or are you a Magicians character? Are you Percy Jackson, Chiron?
Eron: <laugh> That’s a great question. Um, I’ve done a lot of like random costumes that aren’t tied to like a specific fandom. So like pirates and random stuff like that for theme parties. I have a Gimli costume that I still like to get out now and then, um, Deadpool, V for Vendetta, stuff like that. Um, I am working on a Frankenstein costume that’s like way more expensive than it has any right to be, but that’s okay. It’s a lot of fun. Um, and then there is a character that I’ve been working on for a while that I kind of started to work on during the pandemic that um, at some point when I finish some other things that I’m trying to do in my life right now, I would love to get back into music and use this character as a sort of face of that project.
Um, and it’s based on a mask that a friend of mine from one of my old wizard rock gigs, he makes these amazing silicone masks. And I had bought one with my covid money and like totally fell in love with it. And I wanted to make this sort of demon character that, you know, performs and sayings and is more of like a metal style than the stuff that I was writing before. Um, and more electronic than the sort of folksy stuff that I was doing. But I’ve been working on outfits for that character and I hope that I’ll be able to play, you know, at some point in the future play some shows as that character and some of the venues in town or some of the metal events and things like that. But the metal community is a lot different than the nerd community.
Certainly overlap, but it’s a lot more competitive and I feel like there’s a lot more gatekeeping and I don’t know, just different vibes. There’s a lot more fashy metal bands. I don’t really hear about nerd bands that are like horrible right wing people. <laugh> really, it’s not really a thing. Um, so it’s different like trying to break into a scene that is not as cozy as wizard rock. I think I got spoiled by that community that was like “yeah, come stay in our house” and this is just not that kind of a thing, but that’s okay. Someday I’ll do it.
And it’s not like it’s not out there, you know, Wind Rose, Baby Metal, uh, come to mind immediately.
Eron: Mhm. <affirmative>
I could see how–
Eron: Yeah, there’s definitely variety.
Yeah. …Music that is largely rooted in anger could appeal to a broad variety of people.
Eron: Yeah, totally.
So you mentioned touring, which is–
Eron: Mhm <affirmative>
–fortuitous because my patrons love touring stories.
Eron: Nice.
We’ve had disasters where they broke down in a swamp. We’ve had roaring successes where, you know, they brought the house down… The whole spectrum. It’s always fun to hear about what happens when people travel for music.
Eron: Nice. Yeah, I have a good one. I feel like it’s not emotionally uh, devastating, but it is really fun and random and I just love this kind of thing where like, I feel like as a kid my parents were always yelling at me not to talk to people online because you know, I was gonna get abducted or something. And then even as an adult, like my friends are like “oh, I can’t believe you, you know, tell these people on the internet what your address is so they can send you Christmas presents.” And like, I’m like “I’m just, I don’t have that experience.” Like I’ve never had anything but great experiences with meeting people online. You know, if you have some amount of common sense, it’s usually fine. But even when I didn’t have any common sense, it was still great. So I, I was um, visiting my friend Lisa in Columbus on my tour and I wanted to go through Cleveland to like do a gig.
I think it was at a mead place, a meadery, which was super cute, but I had like an extra day before I was going to the next thing and I was like “oh, I’ll try to see if I can get another show.” Um, and I put out some feelers and I was trying to find a place to perform and this random guy messaged me and was like “do you wanna do a house show for me and my wife and our friends?” And I was like “oh, that’s kind of weird.” Like this random guy, like I don’t know him, he’s not in any of these communities, you know, he might be a creeper, like I probably shouldn’t go over to this guy’s house, but I was bored and I had no sense of self-preservation. So I went. His name is Mike, he’s like the cutest thing ever.
I show up at his house and he had like all of these old timey like sci-fi mass market paperbacks out on this table that he was like picking through, which is like one of my weird collections that I had as a 20 something. And he was, you know, appraising them, going through them with his friends. They had snacks and drinks and his friends were super cute and his wife was there and she was delightful. And he had actually like refitted his entire house. Like he gutted the house and rebuilt it to be wheelchair accessible when his wife’s, um, lost her mobility. And the only place in his house that he wasn’t able to do that was the attic. So he gave me this tour, we’re walking around, he’s showing me all the like ramps that he put in. It was super cool. I played the house show for him and his friends.
It was super fun. They like tipped really well and they’re really cute. And then he is like “do you wanna see the attic?” And I was like “uhoh, what is happening?” Like, is this guy gonna take me up in his attic and like do something to me. But I was like “yeah, like whatever, I’ll, I’ll go for it. What do I have to lose?” So I go up and he has transformed the attic into the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, like literally the whole thing. It was like a museum quality like transformation of this space with all of these like workstations all around ’cause it’s, you know, the, the Enterprise. So he is got like these leather armchair like office chair things and then everybody has their own console and his friends come up and they start taking their spots in this bridge. And he’s, he’s written like a program that syncs up all of these workstations to together, together like to play virtual Star Trek with his friends.
And all of the different consoles have like different responsibilities and they all work together to like deal with these collective problems. And so we played a couple rounds of this game that he wrote and like for the, for the amount of sophistication that was in this program, it’s not the kind of thing that you would expect to find in some random dude’s attic. Like it was nice. Like people would pay money to play this. And apparently he has like a LAN party every year where people set up their own mini versions of this like on his lawn and they have this massive like mini convention on his property of like all these people just playing Star Trek with each other. And I can’t for the life of me remember what the name of it was. ’cause obviously they can’t really call it Star Trek ’cause it’s copyrighted.
But I had so much fun and I was just like totally blown away by this guy’s creativity and his like, generosity of spirit. And then we became Facebook friends and he like does all this other crazy kooky stuff like charity bike rides and crazy Halloween things where he buys like a flat crate of, or a pallet of Twinkies and gives them out to everyone. Like he’s just good people. And I would never have known that if I had been like “oh, that’s a creeper, I’m not going over there.” Like, just that whole experience of like trusting the universe and being rewarded with this gem of a person was really, really cool.
He sounds amazing.
Eron: Mhm. <affirmative>
Please tell Mike I love him.
Eron: I I will. Yeah. I’m not really on Facebook that much anymore, but you should definitely look him up.
It’s time for our second music break! Here are the Gryffindor Common Room Rejects and “The Dumbledores.”
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That was The Gryffindor Common Room Rejects with “The Dumbledores,” Creevey Crisis singing “Silence Fell Between” [lyrics], And the Foundation of Fair Fortune with “Forevermore.”
And here’s more Eron!
My patrons also love to get recommendations. You know, musicians that maybe they haven’t heard of or haven’t though to check out in a while. Who are your favorite wizard rockers?
Eron: I think I maybe misinterpreted this question, but that’s probably okay because I was going through like my favorite ones as in like, these are my people. Rather than like “oh, this is the best musical whatever.” Like “this is the best guitarist or that.” Um, so I guess these recommendations are just based on like, the people are amazing people. Probably also good.
We like those recommendations too.
Eron: Yeah. Just to surround yourself with. Um, and some of them I’m sure you already know, I’m sure you already know all of them ’cause you’re like a total expert on this. Um, but–
I am not, no one take that as gospel!
Eron: <laugh> I feel like this is more of like a thank you like gratitude list, but certainly Brian Ross and the whole Draco and the Malfoys band, I mean they’re just so, such great people. They are so generous that like hosting and allowing people into their homes and just sharing all kinds of expertise and information and helping, uh, people with their tech stuff and so much encouragement. I feel really, really grateful to have met them and played with them. My dear friend Nigel Taylor who passed away a while ago from the band Platform One, which wasn’t strictly a wizard rock band, but like whatever. They’re a lot of fun and they’re still making music in his honor, so they’re definitely worth checking out. Lena Gabrielle, of course, my OG middle school and high school friend. She’s incredibly talented and she’s moved away from wizard rock stuff a lot, but everything that she touches is gold. Like all of her compositions since she was like 14 have just been mind blowing. Um, and then Grace Kendall, who I met through Lena when she came through and played a show in the library at my my town and played the little dulcimer is just an incredible, phenomenal human who has just shown me so much kindness and encouragement and friendship throughout the years, even as they has have like reinvented themselves and had all these adventures of, of outdoorsy things and getting together with a partner and just having these transcendent experiences in nature.
Yeah, the wizard rock to tabletop pipeline is very clear.
Eron: Yes, <laugh>. Yeah. It’s very true. Um, and Scott and Kiristin from the Blibbering Humdingers kind of like my fandom parents for a while and it’s really interesting because I felt so healed by their love and compassion and generosity and encouragement and I thought that they were just being nice to me because they felt bad for me ’cause oh my god, I was such a disaster. But like, it’s really cool to see people where their kindness towards you is like so overflowing. And then as you come into your own more, you see those people exploring the parts of of themselves that they were kind to you about, you know, like being super accepting of me being and trans and then like thinking that these people are just like taking pity on me, but actually they’re working through themselves and their own evolutions in that process. Like that was really cool to be a witness to and to just have that connection with people.
Be like “oh, like you being kind to me made you be more kind to yourself and evolve yourself and like we all win.” Like how cool is that? Um, and then of course Ashley Hamel, who has been a huge supporter of me just as a person and has helped me land tons of gigs and just been a great community organizer and an amazing artist and, and inspiration to just be unapologetically who you are, where you are. Like whatever’s going on with you to just like let it out and people will love you. Um, so I, I’m a big fan of all of those people and probably many, many more that I forgot. <laugh>
I’m appreciating your thoroughfare of the wizard rock community just embracing all of you.
Eron: Yeah, it’s definitely meant a lot. I mean I did, I was not coming from a supportive environment. I mean my whole first album was basically just like a cry for help <laugh> like “get me out of here please!” And conventions were really, really important in my like evolution away from that and realizing that I could build a community and a life that wasn’t grounded and soaked in abuse or in denial of who I was. It was a real beacon of light and even though I financially had to kind of stop going to conventions, just that whole idea that that existed in the world and that there were thousands of people who didn’t care that I was trans and thought I was still cool and worth talking to and you know, had a place on the planet was incredibly important to me in coming out and making those changes.
And you seem to be thriving with this whole vibrant community that you’re creating.
Eron: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. I feel like that the town that I live in is really accepting. My workplace is really accepting. I’m the first trans person to be in charge of the department that I’m in charge of and we have all these little baby queers that, you know, I get to supervise and coach and mentor now and it really feels like a nice way to take all of that care that people invested in me when I was a hot mess and like reinvest it in other people.
Thinking back to your early wizard rock days, what specifically did people do or say that helped you take the next step?
Eron: I think there were a few things that happened. Some of them were more straightforward and some of them were more mystical and fun, which is kind of cool. I’m pretty skeptical. I work at a science museum, so magic for me is more of a literary device than a thing that I really believe in. But I remember I went to a, a convention called Hogstown that was in Kentucky and it was like a kind of like a LARP but not a like a light version of a LARP and you would have classes and stuff. I remember my friend Lisa got mad at me ’cause I kept skipping my classes and I was like “this is fake. We don’t really have to worry about it. It’s not a real school!” Um, but she, you know, wanted to play by the book and there was a tarot reader there who’s super nice, her name’s Regan.
And she kept doing this reading for me and she kept pulling the emperor card, which is like the most masculine card and she was like “there’s something you need to deal with and it this,” and I was like “oh shit.” And that was what really woke me up to the realization that I needed to transition. And I remember playing a show in Connecticut that Ashley put together and I was just starting hormones. My voice was cracking all the time. I had to like pitch down my songs because I couldn’t sing them anymore. And I was like really grieving the loss of like my higher register, my voice and then the lower part of my voice hadn’t really come in yet. So I was just, I felt like the ugly duckling. I was like “oh my god, I can’t believe I had the gall to try to perform in this state.
Like, what is wrong with me?” Um, and I remember telling everybody on stage that I was like going, I was on hormones and my voice was cracking and I had just started them and I didn’t know how this was gonna go and they just like applauded like, and it was a big crowd. Like it was, it was like a festival so it wasn’t like five people in a bookstore. It was like a lot of people. And I remember just being so touched by that, like people cheering me on to do what I needed to do for myself because back home, you know, my life had basically fallen apart. I had been broken up with, I lost a lot, I lost my, my home, my family, like everything that, except for my job. I love my job. Um, but everything that I cared about basically evaporated when I said I was trans.
Um, and so having like coming from that and someone telling me that, you know, nobody would ever like value me if I did this and I would just be a, a weird monstrous person that was like gross and like a medical mistake. And then going to the show and having people like clap for me and cheer for me saying that I was doing this was like really, really healing and restorative. Um, and just made me feel like, you know, I was on the right track. So that was really nice. Um, but even before that, going to like MISTI*Con and being super nervous and having my little crappy CDs that I printed out the covers for on my little crappy inkjet printer and having like Scott and Kirstin invite me into their singing circles and like not treating me like a burden, but like treating me like a special guest and, and encouraging me to like perform and share my songs. You know, despite the fact that they had hundreds of really great songs to play and that all these other people were older and more experienced than me and had better gear than me and had actual bands instead of just being one weirdo in a van. Like it was really special to feel that inclusion and that like valuing of my material. Um, that’s not something that happened to me back then very often.
My listeners also know, I like to get like practical advice as well for, you know, people who are just beginning their wizard rock journey; how to train your voice, uh, how you record, a button that’ll change your life in your software.
Eron: Yeah, those are really good. I feel like I’m probably not the best person to ask ’cause I’m not like, despite my efforts I’ve never really become like a sound guy or a techie guy. I do have a DAW that I love that’s called HarmonicDog and it has a FX bus that just, it’s like butter. It just makes everything sound better. Um, and I used that a lot to make my album.
What is a DAW what is that other thing that you said?
Eron: Oh yeah, a D-A-W is a, oh my gosh, I can’t remember the what it stands for. It’s, uh, a digital audio workstation. So it’s, it’s basically like Audacity where it has tracks and you can add tracks and record over your tracks without overdubbing them so you can create your different parts and adjust the levels of everything. And um, and an FX bus is just an effect that gets applied to audio. I think this one is probably has a condenser element to it because it just makes it sound, it, it takes away a lot of the noise and like makes it sound really clear for things like vocals so that when you have, like for me I always like to have like eight voice parts, which is crazy, but it can get really muddy if I have too many and it really helps to make it sound really clear and crisp. Um, yeah. But I think functionally, I mean a lot of my journey has been, you know, hormone related and relating to like the social elements of transing your gender going from being like a cute alty girl punk goth person to being like a mediocre man it’s like a weird transition <laugh>.
So I feel like the things that were cool about my persona performing then are not the same things that would be cool now. Um, but I think really the important thing is to just be yourself and figure out what you are doing that nobody else is doing or, or what you’re doing that not enough people are doing. Or that some sad traumatized kid somewhere needs to see you specifically being successful so that they can keep going and kind of just be that person that you needed when you were there and have that confidence that whatever comes out of your brain is valuable and you know, maybe with a bit of curating and refining, but the fact that it’s yours is what makes it cool. Not that it’s polished or costs a million dollars to buy a fancy guitar or whatever. Like it’s, it’s that it comes out of you that makes it special.
This episode is gonna make everyone cry.
Eron: <laugh> Sorry!
I did just remember there were two things that I think maybe you could give, uh, good advice on because when you were doing your, your touring with Fred in the van–
Eron: Yeah.
You were making those CDs, which we are trying to bring back as a community ’cause CDs are awesome, but people only know how to send them off to like printers or pressers, whatever they’re called.
Eron: Oh really?
When I know you can do it at home.
Eron: Yeah.
I don’t know exactly how, I haven’t burned a CD in a while, but I know it can be done. So that would be useful to learn about. And your shirts that I think you were printing in the van too.
Eron: Mhm. <affirmative> Yeah, I printed those beforehand. It was quite ludicrous. I had like a huge festoonery in my living room of, you know, a hundred t-shirts. I still have some of those patches in my attic, which is kind of funny. <laugh>. Yeah. So I, I actually learned this from my friend Robert, who is like a crazy noise, uh, weird like gabber music person in Detroit. Um, or not Detroit, uh, Cincinnati. And they taught me how to do it. So I, I basically just bought like the screen printing stuff in a kit and did the photo exposure of the stencil and, and burned away the stuff that I didn’t want. And then I did the, the hand screen printing. And they still do that at shows sometimes, not just wizard rock, but like DIY shows or even, um, like rallies, like political rallies. They’ll have make your own t-shirts, make your own banners, um, even at like museums.
I went to like a museum conference in Pittsburgh and they had a make your own tote bag where you could do silk screening. So it’s, it’s definitely not that hard. There is a bit of technique to it and it does take a little bit of practice, but I’m not crafty at all. Like if you looked at any of my costumes up close, you’d be horrified. ’cause the stitching is just atrocious and they’re all like one bad fall away from totally ripping apart. So yeah, it’s, it’s really not that hard. And I do think I, I totally hear what you’re saying about CDs. It’s hard nowadays because I feel like we’re, we’ve always been on this track of like capitalism, like late stage capitalism where nobody knows how to make anything anymore or do anything themselves. And we’re all so reliant on these services and corporations and things where we don’t really know how the sausage is made and the less we know about the means of production, the worse off we are.
So even something silly like a CD where, you know, the likelihood that we could make our own CDs like physically make the CD is that’s never gonna happen. But knowing how the process works and knowing that there are ways to do things without relying on, you know, big corporations is, is really helpful. And for us, small community like wizard rock that’s self-sustaining and self-funding and you know, isn’t tied to like big corporate stuff, I feel like that’s extra important. But yeah, I literally just bought a CD drive on Amazon and I hooked it up to my laptop and I bought blank CDs and I just would make them in like the Wegman’s Cafe in the nearest city. And yeah, I printed out the little inserts on my crappy printer and it was totally janky, but it worked and it was a lot of fun. I think I probably still have a few of those in the attic, but I also feel like flash drives nowadays are so cheap that that might even be like a better option for people who don’t have a CD player because you can just get the files and put them on your devices.
And I, I buy a lot of flash drives at work for like 3D printing demos and PowerPoints that I have to give to a specific person and stuff like that. So they’re, they’re like a dollar now, you know, for music maybe, you know, three, four or five dollars for a big enough one, but they’re so easy to get and then you don’t have to to rely on the cloud or subscriptions or whatever. Yeah. Bring back the CD <laugh>
I cherish my wizard rock CD collection.
Eron: Yeah.
And I have, you know, the CD changer in the car, so they’re all in rotation in there and yeah, I think we should bring it back. Buy a drive, buy some CDs and design some art.
Eron: Mhm, <affirmative> Yeah. Yeah. I like the idea of using Google Drive too. It is a, it is a cloud thing, but I remember when I really, when I got into the Mighty Boosh for a while, there was like this mythical file that would go around and it was like a Google Drive where fans had put every piece of material that ever existed for the Mighty Boosh on this Google Drive. And it was like [angel song] like everything from pictures to interviews to the raw material to fan stuff. And I feel like that would be another cool option of like, just make a donation and you’ll get access to this drive and you know, I feel like wizard rock fans can be depended on to not trash a shared Google Drive. They’re, they’re pretty cool people in general.
So you have sort of mentioned that you’re doing everything these days–
Eron: <laugh>
Are there any particular projects you want people to know about?
Eron: That’s a great question. I mean, mostly I’ve been adulting lately a lot. Um, I just started a master’s program. I got promoted to be the boss of my department that I’ve been in for seven years, since I started doing wizard rock when I was just working part-time and I could take a month off to go on tour. I’m now in charge of that department, which is cool, but also, you know, intense. Um, and I’ve been trying to, to get healthier and kind of work on my, my relationship to movement and nutrition and things like that, which have were really outta whack for a long time and I’ve been trying to get back into a healthier place with that. I don’t know if it’s necessarily something that I want people to like know about or stay tuned, but I also started writing a novel during the pandemic.
Has nothing to do with Harry Potter at all sadly, but it’s kind of a mix of fantasy and historical fiction about the way that queer people were treated from Germany from the 1920s and thirties all the way up to now in various parts of the world. Kind of charting the struggle of folks in different countries in different time periods for a century and using some fantasy tropes to make that possible. So I am not quite ready to share that with the world, but I hope that I will be at some point the master’s program kind of set that back a little bit, but I think it’s still important. And then hopefully someday I’ll be able to do some music with that persona that I mentioned. Do some slightly more spicy music. I feel like I did a lot of music that was, um, really fun and safe and non-threatening and, you know, maybe sad and edgy but not edgy in like a, you know, more adult way or more of a challenging political way.
So I’m excited to share some of those tunes at some point. I feel like that’s something that I would wanna do well or not do it at all, which is why it hasn’t happened yet. With wizard rock, I felt a lot more comfortable just kind of rolling up in my PJs and playing an acoustic guitar and that was good enough. But for this I feel like I would wanna see if I could do something that was more polished and a little bit more complicated and involved more people and more instrumentation and performance stuff. So who knows, maybe I will get to it when I’m like 36 and I have some more time <laugh>. But uh, I feel like I’ll never really be done with music. It’s always part of me, even if I’m not actively performing. It’s a way to feel that you have a, a voice in the world that deserves to be heard and that people wanna hear it. And that’s sort of a skill that I feel like I developed, performing wizard rock stuff and that has helped me in all different parts of life. And just remembering that like I have a voice and that I should use it and that using it makes the world less shitty for other people like me rather than just feeling like I’m imposing on everyone by expressing myself <laugh>. So I hope I’ll be able to make some more music soon.
What I’m hearing is that you should do some more new wizard rock to warm up for your big intense–
Eron: <laugh>
–project. ’cause wizard rock is easy and fun.
Eron: That’s a great idea. Yeah.
Here’s our final music break. We begin with the Dumbledore Enigmas and “The Depths of the Great Lake.”
~*~
You just heard “The Depths of the Great Lake” by the Dumbledore Enigmas, luneytunes and “Look! A Blibbering Humdringer!” [lyrics], and Steve Goodie with “I am the Horcrux.”
Here is the last bit of my conversation with Eron of Errand of Mercy.
Thank you so much for talking with me today. It was amazing catching up with you, hearing about all the things that you’re doing and that you’ve done and that you will be doing. For WZRD listeners who want to keep up with you and your projects. Where can we find you online?
Eron: Um, so I’m not online as much as I used to be. I kind of stopped using Facebook, um, and Tumblr and all that stuff. But I still have a SoundCloud. I still have a BandCamp and I, I don’t really maintain them but they’re there. And I think when I do have more stuff to put up for that new project, Acharistos and I’ll definitely put a link on my existing pages to direct people over there. Even though I think it will be a very different vibe. I’m sure there will be some folks who are interested in checking it out.
And are all of those under Errand of Mercy? Errand DaMercy?
Eron: Yeah, Errand of Mercy. Uh, just, just like always.
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And now, here’s Errand of Mercy!
Eron: This song is called “The Sword” and I picked it because it was the first song that I recorded that I felt like really had something worth sharing about it. I don’t know if it’s the best song ever, but it is… It feels very emblematic of my wizard rock time in my life. Um, and I thought it would be fun to bring it back for a minute.
WZRD Radio Podcast 