Along with Saturday’s performance at the Basement, Trailer Park will headline the venue on New Year’s Eve.
Trailer Park
Trailer Park is definitely back.
After a five-year hiatus the band re-formed in 2011 and has once again become a fixture on the live music scene. Trailer Park will play The Basement in Northampton on Saturday.
“I can’t tell you exactly what we did during that time, very secret stuff,” said Tom Mahnken, who works bass and vocals for the band. “I can tell you that it involves someone very high up in the army, and a Florida socialite.”
During that time the members of Trailer Park, which includes James Robinson (guitar, vocals), Rick Page and Greg Lauzon (saxophones), and Joe Fitzpatrick (drums) also splintered off into Unit 7, which became the Eric Olsson Band and Mahnken teamed up with the Young@Heart Chorus in 2009.
“During our hiatus we continued to see each other,” said Mahnken. “In 2011 we decided we wanted to play again. Honestly it feels like it took nearly a full year to get back in the groove. You forget how much of playing as a band develops over the long haul, and when you take five years off, a lot of that intuition is missing and it takes a bunch of gigs to get it back.”
Mahnken says the band has re-entered a music scene that is a little tougher for original bands with fewer financial guarantees and more competition, but is still generally positive about the experience of playing music.
“Any music scene is going to be a reflection of whether or not the bands are giving people what they want,” he said. “We always want the audience to be a part of what we’re doing. We give them music to dance to, sometimes it’s music to fall in love to, and sometimes we’re just background music for whatever their evening is all about.”
Mahnken says the band is particularly fond of The Basement, an off-the-beaten-path venue on Center Street in Northampton.
“People wander in off the street, or they hear us as they get out of a show at the Iron Horse, and we’re a big horn band stuck in a tiny cellar,” he said. That’s exactly the kind of thing I’d like to see if I were them. I think we’re an excellent backdrop to anybody’s Saturday night, and if they never look at us once but we play a role in their good time, that’s cool too.”
The band has written and plans on recording new material and is currently distributing a never-released full-length album at their live shows. Along with Saturday’s performance at the Basement, Trailer Park will headline the venue on New Year’s Eve.