Dismemberment Plan’s Eric Axelson Talks Reunion, Twisters, and Ipanema

by | Nov 6, 2013 | MUSIC

Since their heyday in the late 90s and early 2000s, The Dismemberment Plan have secured a significant part for themselves in the long history of punk and indie rock in Washington D.C. Having originally started while members were attending Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg, the band cut their teeth playing shows throughout Virginia. Stops at Twisters and VCU’s gone-but-not-forgotten Shafer Court stage were common for the band during their original run.


Since their heyday in the late 90s and early 2000s, The Dismemberment Plan have secured a significant part for themselves in the long history of punk and indie rock in Washington D.C. Having originally started while members were attending Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg, the band cut their teeth playing shows throughout Virginia. Stops at Twisters and VCU’s gone-but-not-forgotten Shafer Court stage were common for the band during their original run.

In light of The Dismemberment Plan’s recent reunion and the release of Uncanney Valley, their first record in 12 years, we caught up with D-Plan bassist (and Richmond transplant) Eric Axelson to learn about the band’s history in Richmond and what he’s doing now.

You guys got started playing small house shows throughout Virginia. Tell me about where you guys played and how you got started.

Jason, our guitar player, and I went to college at Mary Washington, so we met there and we were playing in punk cover bands while we were freshmen and sophomores. Then Travis and I had gone to high school together and stayed in touch. During junior year, he started coming to visit on weekends and we’d play guitar and kind of mess around with song ideas. When the band started late my junior year, we lived in Fredericksburg, so we tended to do house shows there and on campus. There was a little pizza place, and those kinds of things. A couple of us grew up in Fairfax, so we played up there a lot also. There was a coffee house called Dharma that did a lot of shows, so it was an obvious place to play.

What kind of bands were you playing with at the time?

In Fredericksburg in 1993, there was a wide variety. There was a band called The Suspects that kind of sounded like… not quite Void, but more meat n’ potatoes kind of punk. There was a local band called Cash. They kind of took from all genres, they were a little bit Meat Puppets, Zappa, Misfits. It’s been so long, I don’t remember what other kind of bands we played with. Those two bands are just what comes to mind. There were other local friends’ bands. At that point in your life you just play with whoever you know and whoever else is getting shows.

Where were you guys playing when you’d come through Richmond early in the band’s career? What did you enjoy about Richmond?

Twisters, which is now Strange Matter, was our go-to place. I don’t know how we got there, I think we just called them a lot and bugged them till they let us play. I do remember our first show there. Halfway through our set one of the bands was drunk in the back of the room and one of the guys was like “play that song again, it’s your only good one.” We were heckled by… I don’t remember what band it was, but I think they were from out of town also. I think for the first couple years of the band, if we were in Richmond we’d play at Twisters. A little bit later we got to play Shafer Court at VCU, and that was awesome because a lot of bands that we looked up to had played there. At that point in our lives that was kind of it for Richmond. We didn’t play at Alley Katz until much later.

I’ve seen tons of pictures of bands playing at Shafer Court, such as Fugazi and Red Hot Chili Peppers. VCU seems like it used to draw a lot of really great bands. It’s not that way anymore though. What bands did you play with at Shafer Court?

I think it goes in waves. When we were at Mary Washington, we tried to bring a lot of upcoming bands to campus, but I think it depends on funding and who’s at the school, who’s trying to run things. Hopefully it’ll come back at one point, we’ll get more good shows.

The only show I remember [at Shafer Court] was with The Make-Up once. We played there twice, but I can’t remember who was on the other bill. We liked playing there because it was legendary; it’s outdoors and you’re kind of in a little courtyard, so the sound is kind of crappy. Show-wise, it sounded a little bit funky. But we loved coming to Richmond. We had friends down here, and we’d go over to Village and get lunch, or get falafel on Broad Street and head back. For us, it was just fun to be playing out of town. The first three or four years of a band it’s hard to find shows, if anyone lets you on a bill. We were pretty psyched to play somewhere that wasn’t DC or Fredericksburg.


Photo via Sterogum

You live in Richmond now. How long have you lived here?

About two years–I moved in Summer of 2011. My sister is here with her family, so that was one of the driving reasons for my move. It’s also a lot quieter here than DC, and a lot more portable. It just made sense.

Do you go to shows often?

I’ve got to admit I don’t so much. I tend to go to shows when friends are in town. I’ve caught a couple shows otherwise. I saw Technical Jed recently at The Camel, because I knew their songs from back in the day. I’ve gone to the National a couple of times; I saw Bassnectar there, and Fitz and the Tantrums. I don’t go to a ton of shows. I wish I went to more, but I think I’ve realized that we play a lot of shows, so I’m in clubs a bunch as it is.

You’ve been a school teacher and been involved in political activism. What are you doing nowadays?

I’m actually at Capital One right now. I moved down here and worked at a company that did post-production, video editing. I eventually made the change to Capital One as an editor or content manager. It’s a little bit like being a teacher. I’m not grading papers, but I’m looking for mistakes and marking it up the same way as I was as a teacher. It’s a nice place to work, they’re very flexible with the band schedule and have been very understanding with the requests when we have shows and need to take days off here and there for recording. They’ve been beyond cool about those things.

Do most of your co-workers know about the band?

Yeah. There was a moment this morning when I was walking to my computer, and suddenly a couple of my bosses turned around and said, “Hey, you’re going to be on Fallon on Monday, right?” It was one of those funny moments when you kind of forget you’re in a band when you’re at work, and people suddenly bring it up out of the blue. Everyone’s really cool about it. I don’t think people here are really fans of the band, I don’t think… well, someone bought the record.

What do you enjoy about living in Richmond now?

We live in Church Hill, which we like a lot. We have a garden plot up there and there’s kind of a cool community around the garden. I’m a big fan of Hardywood, so I like to stop by there sometimes and see what they have brewing. I used to be a beer blogger up in DC for DCist, so I’m bit of a beer nerd. It’s also fun to see a lot of new things opening up. I think there’s another brewery opening early next year. It’s fun to keep tabs on all of the local breweries. It’s nice to drink local, you don’t need to ship things from California to get a great beer anymore.

It also seems to be a really good times for restaurants in Richmond. When we used to visit here back in the day, I don’t know if we were just broke or didn’t know there was better restaurants, but we used to go to Mamma Zu’s by default. It seems in the last few years since I’ve moved here there’s been a lot of new places opening up, so it’s kind of cool to go try new spots out and see what they have. We still go to Mamma Zu’s whenever we can, but it’s nice to know there’s places like Stella and Heritage. Ipanema is also a go to place to us for dinner. They always have good eats there.


Photo via Sterogum

Since I’ve moved here, I’ve tried to see what happened to some of the bands we used to see from Richmond back in the day. I don’t know where they all went to. Back when we were in college there were bands like The Good Guys and Burma Jam. Since I’ve moved here, I’ve tried to find records of theirs and things like that and I wonder what happened to the Richmond scene. Compared to DC, there’s a lot more record stores. My go-to is Steady Sounds, I know Marty [Key, Steady Sounds co-owner] so it’s good to stop by and see him. I like to go to all of them. I wish I could buy more records. It’s a slippery slope–you can spend a whole day and a whole lot of money and come home with a big stack. It’s fun.

How are you feeling about your new record?

Yeah, it’s kind of weird. We all love the record, but we’re finding from a lot of friends and a lot of shows, fans have mentioned it too, the first few listens they don’t quite get it. But after three or four listens they’re hooked, and listen to it nonstop. Some reviews have been less than favorable; you wonder if they only gave it a listen or two and judged too soon. We love it. It’s the first time in our band’s history that we want to play all the new songs live, but there’s only so much time. You still need to play all the old songs. So far, everything from the record’s been played live and gone over well. We’re really happy with it.

Any chance The Dismemberment Plan will play in Richmond soon?

I’d love to play in Richmond, but the hard thing is we all still have our jobs. In 2013 we’re doing 12 more shows. I live here and wish we could play here sooner. I’m hoping in 2014 we can.

Brad Kutner

Brad Kutner




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