The last time Rich Aucoin played pinball was in Paris.
He said while everyone was drinking and partying they would watch as one person played on the only machine in the bar.
“That was my last game of pinball, and it was pretty much my favourite game,” he said. “It was pretty epic.”
Aucoin said he hopes he’ll bring his Parisian pinball skills to Ottawa Oct. 2 when he plays House of Targ.
The Haligonian musician has been touring since Aug. 30 after the release of his sophomore studio album Ephemeral. When we spoke he was back home in Halifax between shows.
“I tour kind of weirdly compared to most bands, because I don’t get in a van and tour,” he explained. “So there’s a lot of stop and start with my tours.”
Because of this, he said it never really ends. Instead it changes from show to show. Aucoin said he uses this downtime to work on the multimedia aspects for each performance. He has cut the music of Ephemeral to a 1979 claymation adaptation of The Little Prince.
“At the live shows there’ll be elements from the film,” he explained. “And then, because it’s a little bit more introspective, to kind of just watch the one video source during the show, I’ve kind of buffed it up for live audiences, so that it’s a bit more sensory overload instead of just the original thing it was written to sync up to.”
Despite the fact there’s a sense of timing to these visuals, Aucoin said no two shows are the same as he recuts the visuals for each one.
Along with his visuals, Aucoin is also known to take the performance off-stage and into the audience, getting the crowd to sing into his wireless mic, literally crowd-surfing on a surfboard, and taking it back to grade school by bringing the party under a giant rainbow parachute. He said it’s a fun show to do because it provides him with an immediate reaction to his performance.
Aucoin described his last studio album We’re All Dying to Live, which involved roughly 500 collaborators, as a sprawling record that the live show came out of. He said Ephemeral is more of a representation of what the live show will be like.
“It’s a different jam than the last one,” he said. “It’s supposed to be more like the people playing on it with me are people that have performed live.”
He said he wants his audience to leave a good euphoria and if you follow his example, you might also leave with a stomach full of perogies.
“I love them. They’re going to be a great post-show snack,” he said. “Definitely can’t eat any of them before the show.”
