Album Notes

Life has a way of forcing its stereotypical imprint on the soul."Life likes to have its fun with me. When it drops its guard we're gonna wait and see." As Eric Winzenried explains in "Punchline", he knows the deck is stacked in life's favor, but as an artist he's gonna resist becoming its punk.

Stepping way beyond the trite images of a one genre artist, Eric's music is an eclectic blend of pop/rock with elements of hip hop to alternative. His debut album, "Hooray", captures the diversity of his musical influences from the humor and sarcasm of The Kinks and The Replacements to the lyrical flow of Sublime and A Tribe Called Quest as well as the unpredictability of David Bowie. The signature songs "Ohio" and "Smarter One" best showcase this unique blend of musical styles.

His debut album highlights his unique comical insights into life's absurdities. He takes situations, from the truly tragic to the simply inconvenient, and breaks them down to what's really worth crying over. In "Therapy", Eric tells the charming love story of a crystal meth smoking ex-girlfriend while in "Punchline", Eric makes light of his ex wife's painful marital infidelity by contrasting it with the even greater tragedy of the death of his sister . In the featured song, "You Can't Stay at My Apartment", he documents the sufferings we have all endured of the psycho uninvited house guest who never leaves and questions our inability to stand up for ourselves.

While Eric Winzenried's songs contain self deprecating humor, sarcasm, and their not so distant cousin, anger, they all share the same message: if you are able to laugh at the humorous fragile nature of life, you'll stop viewing yourself as a victim and take back the controls.