Eric Cunha is not a megalomaniac. Yes, his band is named after him; but unlike artists like Bon Jovi, Van Halen or Dio, who conceitedly gave their rock outfits their own surnames, someone else is to thank—or blame—for coining his group's moniker, Cunhaband (pronounced "Cunyaband").
"I did not come up with the name—someone else did," claims Cunha. "It's Cunhaband, man. It's a term of endearment."
In Cunhaband's case, the nomenclature might actually be justified, as Cunha—at least in the recording sense—is a one-man show. The West Springfield resident plays or programs all instruments and performs all vocal tracks in producing his homemade brand of power-pop, simultaneously serving as his own recording engineer. It's a formula he's been employing for over a decade.
Cunhaband is the manifestation of years of independent songwriting by Cunha, who wrote and recorded all the material while toiling in other bands. "A band I was in kind of self-destructed, and I was left with this catalogue of songs that I'd worked on, some with this other band, and I wanted to just record it and get stuff done with it—it was such an on-and-off thing; I'd want to do it and then get discouraged and I wouldn't finish it up," he says. "Anything I've been recording for the last three years or so, automatically I was like, 'That's Cunhaband,' so whatever came out of it went to Cunhaband."
Cunha, who also plays drums in Holyoke-based rock band Gonzo Noir, has a musical history that stretches back over 12 years. "I started playing in bands when I was a freshman in high school," Cunha says. "Mostly drums in all sorts of bands. I've been recording music on my own, mostly for fun, and I made the transition to guitar and started playing out with those bands. I've been recording my own guitar stuff all along, but I would put it aside to work with whatever band I was playing with at the time."
What bands informed his musical development?
"I like a lot of different stuff: older garage rock, a lot of stuff that came out before I was born. As far as Cunhaband stuff, I'll kind of make fun of it—that reminds me of this, and that reminds of that, a lot of it is like early, New Wavy, Cheap Trick, Devo, XTC, Talking Heads kind of stuff. I like a lot of that stuff. I don't know how much of it comes out in the music. I'm not really interested in that.
"When I was a little kid, all I knew was Def Leppard and Led Zeppelin, when I was like 10, and then Nirvana and all those bands came out, and then I started watching [MTV's] 120 Minutes. Then the first time you see a Sonic Youth video, you're like, 'Holy shit, this exists,' you know. Then you go back and discover why these bands sound the way they do, and it's because of [Captain] Beefheart and [Frank] Zappa and the Monks and stuff."
One of his major influences is his birthplace of Chicopee, a town he lived in for his first 20-plus years. "Chicopee's like a bunch of little small towns that by default are near each other; you can't get to any other place except the highway. It's a close-knit town, but there's something strange in the water," says Cunha.
"One of the Cunhaband projects is an album loosely based on either events or people based in Chicopee," Cunha continues. "Growing up there for 20 years, you just get used to stuff, and the way things smell. I used to live right by the treatment plant on the Connecticut River, so every summer you go for a walk on that dike and it's like, I want to make an album that smells this way—like fucking brown with a layer of green on top of it."
So what does Chicopee sound like?
Cunha pauses for a beat before answering. "I don't want to bag too much on Chicopee. It would probably be—the best way to describe it would be a lot of pop tunes, a lot of corrosive pop tunes, where it's a lot of industrial waste coming out of my mouth, you know? A lot of songs about where you live and what you do. The songs are pretty conventional, with probably, like, interstitial songs in between—mental imprints of where you grew up, and certain smells and sounds kind of trigger off a memory. I would definitely want to include those pieces to sort of unify it, so it's not just a dozen or so schizophrenic little pop tunes."
As drummer and friend Paul Preston tells it, Cunha has no shortage of tunes: "Eric has a whole catalog of songs and unfinished projects; even the two of us have copious improvs just sitting, collecting dust." That being said, Cunha needed a little extra push to get some of his backlog of songs out there. Like many other independent artists, he turned to the Internet. Cunha credits this online presence with taking his project to the next level. "I've been playing in bands for like a decade, in one doomed band after another—and it's just an easier way to just get people to check out the music and communicate. There's a lot of small-pond kind of politics going on in the area, and I'm not a very social person—most of my friends are not really social outgoing people who are going to hawk their wares on you, so this was a good way to get involved, get to know some of the people."
Live, Cunha recruits friends and past collaborators to flesh out the band's sound. Currently that includes Preston and bassist Mike Duffy.
The band does not have a plethora of gigs under its belt, but it's already paid some dues. Cunha describes one of Cunhaband's particularly challenging first shows: "It's raining out, a really humid day, and all the windows are closed. Late-summer show. We go in there and it's a kitchen—we see a bunch of amplifiers and we're like, 'Where are we setting up?' and they are like, 'Right here in the kitchen.' But then the girl who lives there starts cooking a vegan potluck, which means boiling pasta on a stove five feet away from us while we're playing. Humid, tiny apartment, windows shut, kids standing around watching, crowded in the kitchen with boiling pasta going."
The immediate future does not hold many shows, but this is the result of a willful sacrifice. "I'm taking time out to record and write; no shows until the Happy Valley Showdown this winter. Playing in my other band, Gonzo Noir, but basically I'll be holing up, maybe growing a beard, recording as much stuff as possible. Time to cobble an album together, hopefully for release early next year."
Bon Jovi wouldn't dream of taking the winter off to grow a beard.
