College, particularly the first year, is about self-discovery. Those who attend are thrown into a big pool for the first time in their lives, and sometimes cling to roles they discover in order to have some semblance of identity in this new chaos of people. Like the kids who discover the gym, or alcohol, or Greek life, or video games, or religion.
Or in the case of the The Extensions’ Brian Erickson, the acoustic guitar. So common is the magnetism on college campuses between white guy and acoustic guitar that it’s become cliche. But, to Erickson’s credit, he says never played “Wonderwall.”
“My roommate and the guys I met across the hall all played acoustic guitar,” says Erickson. “I thought at the time what the world needed was another white man playing guitar in a college dorm room. I bought an $89 guitar on eBay, and within months I was playing at open mics.”
For Erickson, playing the guitar was more of a vehicle to do what he was really passionate about: writing.
“I didn’t care that much about guitar work, it was more a vehicle to learn how to write music because I always liked writing,” says Erickson. “I would write all these short stories, but I could never write a good ending. I would have a good one or two pages, but after that everything would fall apart. But with songwriting, you really only need one good page.”
Originally, Erickson thought of songwriting as the “laziest way forward” to pursue his writing dreams, but the journey after Rider has been anything but. Erickson was lead singer of the Paper Jets, a power-pop band that lasted for 10 years. Band years can be measured in the same way as cat years, so a decade as a band in New Jersey is a pretty long time.
“In 10 years we’ve had nine different members, but it was always the drummer and myself that were the two consistent members of the band and we went to Rider together,” says Erickson. “As long as it’s the two of us we can call the band the Paper Jets, but as soon as one of us got tired of it, we would stop doing it.”
With that agreement in mind Erickson was looking for his next journey in music, and the pieces he needed surrounded him all this time.
“It was this very smooth crossover from the Paper Jets to the Extensions,” says Erickson. “The Jets released our final album in December of 2018, and the Extensions put out our first album in September of 2019. It wasn’t even a year because we were practicing and arranging things prior to that.”
The foundation was laid for the Extensions when Erickson, and Extensions drummer Pete Stern played together in a Paramore cover band for a Halloween show. While Hayley Williams had airplanes in the night sky on her mind, Stern had paper jets on his mind.
“I knew nothing about Paramore, but I just wanted to play a show with Pete,” says Erickson. “That was the first time we played a show together and I was like, ‘We need to do more of this,’” says Stern. “We need to keep this vibe going, and there was a vibe.”
The vibe kept on going, and the Extensions were formed and rounded out by Lisa Lovell (keys + vox), Becca Cristino (guitars + vocals), and Will Blakey (bass). In 2019, they released their first EP Bellicose. For Erickson, the Extensions gave him a new lease on life.
“It gave me a second life,” says Erickson about the Extensions. “I almost was ready to give up a little because I spent so long just making music and throwing it into obscurity’s butthole.”
The journey out of obscurity often starts with a new EP, and the band says Bellicose set the pace for future records of theirs.
“They were really good, solid songs,” says Lovell. “We went in and recorded it and that gave us a base to expand our sound for our next possible couple of albums.”
But no matter how solid the songs are, there are always bound to be issues in recording music. Take the song “Fake the Rest,” for example.
“We couldn’t find the click track for that song, and the files got messed up,” says Stern. “The drums that are on that song were done one time with no click and just rolling with it. It went ‘this EP is ruined because this is my favorite track on the EP’’.
In terms of lyrics, Erickson says that “Fake the Rest” is a song about self-involvement. “It’s about having a hard time and the things that are going on around you make it hard to see past yourself,” says Erickson.
Conversely, the last song on the six-track EP is “Envy Smile,” a song about just enjoying life. “Live your life and tell your story, and go about the rest of your life,” says Erickson.
In November of 2021, the Extensions released a cover of “Don’t You Forget About Me” for a Mint 400 at the Movies special. The Extensions had their eyes on covering the song, and secured it early on.
“That was a highly coveted song, and everybody wanted to cover that song,” says Lovell. “I was like, ‘No, we are doing this song’, and multiple label mates wanted to do that song for the special.”
Erickson wanted to model the Extensions take on the classic song after hearing a cover of “Don’t You Forget About Me” on the former NBC sitcom Community.
“I liked the tempo and the rhythm, and I was like, ‘We should do this,’” says Erickson. “We took the grooviness of the Community cover and the synthyness of the original and put it both together.”
Something else that the Extensions have in common with Donald Glover, former Haddonfield resident Joel McHale, and Chevy Chase is that they needed a community to succeed. For the Extensions, their equivalent to a community college study area was Asbury Park.
“Asbury Park is a really good close-knit community,” explains Erickson. “It’s not one of those areas where people are so competitive that they shut others out and close people out. Maybe it was like that years ago, but with the current crop of artists who get shows around there it doesn’t really roll like that. I hope the people who are 18, 19, 20 keep it going. It feels like a much more inclusive community now. We are extremely grateful and appreciative to be a part of that community.”
On March 26, the Extensions will be playing Stosh’s in Fair Lawn, but beyond that show the Extensions have big plans for 2022. And by big, I mean a 22-song LP big.
“I want to call the LP Heaven is Other People because there’s that famous quote, ‘Hell is other people,’ and it’s something that I don’t agree with,” says Erickson. “My justification for it is this: If you think of your proudest moments even if you do them alone you want to share them. Cynical people will be like, ‘Oh you post something online and you get your likes and you get your dopamine.’ But maybe it’s like you want people to feel the same joy and the same sense of accomplishment that you are feeling in that moment. The whole album is about shared moments and what they mean to us.”
The Extensions will be playing at Stosh’s in Fair Lawn on March 26.