WORDS Tara Crutchfield
PHOTOGRAPH Amy Sexson
MrENC Eric Collins is a graphic designer by day, musician by night (and the rest of his free time). Born in St. Petersburg, Collins moved to Lakeland when he was five. Now married with two children, Collins has been here ever since. The MrENC frontman released his latest EP, “We Do Our Own Thing,” earlier this year. The 4-song EP is an ode to growing up in Lakeland and the area’s creative renaissance. We sat down with Collins at The Vanguard Room to talk about early influences, musical evolution, and nostalgic lyrics.
holographic wrapping paper and cut it and fold it into the cassette and write our names on it,” he said. They would print and cut lyrics and put them in the cassettes that they would sell at shows. Denison Marrs did this until they could afford to press CDs. They continued to grow musically and eventually landed a record label and got to tour the nation. The band amicably broke up circa 2004, according to Collins. Following Denison Marrs, Collins and his brother-in-law, Dean Lorenz, wrote and demoed an album that also got a record deal. They were set to go on tour with their band, The Dark Romantics, but the bandmates didn’t want to leave their wives behind. So, Carla learned bass, her sister Amanda, keyboard, and a friend on drums joined the tour. They still look back on it and laugh, said Collins. “They could all play the parts perfectly [to their songs], but they couldn’t play any other songs. […] I thought that was so cool. That’s the most punk thing to me,” he said. The band put out a couple of albums and toured between 2006 and 2009, according to Collins.
“As a kid, my mom raised me on classic rock,” he said. As he grew, the rhythms of Led Zeppelin turned into hip hop and rap in middle school. Influences from artists like Public Enemy have carried over into his “grimey anthems dripping with salty alt-rock garage-y grunge vibes or whatever.” “Their production was a lot of sampling noise and jazz records,” he said of the hip hop group. “That has carried over into my music too because I still like to make noise textures with feedback and distortions.” It wasn’t until high school that he got into more alternative and grunge. Collins talked about meeting his wife, Carla. “She had way better taste in music than I did, so she was introducing me to punk bands, and we were discovering other bands together.”
Craving a creative outlet to make and play music, Collins started MrENC at home. “I started doing a song at a time, releasing it online, and started to grow again,” he said. He worked with New Granada Records out of Tampa to put out a few 7-inches, cassettes, and the first two full-length albums. The early days of MrENC were Collins playing every part and instrument needed to create a song from piano to guitar.
Other influences for MrENC (standing for his initials: Eric N. Collins) include The Smashing Pumpkins – who he connects with, from their lyrics down to guitar tones. The ‘space rock’ subgenre sounds of Failure and Hum inspired Collins, too. He liked the flow of their songs and album arrangements, creating a mood.
Missing the band element, he invited his brother-in-law Dean to play drums with him along with other musicians. Collins appreciated having his friends and other local musicians involved. Lorenz currently plays guitar for MrENC, and he and Collins write songs together. Another contributor to the band is Casey Newton, “awesome bass player” and studio manager for The Vanguard Room. “They’ve always been so kind and honoring to me here,” he said of The Vanguard Room owners.
Collins played trombone in school but found his way musically through his mother’s acoustic guitar. In high school, he started messing around on her guitar more seriously. “My dad went and bought me this guitar chord poster from the mall,” said Collins. “I had it on the back of my door, and I’d sit on my bed, learning how to move my fingers and play chords and writing terrible songs.” FROM GARAGE BAND TO TOURING THE NATION
Collins and Newton worked together on a song for The Vanguard Room’s 2019 Christmas album, “A Lakeland Christmas.” The two became fast friends, and Newton joined MrENC on bass.
Towards the end of high school, he started playing with a few buddies – one played drums, another bass, a friend of a friend playing guitar. “It was all these older teen kids that didn’t know what we were doing,” he laughed. “Literally a garage band.” The band dubbed themselves Denison Marrs. “We would save up money and record locally,” said Collins. They recorded in a building behind Lakeland Square Mall.
Thinking back to the earlier sounds that MrENC put out, playing all the instruments himself, Collins said, “I was missing people, missing their input and really their creativity. When it’s just my mind, I feel like everything starts to be the same for each song.”
“We recorded the tape in his funky little building, and then we made cassettes. We’d go to Walmart and buy
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