Eric Auger doesn’t always wear his horned helmet. On air, Auger is Erik the Red, the Viking skipper of his WOMR show, The Reminiscence Bump, every other Thursday from 9 p.m. to midnight. He’s had the show for a year and a half.
The “reminiscence bump” is an actual phenomenon: the National Library of Medicine defines it as “a tendency for middle-aged and elderly people to access more personal memories from approximately 10-30 years of age.”
“Music imprints on young adults,” says Auger. “It’s part of your evolution as a person. Everybody loves music from when they were that age.” Each show has three ingredients: a memory, a story, and a song. Auger remembers his art teacher, Mr. D, who loved Barbra Streisand. “I was a 13-year-old boy listening to ‘Woman in Love’ while I was painting,” says Auger. The playlist evolves from there: songs that feel like that memory.
On Feb. 6, the week before Valentine’s Day, Auger told the story of an ex-boyfriend showing up at his house, banging on the door. When Auger opened it, the ex stormed to his car, put on “Love Is a Battlefield” by Pat Benatar, and proceeded to drive up and down the street blasting the song. That night’s episode of The Reminiscence Bump was called “Lost in Love.” Auger played “Love Is a Battlefield” and other songs about relationships, “good, bad, sad, and glad.”
Auger grew up in rural Burrillville, R.I. in a family inclined to the arts. “My dad was a wood carver,” he says. “My mom was a seamstress.” Auger is the youngest of four, all of whom drew and painted. When he was 11, he started to collect vinyl. He listened to new wave, post punk, pop, rock and roll. Auger was a gay kid in a small town in the ’80s — “Music was my escape,” he says, from a place where he knew no other gay people. “I had a lot of questions and confusion about myself. I let the tunes take me away.”
Auger graduated in 1992 from Rhode Island College with a degree in photography and graphic design. He started as a radio and television production major, so in a way he’s come full circle, he says. In Pawtucket, R.I., he and a business partner, Joe Pari, started TEN31 Productions, a performance art company that specializes in “living artwork and dance” for events. Auger still co-owns and runs the company remotely from Provincetown, where he moved in 2020 with his husband, Joe Asermely.
How was Erik the Red born? “My dad loved Vikings,” says Auger. “He named me Eric after Erik the Red.” The real Erik the Red was a Norse explorer credited in medieval sagas with founding the first European settlement in Greenland. “I do have a little bit of Norse blood in me,” says Auger.
The DJ is a Viking, but the show doesn’t stick to Scandinavian sounds. “I love country,” says Auger. “I love rap, pop, rock, soul, gospel. I like soundtracks and musicals. I wanted to do something about how music makes me feel.” The common thread thoughout all genres he plays is nostalgia.
Auger says he’s learned a lot since joining WOMR — about the technical aspects of radio but also about himself. “I’m actually an introvert,” he says. That fact isn’t obvious: in the summer, he performs a one-man show on Commercial Street as characters like Penguin from Batman, Beetlejuice, or Nosferatu, singing into a microphone. “Sometimes I’ll dress up as Satan,” he says, “just to be crazy.” One of his characters is called Bob the Goat. “He’s just a goat.”
Dressed up, “I have my facade on — it’s almost like my armor,” Auger says. As a kid, he looked forward to Halloween. His costuming has become more elaborate and immersive in adulthood. When planning his radio show, Auger had to ask himself: “Do I have the courage to put myself out there and share my stories as Eric?”
The answer is yes. “I’m totally myself,” says Auger. WOMR has given him “free rein,” he says, to play make-believe. “Why adults can’t play anymore is beyond me. I refuse to believe that.” Around Christmas, Auger has “conversations” with Santa Claus. At Halloween, he rolls his “r”s, cackles, and becomes a vampire. Always, he’s Erik the Red — the version of Eric Auger that is a storytelling DJ.
Last year, for St. Patrick’s Day, Auger told a story about his mother’s Irish friend Kitty Duffy, who called often. “I’d pick up the phone,” he says. “She’d say, ‘Oh, hello there, Eric! Do you happen to know who might be calling?’ ” His mother had only one friend from Ireland, and Kitty’s accent was thick. He’d say, “Is it Kitty?” and she’d say, “How’d you guess?”
Auger told the tale in an Irish accent. A listener called and told him the story had made her laugh. “Your Irish brogue was perfect,” she said. Later, at a WOMR anniversary party, the caller recognized him, and the two, meeting for the first time, hugged. “That’s what it’s all about,” says Auger.
On air, Auger invites listeners to tell their own stories. “It shocks me when people call in,” he says, because his show is late at night. But people of all ages do. “They’ll call in and say, ‘I have a bump for you!’ As long as I know one or two people were tuning in, and I gave them happiness, then my mission is accomplished.”
