Bill Ectric Interview Marshall Burns (aka foolish paeter)

Talking to Mars

Bill Ectric Interviews Marshall Burns

On one hand, Marshall Burns' music sounds like something out of this world, but it also sounds dark, rootsy, and mystical. Clay "Lightning Rod" January has called him a "kindred spirit." On Levi Asher's website, Literary Kicks, Marshall's screen name is "foolish paeter." His friends also call him Mars. I asked him some questions about his CD, Flowers and Bones, his music, his writing, and his artwork.

Bill Ectric: Tell me about the "Ghul Box."

Mars Burns: The GHULBOX is a Leslie cabinet (or analog tremolo unit) that I excised from a defunct electric organ. A Leslie cabinet consists of a speaker behind a rotor. As the rotor spins, the sound is spun in a circle, effectively yielding that cool, spooky tremolo sound.

The power supply had to be removed from a completely different part of the organ, then re-wired and drilled onto the side of the GHULBOX. I only have one amplifier, being a 200W Crate with built-in spring reverb and digital chorus I simply hook up the GHULBOX to its Speaker Out jacks. I used it once on Flowers & Bones, on the lead guitar of 'Mr. Tomi's Grimsong,' which I think perfectly showcases the sound that caused me to name it the GHULBOX ("ghul" being pronounced like and synonymous with "ghoul").

Bill: Who are some of your musical influences?

Mars Burns: The most apparent and probably biggest influences are Tom Waits & Captain Beefheart. I've always dug the organic rawness of Tom Waits, and his junk percussion, and that ended up coming out in my music and then when I got into Captain Beefheart, I loved the complexity, the fugues and counterpoint, and the irregular song form (the latter there was the pivotal influence, that's what really got me writing. Before then I had only written, in a very basic chord-progression framework way, "no. 12" and "Wintersong"). It was right around then that I started to get into Baroque music as well.

Illustration from the CD booklet

Other things that influenced the songs on the album "Flowers & Bones" were Delta blues, especially Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. Link Wray & Dick Dale -- their raw power were the main reason I picked up guitar I was never impressed by the guitar until then. Slavic traditional music, the scales they use really knock me out (I used two of them on "F&B," one in part of the right-channel guitar on "Hunter Intro" and one throughout "Broken Chains & Blackened Wings"
-- they put a nice outlandish, mysterious quality to the music). Country music, particularly mountain music & Bluegrass like Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe, and the Carter Family, also Western music like Johnny Cash and the "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" soundtrack, and Western swing like Bob Wills -- I grew up mostly in Nashville nd "rural" Oklahoma, country music was unavoidable. Southern Gospel, also unavoidable from growing up in Southern Pentecostal churches and from the fact that my grandfather, Bill Burns, is a famed (on the Southern Gospel scene) Gospel songwriter. Irish traditional music, which I've always enjoyed listening to, maybe at first just because I'm ethnically mostly Irish. Jazz, but pretty much just the aggressive stuff, the soft stuff doesn't really do anything for me I like a lot of Count Basie, Miles Davis' crazy stuff like "Dark Magus," Coltrane, Ornette Coleman (and anything else skronky), Mingus, T-Monk jazz drummers really knock me out, they do really amazing things. And Rennaissance minstrel-type music, which I've never really heard, but I have this idea in my head of what it sounds like and I go from that. Oh, and I like a lot of punk/new wave stuff too.
Another illustration from the CD booklet

Bill: I understand you played all the instruments on your CD Flowers and Bones (I love that title, by the way). How did you come up with the idea to create different characters to credit each instrument? Are there meanings behind each character's name or personality?

Mars: Well, of all the instruments that were actually *played* (a lot of it is a midi sequencer programmed to play my melodies), I did all but 2: the cymbals on "Blackfeather Weather" and the horn on "The Mining Song," both of which were played by my younger brother William (he did a really bang-up job with that horn, it's a shame that he's not into skronk music. He shudders at the mention of "Captain Beefheart").

The characters sort of just came about... Originally the album was going to be "Dream & Shadow" by Marshall Burns, but then I got the idea that I wanted to make it into a band, with a fluctuating lineup. I wanted a mini-orchestra. So I made the album "Flowers & Bones" by the Dream & Shadow Huntsman Group, and I filled up the first lineup with fictional musicians. They're all characters that I've used before in bands in my writing: John Steamer, Rawg Tu-Bone, Grue Sumner, Black Sam Black, and Seven-Finger Rosco all played in the Inner-City Skeleton Coalition (John on guitar, Rawg on drums, Grue on bass, and Sam on turntables) Berserker Jones, Paleface John, and Holly Gree all played in Possum Jim's Chickenfried Junkyard Slamjazz Jug-Band (playing the same instruments they do in the DASHG). I gave myself the name "The Marksman" or "Marksman Byrns" in keeping with this conceit I use comparing creative work to hunting (which is also where the band name came from), and comparing the guitar to a rifle.

I wish I could say that I had the character's styles in mind when I played the stuff, but I didn't. Most of it works, particularly John Steamer's guest lead guitar on "Steamhorn Song" and Paleface John's organ solo at the end of "Dusk," but Holly Gree's mandolin playing all sounds distinctly masculine (at least to me) and Rawg Tu-Bone's drumming is too complex and not Stone Age enough (except on "Blackhat Leatherboot Zombi Jamboree" and "Steamhorn Song").

Mars Burns

Bill: Do you have a favorite instrument to play?

Mars: The guitar, which I learned first, is probably my favourite to play, because I can improvise on it nearly effortlessly, whereas improv on other instruments requires concentration. Bass guitar is really fun to play too.

Bill: Yeah, I like playing bass. My favorite song on your CD is Winona and the Winged Bean. That drumming is wild and infectious - it blows my mind every time I hear it. Is there a name for that kind of beat? What kind of drums did you use?

Mars: I don't think there's a name for that sort of beat. It's almost a trip-hop beat, but not really. Maybe I should call it a Bean Beat. It's based around a drum theme that I use a lot, with the 1 on the floor tom and the 3 on the snare, and then extra stuff thrown in (particularly some cymbal and hi-hat work that I will admit to stealing from John "Drumbo" French of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band).

All drums on the album except those in "The Mining Song" and "Steamhorn Song" are synthesized. The only real drum used on those two songs is a tom that I found on the side of the highway. Everything else is trashcans and buckets and things. The only real cymbals are the ratty ones used on "Blackfeather Weather" that cymbal-like sound on "Steamhorn" is actually a metal plate positioned on an uneven steel disc in such a way that it rattles loudly when hit.

Bill: You seem influenced by folklore. Is that correct?

Mars: I think that my stuff is very definitely folklore-influenced, but it's more of a personal folklore. I have this very romanticized view of American rural countrysides. It's all in sepia like an old photograph, nights are darker there, the soil is older and remembers everything, there's things in the woods that no one knows are there.... stuff like that. I'm what psychologists call "fantasy-prone." I'm constantly imagining things like that.

Bill: Tell me a little about that song about digging in the mines. I can almost hear the digging going on.

Mars: In my writing, there is an iron mine, the Brinin Mines, where suddenly gold and jewels were discovered by the mining team that went the deepest. The miners on this team became fanatical, foregoing even their own health for the sake of the mining. Rumors were that their two captains dabbled in the Black Arts and were in league with demons. They eventually led the team away from the gold & jewels, the fanatical miners unconcerned, and led them to open up this undergound chamber filled with demons & monsters. I was describing this to one of my e-friends (as I refer to friends I know solely over the Internet), one Irishman named Karl O'Hanlon, and he was inspired to write a poem, and then I was inspired to put music to it. I wanted the music to sound & feel like a mine, but I wanted to do it without ripping off Tom Waits' interpretation of "Heigh Ho (the Dwarfs' Mining Song)." I came up with the drum part first (which is also centered around the drum theme I mentioned earlier), and then the lurching bass marimba (which is absolutely Terrifying on stereos with powerful subwoofers), and finally the lilting banjo melody. I added a bass clarinet part to represent the "moletusk horn," later replaced with a different sound, the melody moved to slide guitar. There's also a short flute part to represent the skeletal canary, which always brings a smile to my face when I hear it (like the bells at the end of "Hunter Intro"). I used a diminished scale throughout the song to provide that dark, spooky quality. Then I took an assortment of junk objects (including a particularly resonant propane tank), and hit them with drumsticks & hammers, dropped them on top of other junk, threw them across the room, rattled them, and just made various noise with them to no rhythm for 3 and a half minutes, and put that behind the instrumentation. Then I just sang
the poem (when I sing the songs, I have no idea what I'm really going to sing melody-wise. I just do what the instruments & words demand).

Bill: Cool. Well, it sounds great. Do you have any plans to play live and if so, will you recruit musicians?

Mars: I plan to play live starting this summer with a band of real musicians, although some of the instrumentation will be "canned" because there aren't enough of us right now to play everything in the songs. I have yet to play any DASHG material solo live.

Bill: Not only do I dig your music, I also like your writing very much. Who are your influences in writing? Poetry? Prose? Lyrics?

Mars: The lyrics of Tom Waits & Kathleen Brennan (Tom's wife and songwriting partner), and Captain Beefheart are a major influence on my writing. Also Lewis Carroll, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, HP Lovecraft, EE Cummings, Edgar Allan Poe, Chuck Palahniuk, and Joseph Conrad.

Bill: What's the most unusual instrument you use on
Flowers and Bones? Are there any other instruments you plan to use on your next CD?

Mars: With all the junk percussion used, there were a
lot of unusual instruments, but the most unusual thing would have to be what was used as the moletusk horn in "The Mining Song." This was a set of plastic pipes branching off of one main pipe in all directions and at various angles. The main pipe was blown into like a horn, and the holes at the ends of the other pipes could be covered up and uncovered for variances in the
chord played. It sounds especially evil in person.

The next CD (tentatively titled "The Continued Adventures of the Dream & Shadow Huntsman Group") will have a lot of real clarinet, and more real drums. Also more junk percussion. Possibly some cello, and some upright bass. And this old Wurlitzer electric piano that I have that doesn't work like it's supposed to. It makes the most heinous, evil, distorted sound. I also want to do short segments between songs of chatter between the musicians acting as their characters.

Bill: Oh, I almost forgot. On top of your music and your writing, you also included an artistic chapbook with the CD. I was impressed by the art as well. Man, you do a little of everything! What are your art influences?

Mars: Thanks for the compliments! Artists that influence me include Bosch, Van Gogh, Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), and Monet. There's also Michele Mikesell, a TA in the University of Oklahoma's school of fine arts, who does these amazing paintings in which she uses actual *oil*, industrial oil, that she sets on fire, and Bob Dohrmann, an art professor at OU, who does a lot of different things... One time he made a set of trading cards, "Atomic Pie" trading cards, and all of them were people & places & events that had to do with the Cold War. I also really like Japanese watercolours, although I don't know any of the painters' names... And back in junior high I had this friend named Steven Morris who did these really crude ink drawings that I always loved but could never do right.

Bill: Well, there's another goal for you.
Thanks for the interview. I'm definitely looking forward to your next CD!

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