Interview with Christina Marrs

CM: Well, I had a friend, Guy Forsyth in Austin, Texas, a local guitar player, harmonica player, singer, and songwriter. And he and I went to this party out on the Llano River, place called the Dabbs Hotel, a turn of the century bed and breakfast and they had this crazy party out there one night. We met Wammo there and so Wammo and Guy got to talking about how their bands were and how their ears were hurting and how they wanted an acoustic band. SO Guy called a bunch of people he knew and we all had a rehearsal and somebody booked a gig. That was a lot of years ago.

TATW: When it started, did you ever think it would last this long?
CM: I don't know that I really thought about it in those terms when it first started. It was just something fun that we were as a group of friends getting together playing music that we liked. It was a side project for most people in the band at the time. So, you know, not too long into it I started to see the potential for, you know, a long future, a long life for the band yeah.

TATW: How would you describe the Spankers to someone who has never heard them?

CM: Oh, it's so hard. It's so hard I can't do it, I can't. After 11 years, I still can't do it. Writers can't do it, nobody can do it. Nobody can describe the band accurately. Because if you use certain terms like acoustic or old timey or folk or any of those things it sounds lame. It just sounds lame and boring. You know, it's so many things how do you summarize it for someone?

TATW: I think my friend, Magic Ben, brought it up the best. I played it for him a couple weeks ago. He had never heard it. And he heard all the different varieties and stuff you guys are doing and he looked at me and said "It's what my ears wanted hear, but I just didn't know it."

CM: That's good. I mean you can give somebody a vague answer like that, you know, what do you guys sound like? But, you know, oh we're postmodern just whatever, vaudevillian punk rock. Still nothing you say really can make it, you know, you can't really fit into any tangible terms to get the idea across. People, kinda, really need to hear it and see it.

TATW: Okay, and what should they expect to see the first time they see a show?

CM: Well, I guess, you know, a big band having a lot of fun. They're gonna see a lot of different kinds of music, or hear them rather, I guess. A whole hell of a lot of different instruments on stage, a lot of switching places, running around, standing up and sitting down and dancing you know, a little mayhem.

TATW: Now speaking of all the different instruments, now before joining the Spankers you didn't play any instruments, you'd never been in a band, and now you play over 5 instruments. Now between recording, touring and being a mom how the hell did you find time to learn 5 instruments?

CM: Well, I learned them up to a certain point, then I stopped learning. You know when the band first started I didn't play any instruments, so and we've always had a lot of front people and the band first had a lot more front people than we have now. Everybody but the bass player and the drummer basically was a singer so I was put up there and I'd wait 4, 5, or 6 tunes before I'd get to sing one and you know. And not playing an instrument was kinda boring; I just stood there while I wasn't singing.

TATW: Right.

CM: So, I've really just learned to give my hands something to do while I'm sitting there. And, I've picked up the various stringed instruments because well just to give myself more versatility when I'm adding rhythm to a song, whether it's banjo or guitar or ukulele, you know. But, you know, now, I guess, I'm a fairly intrical part of the rhythm section, I guess. But I'm virtuoso or anything. I started to late in life, really, I think when you don't start when you're kid, when you still have the ability to keep your fingers all nimble and quick, and when you learn as an adult I don't think you ever get that versatility, you know that ability to move fast.

TATW: Johnny Cash didn't learn how to play guitar till he was out of the Army.

CM: Right. And when you listen to Johnny Cash play guitar…

TATW: You can tell…

CM: (Laughter) Yeah, you know, it's the difference between somebody who learned later in life, someone who is like a banjo or fiddle player who's been playing since they were little kid. It's that muscle memory that you develop when you're really young, it's like learning to speak a language, you know. You're better at it when you're younger than when you are older.

Now, you guys do a lot of songs about drugs and sex, was that your angle when you started?

CM: I don't think it was necessarily an angle, I mean; it wasn't something that we sat down and talked about. I don't think we ever really sat down and talked about what the band was going to be like. It just kinda happened. We did a lot of old Country Blues tunes and reefer tunes and songs about sex are pretty common in the old blues tunes, songs. We didn't invent the genre, it was already there. We kinda borrowed it added to it.

TATW: So, one of the things I love about you guys is all the humor involved. Too many bands these days take themselves far, far, far too seriously. And they don't have any fun with it anymore. I like the fact that you guys do. A friend of mine says that "Whatever" is one of the sweetest songs ever written about trying to get someone into bed. Any comments on that?

CM: Well, I mean you know, it's kinda a tongue and cheek song, you know, that was a little bit of the genre robbing that we do, you know. Kinda that whole hippie-dippy thing and being politically correct to get laid. I mean, yeah, it's a parody, it's very tongue in cheek. I don't know when you are a humorous band you risk being called a novelty band. That's the thing. For last nights show in Pittsburgh, they called us a novelty band and they called us a joke band. And that is what happens when you use humor. And I think it's silly. I mean the Spankers we obviously do a lot of things that are funny. We also do a lot of songs that aren't funny at all. You know songs about love or heartbreak or whatever and you know music encompasses all of the emotions, all of human emotion and humor is a very large part of our life experience. So, I don't see any reason why it can't be expressed in the music. But you do run the risk of being blown off, oh they're a novelty or they're a joke band because other songs are humorous. And I think people who see the band that way really just don't get it. I don't think they're getting the whole picture.

TATW: Right. Now, you have so many people in the band, as far as for writing the songs is it a collaborative effort or is there one main song writer for all the original songs?

CM: Well, Wammo writes some of the stuff, I wrote most of my stuff, you know. We've collaborated on a few things like "If You Love Me (You'll Sleep On The Wet Spot)" and "My Favorite Record" was a big band group collaboration, like four people wrote that. You know, sometimes I'll write something and Wammo will contribute lyrics. It varies, you know we usually write our on tunes and bring them to the band as opposed to the band sitting down and writing songs together as a group. That hasn't happened very often.

TATW: You mentioned "My Favorite Record", when I first got that I was like wow these guys must think pretty much of themselves to call this record "My Favorite Record". Then by the second time I was through it in the first hour I was like yeah okay I see why the call it this. It really is like my favorite record, I play it constantly.

CM: We named it that because it was a part a goof because when you're selling merchandise up there after every other person comes up and says what's your favorite? because we several different CDs on the table. Which one's your favorite? So we wanted to have one so you could just say this is it.

TATW: Well, it's funny because I got it and I play it all the time. And all my friends come over, I have lots of people come through my house, and what the hell is this?

CM: That's "My Favorite Record"...

TATW: That's "My Favorite Record" and then they start listening to it and it's can I borrow this? It's like everyone I know has copied it off me or borrowed it for a couple days.

CM: And DJs also have to say that's the Asylum Street Spankers from "My Favorite Record". But once we got into the studio I think we had a song on there called the "Monkey Rag", "The Minor Waltz", and "Wammo's Blues", and we noticed that a lot of these songs were, you know, either had some musical reference in their title or no song was about a sad song and I saw a good theme and we decided we needed a title track so we wrote the song "My Favorite Record". And we tried to kinda tie it all in together.

TATW: Tell me about the new album "Strawberry".

CM: It's the first in our live bootleg series. We're gonna do probably 5 CDs worth of live recorded material spanning the first decade of the Spankers. The Strawberry Festival was recorded in 1998 and at the time we were in between record labels and we definitely needed some product to sell on the road. You can't be a band on the road without product, or you don't survive. And we were just feuding with our record label and we couldn't get any records from them so we released this live show ourselves and we put out a thousand copies to sell of it, it was a limited run, official bootleg. So it in the bootleg series we reissued that and the next one is gonna be a collection of rarities like that aren't available otherwise.

TATW: Now, I heard at one point that some of the bootlegs were selling on eBay for like in the hundreds of dollars.

CM: Let's see now, our first CD live which was "Lost in the Asylum Street Spankers Live", which was our first release, we released in like cassette paper originally. We decided not to re release it mostly because like lots of bands were like live CDs that they put out. Were just not like crazy about how a lot of stuff on it sounds. And so it's not available, it's not out of print and I've seen it go on EBay for and I've the Strawberry bootleg, the original we put out the thousand copies of go for 50-70 bucks. I don't know if it's gone up to a hundred yet but who knows somebody out there might. I'd hate to be the one who paid a hundred dollars for it then we re release it for 15 bucks. Some people are collectors and they want that original.

TATW: Now, what is the biggest crowd the Spankers ever played in front of?

CM: We played a couple festivals where, you know, there were probably about 5,000 people. We played at a festival in, well we played at some pretty big festivals. There was a festival in Olskilsga, Denmark, called Olskilsga Festival, and that's probably the largest rock festival in the world, about 70,000 people attend. And the year that we were there Bob Dylan was there, Neil Young, Patty Smith, The Cure. It was a very, very awesome. Of course, not all 70,000 people turned out to see us but we had about 5,000 people.

TATW: Who were some of your biggest influences?

CM: Oh god, the influences question.

TATW: Alright, I'll take that one right out. What does the future hold for the Asylum Street Spankers?

CM: Well, we're hoping to branch out onto television. So far we've written 2 scripts of a pilot series, there's five episodes and we've written two. Kind of a musical variety, you know, comedy thing.

TATW: This is for Comedy Central, right?

CM: Well, that's who was the willingess in the beginning Of course the producer there who saw Guy is no longer there so that kinda ruined that for us. TV seems like from our experience a very, very slow process. Just getting people to read your stuff, read your script and getting people interested in it. That's our next, hopefully what we'll be doing next. The next big thing.

TATW: Now, before we wrap up would you like to say anything?

CM: Nope.

TATW: Okay, thank you so much for the interview.

CM: Your welcome.