Christina Marrs of the Asylum Streeet Spankers

By Alex Teitz

   The Asylum Street Spankers aren’t as much a band as an experience. Using numerous musicians and a mixture of musical styles including country, rock, rockabilly, folk, swing and nearly everything else, the Asylum Street Spankers have created a sound that is unique. The Asylum Street Spankers also stand out because they play acoustically, savoring every sound.

In eight years the band has put out six albums. The newest is My Favorite Record that includes Waltzes, and sharp original songwriting that makes one wonder if the party was as big in the studio as it sounds.

Christina Marrs is the lone woman of the group. Her vocals are distinct and have the right “pop” to them. Marrs is not the typical band musician. She is a mother of two, and started out as a singer. She now plays five instruments. FEMMUSIC had a chance to talk to Christina via e-mail. For more information visit asylumstreetspankers.com

FEMMUSIC: Can you describe your songwriting technique?

CM: I don’t really have a “technique”, per se. The process differs from song to song. Sometimes a song starts out as a melody that’s stuck in my head. If a melody is really plaguing me, I eventually decide that it needs further attention. Then I’ll ask a few people if they’ve heard this tune, I’ll hum it for them, and if nobody recognizes it, I feel like it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s something my brain made up, and not something I heard in an elevator or something and just retained…
Lyrics are the strange thing; sometimes they just come right away…you’re just sitting there, and the next thing you know the song is finished. With other songs, I’ll half write them and can’t finish them right away. From the new record, “Breathin'” and “No Song Sad Enough” are two examples of songs that were begun, but not finished, until months later. When I get stuck, I tend to try not to force it, and just let it happen naturally.
The songs I wrote for “Spanker Madness” were a different animal altogether. I was basically told I had three weeks to write 2 songs about weed, and so I did. Then we decided to make a full-length record instead of an EP, and I was told to write two more, and so I wrote two more. I actually enjoyed having to do it this way, kinda challenging, but fun.

FEMMUSIC: What was the biggest challenge making MY FAVORITE RECORD?

CM: Probably deciding which songs had to go. We really wanted the record to have a nice “flow” to it, and brevity was something we were concerned about…we didn’t want it to ramble on.
I think we made that mistake with “Hot Lunch”; it was way to long. 17 songs, I think.
So with My Favorite Record we had to carefully decide which songs stayed and which had to go, and with so many song-writers in the band, and so much time between albums, we had stock-piled quite a few tunes.
Wammo tends to get a little out-of-control in the studio. He’s learned so many cool tricks through his own recording experiences, and he wants to do this and do that….it eats up time in the studio, and of course time is money. Keeping him from going over-budget is challenging as well.

FEMMUSIC: What was the best experience making MY FAVORITE RECORD?

CM: It was all good. I think writing the title track was a lot of fun. It was a real group effort, the first of it’s kind for us. We had toyed with the idea of a title-track…the record title was decided on long before we went into the studio, and Guy Forsyth had been on the tour proceeding the studio work. He had toyed around with some lyrics, but never really finished a song, just a few lyrics and some bits of melody.
One late night in the studio, I got it into my head that we really NEEDED a title track, and told Wammo that since Guy wasn’t there we’d just have to finish his song for him. Matt Weiner (bass) came up with the melody and progression, Guy, Wammo and I all contributed lyrics. I arranged the harmonies, Wammo wrote Guy’s Bing Crosby-esque vocal part for the end, and even James Michaels (engineer) and Leroy Biller (producer) played and sang on the “samples” that we used.
I think the result was great. They say too may chefs can spoil blah blah blah, but it was a blast and ended up being one of our favorites.

FEMMUSIC: The Asylum Street Spankers do their material acoustic. What challenges does that present verus other bands you’ve worked with?

CM: Well there’s the obvious thing; keeping the audience quiet. This usually isn’t a problem, except when we’re in a situation where there’s people in the audience who don’t have a clear view of the stage. It’s that “out of sight, out of mind” thing. Room size and lay-out, ceiling height, seating arrangement, whether there are video games or pool tables….these are all things that we have to consider that usually don’t affect amplified bands. And there are definitely better and worse rooms for us.
Your playing and vocal technique is very different playing unamplified. It’s a whole other kind of attack. I think that acoustic instruments sound better played acoustically. Pretty basic concept, really. If you stick a microphone in front of and instrument or voice, it WILL alter the sound. However, in particular regards to vocals, there are some subtleties that a microphone will pick up that get lost in a big room. I’m sure our guitar players have felt the same way. You have to concentrate on playing or singing in a way that will throw the note all the way to the back of the room, and it’s not something I think everyone could do without a lot of practice.

FEMMUSIC: As a woman in the music industry, have you been discriminated against?

CM: Not in any really blatant way. There’s just little assumptions that people, consciously or not, will make about you if you’re a woman. When I was still involved in booking the band, there were a couple of instances when several calls from me to a club or promoter would yield nothing, and then one of the men in the band would call and BAM!…we’d be booked. Little stuff like that. Quite frequently I’ll walk up to the door of the club with instruments in hand and tell the door person “I’m with the band”, and they’ll ask me “Are you IN the band?”, as if I may just be some groupie or something. But I can’t say that I’ve ever been discriminated against, really.

FEMMUSIC: What one thing would you like to change about the music industry?

CM: Jeez…don’t get me started. Everything’s just so dumbed down for the masses, when it’s likely that the “masses” could probably easily enjoy a little more sophistication and depth to what they’re listening to. When you look at the success of the “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack, it seems obvious that average people will respond positively to good music, relevant music. But the success of that one record doesn’t really change the way anything is done in the biz. Radio stations still stick to their tight little formats, record companies keep trying to duplicate last month’s big seller.
I’m really bummed out about what happened to Napster. It was really the best file sharing thing around, and SO diverse. It gave people the opportunity to check stuff out before they bought, get turned on to new and different things, etc. And regardless of what the big record companies were saying, people are ALWAYS going to buy records, CDs or whatever other format they come up with. We all made mix tapes in the ’80’s and it didn’t bring down the industry. I think their real problem with it wasn’t the loss in potential sells from people downloading, but the potential of losing customers who might discover accidentally that there’s something out there that they like better than what their commercial radio stations are pouring out.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg…I could rant all day about this one.

FEMMUSIC: What advice would you give to an artist just starting out?

CM: Play, play and play some more. Get whatever gigs you can, just for the experience of performing in front of an audience, even if it’s a small one. Play with a bunch of different musicians. I’ve learned so much from the other musicians I’ve worked with over the years.
Go see a lot of music. Watch what other people are doing. You can learn a lot this way, too. And no matter how good you are at something, remember that there’s always someone out there who’s better at it, so you should always keep raising the bar for yourself.
It’s hard for me to give advise. I was so lucky with the Spankers. It was my first band, I had next to no experience under my belt, and within months of our first gig we were one of the most popular bands in town. It certainly doesn’t always happen that way, and I’m aware of how blessed I am to have been given the opportunity to do this. We continue to be blessed, we have great fans, we have a lot of fun…it’s been a wonderful experience. Four more years of this and I will have been a “Spanker” for one third of my life!