WALTER SICKERT & THE ARMY OF TOYS

by Joel Simches

Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys have been exciting and warping the artistic minded for the last several years. From the initial core of Walter and Edrie, their army has spread to encompass some of the finest artistic and musical minds in Boston. Their live shows have been epic and over the top, having toured with the Tiger Lillies, Amanda Palmer, Jaggery, and so many others. Most recently they performed at the Steam Punk World’s Fair, dazzling audiences with touches of burlesque and cabaret mixed with the imagery of Lewis Carroll and a Pythonesque sense of farce. The band is releasing their first full-length, Steamship Killers, featuring the current core of nearly a dozen musicians, replete with Walter’s exquisitely demented artwork and twisted songs of death and squids.

I caught up with them as they prepare for a tour to promote the release of Steamship Killers. The tour starts with their release party at Club 939 in Boston with Jaggery on June 4, to be followed by a brief tour of the Northeast.

Noise: Did you intend that this would grow into a 19-piece band?

Walter: Yes, but I don’t think it’s done growing... I think that you don’t know how many pieces it’s going to be in the end.

Noise: So who is involved in the band right now?

Edrie: Well, we have a sort of set list of musicians—Jojo calls it “A Queer Ape”—so there’s anywhere from four to thirteen onstage at any one time actually playing instruments. And the core of the band is Rachel Jaysom on viola. She graduated from the Boston Conservatory and is a super awesome viola player—she can play in any style. We went to her graduating recital and it was the first time they had ever had a standing ovation at a graduating recital and there were so many people we couldn’t all fit in the room. Her professor was a little freaked out. We also have Terrance [TJ] Horn on drums. We met him at a movie store when he disparaged my movie selection and then Walter asked him to join the band.

Noise: Which movie?

Edrie: The store that he worked at was going out of business and my absolute favorite movie was, like, a dollar!

Walter: Which was….

Edrie [giggling]: It’s about a horse.

Walter: Oh, come on… give the name..

Edrie: I don’t remember!

Walter: Wasn’t it Black Beauty?

Noise: Black Stallion?

Walter: Oh, no… A Man From Snowy River.

Edrie: Yeah, so it was A Man From Snowy River, which is legitimately a horrible movie, but it has horses and cowboys and horse tricks in it. So I handed it to check out and he’s like “Whoa, this movie SUUUCKS.” Thanks, and Walter’s like, “join the band.”

Walter: We gave him a CD after he told her the movie sucked. We had him come to a show as a rabbit to the Mayfair... which was the very first time that the Army of Toys played a live show that wasn’t just the two of us.

Noise: Was that the first time? Because you had Mitchell Ahern come and play the electric crutch and the vacuum cleaner at the Abbey.

Walter: Well, it was the two of us and then the third or fourth person would always be someone who played something really bizarre. E. Stephen Curator played the hedge trimmer at Church show and an electric saw at another show.

Noise: How do you play an electric saw?

Walter: He’d have an electric saw and a piece of metal and somehow he was banging the metal against the blade as the blade would spin and it had no musical value, but it was really cool and noisy.

Edrie: And scary, ’cause I couldn’t see what he was doing.

Noise: But your music has always had a blend of music and art, so why would it make a difference between having a violin player and an electric saw player?

Walter: I don’t think it makes a difference. I think that’s evident how we feel about it on the new record. “Revenge of the Rats” has a cello mixed with a kazoo. I think the most important part about it is just getting across the emotion or painting the mental landscape with the sound and if it’s a saw that does that, or an electric kazoo or a crutch, well, you know, great!

Noise: Getting back to the other members.

Edrie: We also have Madeline Ripley on violin and she plays in a lot of different ensembles. She’s constantly busy. She played with the Dropkick Murphys when they came to town. She’s played with Humanwine a couple of times. We also have JoJo the Burlesque Poetess, who started out as the comic relief and read some poetry. Then she bought a ukulele on tour and now she plays that in the band, which is kind of crazy. Then there’s Meff on rhythm guitar. She and TJ have been best friends their whole lives and I think he was nervous about hanging out with us so he brought Meff along and after three practices she’s like, “Oh there’s a guitar sitting here mind if I just play along?” and she played and we were like, “Holy shit! She plays really well,” so she was automatically in the band… am I missing anybody?

Walter: Probably. Kevin Corzett?

Edrie: Oh Kevin! (laughs) There’s not a single band in Boston that he hasn’t played with… but for us he plays clarinet.

Noise: He has a Klezmerish approach that seems to work so well for the music.

Edrie: And we forgot to talk about Mike Leggio from What Time is It Mr. Fox? on bass, who shows up to all our shows… even though we give him nothing but wine.

Walter: He’s a classy fox, that one!

Noise: Edrie, you’re singing, too. Before you did a lot of silent bits, playing with toys and walking into the audience. Now you’re leading band, leading the audience in chants, so it seems you’ve grown within the band.

Edrie: It’s true. I’m taking over.

Walter: Yeah. Pretty soon all are songs will be about horses and cowboys. I think they already are… The band came together kinda like Eddie & the Cruisers. We went to see Rachel play beautiful classical music at her school. She’s an incredibly talented musician and we’re like, “Dammit we need to have her in the band!” Our drummer is a punk rock drummer. Our violin player plays in Irish rock bands and Meff wears a moustache. It’s like the…

Noise: …Commitments.

Walter: Yeah, It’s like the Commitments… or Captain Planet.

Noise: Now how did you hook up with Mali Sastri and the rest of Jaggery. You’ve been doing a lot of shows with the double lineup.

Walter: I literally bumped into Mali outside T.T.’s. We were both really drunk and she said, “I know who you are and heard of you!” And I said, “Who the hell are you” and she said, “I’m Mali.” And I’m like, “I’ve heard of you, too.” We became friends quickly and she invited us to the Cloud Club to see her play and then after that we were there all the time, playing shows.

Edrie: It’s fun touring with them because we can take a lighter version of the band and intersperse even more musicians so we can have Daniel Schubmehl play drums for us and Tony Leva from Jaggery play bass for us. On the next tour we’re actually bringing almost everybody, but we’re still going to switch back and forth musicians.

Noise: It seems like an easy fit, because even with the diverse styles, everyone is so like-minded towards the music and the artistic ethic you are trying to achieve.

Edrie: We started out creating song structures that either Walter could play just by himself, or I could add a little bit to, so the songs stand on their own as a guy with a guitar or a guy with a piano and everything else is just extra. We let people create the parts around the influence that Walter’s songs are. We can add as many people as we want. We could be a huge marching band as long as people follow the structure. Walter leads and we follow him.

Walter: Everybody in the band has an understanding and a desire to be part of “the show” itself, not just play music, but present it as an experience.

Noise: Lainey Schooltree did your last EP and has also worked on this new album. How did she become involved with you?

Edrie: I’ve known Lainey for a really long time as a part of the Steamy Bohemians and when she started going to school for sound engineering she needed some people to work with.

Noise: A “guinea pig” band?

Edrie: And we were the perfect guinea pig band, because we were like, “Oh we’d love to do an EP… in a studio.”

Walter: That we can’t afford.

Edrie: And we really liked how things came out. She’s not only super conscientious and very detail oriented, which I like, but she’s also kinda flakey and crazy, which Walter likes. So it’s a good combination between that orderliness that I kind of need to make sure that things are actually getting done and the artistic part that Walter needs to make sure we’re getting a piece of art out of it as opposed to a studio album.

Noise: What is the biggest difference sonically between the EP and the new album?

Walter: We have the whole band in the studio, pretty much. There’s no electric crutch.

Noise: Did you keep the mimes and the puppeteers?

Walter: Oh yeah. We’re mime heavy! Great name for a band. We’re Land Mime!

Edrie: [Groans]

Noise: With all your artwork as such an integral part of the visual element of the band, I understand you’ve been invited to do some art and design for Art Beat in Davis Square this year?

Walter: Yeah, I’m the artist doing all the work for it… for everything… from dog tags to flyers to street banners.

Edrie: And T-shirts!

Noise: How did that come about?

Edrie: We applied to play Art Beat… and when I apply to places I always send a little link of Walter’s art. The theme this year is water, and I happened to send a picture of a squid coming out of the water into a boat and the organizers said, “That’s exactly what we want.”

Walter: So in July in Somerville there will be tons of squids with eyeballs and teeth.

Edrie: And tentacles.

Noise: That’s the way you always imagined Somerville could be.

Walter: It is!

Noise: What advice would you give to the scores of musicians, conceptual artists, and performers who are drawn to what you guys do?

Edrie: I think you should just put yourself out there and you never know what’s going to happen. A year ago when we did Mayfair we never thought that we would actually continue to play with a huge band and be able to sustain it. We’ve realized it’s helped us grow as musicians. I like Jojo’s advice, which is, “Rock out with your frock out!”

Walter: My advice is do exactly what you want to do and don’t worry about it. My God, if you have a desire, do it, because what you have in mind is unique to yourself. As long as you find a way to outlet that energy, it’s gonna be a positive experience. Don’t hold back and don’t be afraid of what people think about it. Fuck ’em! As long as you do it for yourself. It’s pretty much what Edrie said, but she didn’t drop the F-bomb.

Edrie: I don’t normally.

Walter: That’s bullshit!

Steamship Killers is due on June 1.

www.armyoftoys.com

ASA BREBNER:

ROCKIN’ STRONG

by Julia R. DeStefano

“The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but even further into sin, ever deeper into human life.”

~Herman Hesse

A prolific songwriter, wordsmith, producer, and all-around gem of the local scene, Asa Brebner has experienced a substantial share of ups and downs throughout the course of his exhilarating career. Also an accomplished visual artist, his artwork has been exhibited at Church, Club Passim, the Middle East, and the Paradise Lounge; it can be seen regularly at the JamSpot in Somerville, as well as at Hi-N-Dry. In fact, Peter Wolf recently presented Keith Richards with one of Asa’s guitar sculptures.

Having learned guitar with the help of R&B, the Rolling Stones, and an assortment of blues records, he says his “break” came in 1974: “I knew these crazy vegetarian, peyote-eating, heroin-addict maniacs that ran a health food store where Dali is now. So whenever I go into Dali, which is not that often, I get this déjà vu, but it doesn’t look like it did before.” It was here that the starry-eyed Asa would become associated with a particular group of people—individuals who would soon be what he says was “arguably the first punk band to play at the Rathskellar after the days of Willie Alexander and the Lost. There was a string of years where they just had cover bands down there.” Led by the charismatic Mickey Clean, the Mezz was given a chance by owner and visionary of the Kenmore Square club, Jimmy Harold, which soon amounted to a Tuesday night residency. Asa recalls, “His attitude was: ‘you guys are so bad, people will just come down to laugh’ and he was partly right, but we had a lot of energy and at the same time, there were a lot of other people who were rebelling against the corporate Doobie Brothers, Eagles-type stuff that was on the radio at the time. So-called punk rock came out as a reaction against that, which we (the Mezz) were somehow part of.”

A mere two years later and Asa became a member of the re-formed Modern Lovers. Having been convinced to join and groomed by Jonathan Richman, he accompanied the band as bassist on their first tour of Europe. At a young age, Asa found himself playing 3,000 seat concert halls with Sid Vicious, Mick Jagger, members of the Clash, the Sex Pistols, and even Nick Lowe among the fans. The Modern Lovers played a huge rock festival in Holland with Journey, Thin Lizzy, and Graham Parker, and also appeared on England’s Top of the Pops TV show with Foreigner and the Buzzcocks Asa says, “The whole time I was using a little B15 bass amp turned up to about two. Jonathan knew how to use low volume to his advantage. Instead of assaulting the audience with a wall of noise, he made them participate by forcing them to listen. It was pretty amazing and totally against the gestalt of what was the prevailing status quo of the time. There were more than a few tense moments when the punks who came expecting to hear “Roadrunner” were treated to the drama of him crawling around onstage, plaintively singing “I’m a Little Dinosaur.”

In 1978, Robin Lane’s arrival in Boston resulted in the formation of Robin Lane and the Chartbusters, a band that toured the U.S. several times, cracked the Billboard Charts, and whose hit single, “When Things Go Wrong” was an early favorite on MTV. They were scouted by Jerry Wexler, the famed producer of Atlantic Records and Stax/Volt, who produced Aretha Franklin’s early material. Asa says that he remains “in awe that he [Wexler] came to see us at a now-extinct local venue. We got signed to a two album deal with Warner Brothers records and toured for two years in a Winnebago, alternating between playing new wave nights in Midwestern backwaters and opening for such diverse acts as the Cars, the Kinks, the Ramones, Split Enz, Hall & Oates, XTC, Black Flag, and the Undertones.”

In what can fittingly be described as bittersweet, Asa recalls the Chartbusters’ rise and fall in local popularity: “We sold 60 thousand units in New England and now there is barely any cultural memory of all that save for the ubiquitous Robin Lane & the Chartbusters albums one can find in a pile of old vinyl at any yard sale.”

In 1981, Asa unveiled the Grey Boys, the first band in which he composed and sang all of the songs. The following year, he reunited with Robin Lane for an album and tour and played Europe, the United Kingdom, and Australia with the Modern Lovers. Through the chaos, Asa continued to write material and assembled Idle Hands, his own group. A local favorite, their song “Last Bad Habit” appeared on Warner Brothers’ Best of the Unsigned Bands collection in 1988. The ensuing years saw the release of a number of solo records—the first being the rare Prayers of a Snowball in Hell, followed by Ragged Religion, I Walk the Streets, Best No Money Can Buy, Hot Air, his first live recording, Abbey Lode, and a retrospective compilation entitled Time In My Way, both of which were released in 2007.

Asa is still “plugging away like a cat with nine lives,” yet is no longer reaching for the brass ring. The following quote by Czech-French writer Milan Kundera deeply resonates with him: “At a time when history still made its way slowly, the few events were easily remembered and woven into a backdrop, known to everyone, before which private life unfolded the gripping show of its adventures. Nowadays, time moves forward at a rapid pace. Forgotten overnight, a historic event glistens the next day like the morning dew and thus is no longer the backdrop to a narrator’s tale but rather an amazing adventure enacted against the over familiar banality of private life.” He says, “it distills everything one needs to know about popular culture, which is now referred to as ‘world culture.’ It says it all as far as the difference between now and before there was media. Things have accelerated to a much more alarming pace—who knows what’s going to happen? Events have, however, become the backdrop as opposed to your life, which used to be the adventure itself. Now it seems the adventure is us watching it all unfold.”

A testament to his perseverance and immense love of music, Asa’s latest, “Suenos de los Muertos” (Dreams of the Dead) is “fiction distilled from reality,” a cathartic look at the loss of a life. He arrived at the title while caring for his ailing mother, who passed away almost a year ago and also cites the play-turned-movie, Our Town as additional inspiration. He explains, “Oscar Wilde once said: ‘A sentimentalist is someone who wants to experience an emotion but doesn’t want to pay for it’ and I had to watch my mother go into the next world.” One song in particular entitled “I’m Not Gone” addresses this, though he hopes it does not come across as “schmaltzy or sentimental. I think it goes beyond that and hopefully, transcends it.”

Generally, Asa says his songs are emotional reactions: “I always thought the best songs that I wrote were those that came out in minutes and maybe I’d tweak them later, but they started with some sort of a throb, a regurgitation of emotion. Then there are plenty of others that are along the lines of satire and come from a totally different part of my psyche. Those songs write themselves, too. It’s almost as if you just have to come up with the feeling or title and it will write itself. There’s a song, “AllNightUpTightBagBiteKo KaineParty,” on my new record which is a nostalgic look at the late ’70s and ’80s when people were staying up, taking all kinds of horrible drugs, and playing awful music but loving every minute of it.” He explains that whether it happens to be static—beautiful in of itself; the Mona Lisa or a Van Gogh painting—or didactic—in need of propaganda; a topical matter relating to the outside world, such as a commercia—a good song will always “resonate with somebody without them knowing who John Hyatt is or Tom Waits. It will speak to them without any prior knowledge except the English language or whatever language it’s being sung in.”

Suenos de los Muertos is the first project that Asa has done completely in digital format and as expected, he still has some nostalgia for giant reel-to-reel tape recorders: “I started out doing this stuff when digital was an unheard of thing; people didn’t know what digital was unless it meant their fingers. I did the basics of Suenos up in northern New Hampshire and brought it to my friend Pat Wallace who has a logic format. I love the whole digital world; I think it’s getting better. I look more for the feel of the thing and the sentiment behind it—whether it rocks or not!”

Multifaceted Asa is still doing the rock ’n’ roll “mating dance” and rockin’ strong with the Family Jewels, (Fred Griffith, Andrew Mazzone, Steve Sadler, Kevin Shurtleff) an R&B outfit rooted in music of the ’50s. On the other end of the spectrum, his recent involvement with the New Hampshire-based Bramble Jam marks his newest venture, one into the realm of family-friendly sounds.

“Wishes and bottles and cigarette burns, we’ll limp on home by and by —but not until we’ve all had our turns for the best no money can buy.” ~“The Best No Money Can Buy”

www.asabrebner.net

www.myspace.com/asabrebner