Talking to Mars, Page 2
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
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").
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grandfather, Bill Burns, is a famed Gospel songwriter on the Southern Gospel scene. 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.
Art by Mars Burns, from the Flowers and Bones CD booklet of lyrics