Asylum Street Spankers
Encyclopedia
The Asylum Street Spankers, formed in Austin, Texas
in 1994, was a band whose music was rooted in early 20th century American music
al forms. In fall 2006, the band's anti-war
satire
video
"Stick Magnetic Ribbons on Your SUV", directed by Morgan Higby Night
garnered 1,054,743 views on YouTube
within the first two months of its release. The band dissolved after a final tour in spring 2011.
in Texas
, the band began by busking
on the streets of Austin and playing for tips in bars. In their earliest days, the Spankers' repertoire consisted almost entirely of country
, blues
, jazz
, swing and Tin Pan Alley
songs dating from the 1890s to the 1950s with a particular emphasis on the 1920s and 1930s. While their tone was raucous and irreverent, the band was also known for its musicianship, theatricality and militant acousticism. Until 2004, they played the vast majority of their concerts without any amplification at all. Not only did this heighten the theatricality of their shows, it caused the musicians to develop inventive vocal and instrumental arrangements in order to constantly engage an audience in such a quiet performance. Several early members were actors and nearly all members have been multi-instrumentalists.
With the departure of Guy Forsyth in 1997, the Spankers began playing more original songs, most written in the roots
styles the band had already mastered. By 1999, only Marrs and Wammo remained of the line up that gained popularity in Austin and around Texas. Reconstructing the band under their leadership, Marrs and Wammo began to expand the act's boundaries to include more cross-genre experimentation, more intricate arrangements and vocal harmonies, and, most successfully, more humorous songs, sometimes with pointed social and cultural commentary. Many of their albums from 1999 on have been musically or lyrically thematic. Spanker Madness, primarily country blues music about drug use
, is generally pro-marijuana, but several songs examine the negative side of drug use and incisively criticize the War on Drugs
. They have also released A Christmas Spanking; Mercurial, an album recorded live using technology and techniques of 1940s vintage; My Favorite Record, an album about their love of music; X-rated EPs
; and an album of songs about children and childhood heavily inspired by Shel Silverstein
and Maurice Sendak
. The Spankers have covered songs by a wide range of artists including Prince
, Tom Waits
, Bob Dylan
, Beastie Boys
, The B-52's
, Black Flag
, Louis Armstrong
, Bessie Smith
, Harry Nilsson
, The Jazz Butcher, The Violent Femmes, George Jones
, Nirvana
, Nina Simone
, Nine Inch Nails
, Otis Redding
, Screamin' Jay Hawkins
and Johnny Cash
. They are also known for throwing snatches of familiar songs into cut and paste sections of their own construction to form musical montages.
In 1999, Marrs and Wammo founded Spanks-a-Lot Records to release their music. Besides giving the group complete creative control, starting their own record label allowed the Spankers to increase the frequency of their releases, avoid the problems they had experienced with their three prior labels and keep a larger share of the profits derived from their recordings. This move was part of a trend amongst musicians allowed by the proliferation of digital recording technology and distribution. Spanks-a-Lot has released two DVD
s documenting the group's live show, highlighting its musicianship and continually evolving theatricality.
Their theatricality reached its apex in January 2008 when the group premiered its stage show "What? And Give Up Show Biz?" off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theatre.
In January 2011, Asylum Street Spankers won The 10th Annual Independent Music Awards in the Gospel category for God's Favorite Band.
. The term "spanker" is an old musician's term for "one who plays his instrument vigorously and proficiently".
In March 2011, the band raised over $20,000 from fans in order to create a DVD retrospective and documentary centered around their final performances in Austin.
solo albums by members:
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
in 1994, was a band whose music was rooted in early 20th century American music
American music
The music of the Americas is very diverse since, in addition to many types of Native American music, the music of Africa and the music of Europe have been found there for some five centuries, creating many hybrid forms that have influenced the popular music of the world.-See also:*Canadian...
al forms. In fall 2006, the band's anti-war
Anti-war
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...
satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
video
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
"Stick Magnetic Ribbons on Your SUV", directed by Morgan Higby Night
Morgan Higby Night
Morgan Higby Night is an American writer, director, , and DJ. His notable works include; feature film , the award winning for The Asylum Street Spankers, , and .-Early life:...
garnered 1,054,743 views on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
within the first two months of its release. The band dissolved after a final tour in spring 2011.
History
Founded by Christina Marrs, Wammo and Guy Forsyth after a legendary party at the famous Dabbs Hotel along the Llano RiverLlano River
The Llano River is a tributary of the Colorado River, approximately 105 mi long, in central Texas in the United States. It drains part of the Edwards Plateau in Texas Hill Country northwest of Austin....
in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, the band began by busking
Busking
Street performance or busking is the practice of performing in public places, for gratuities, which are generally in the form of money and edibles...
on the streets of Austin and playing for tips in bars. In their earliest days, the Spankers' repertoire consisted almost entirely of country
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, swing and Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century...
songs dating from the 1890s to the 1950s with a particular emphasis on the 1920s and 1930s. While their tone was raucous and irreverent, the band was also known for its musicianship, theatricality and militant acousticism. Until 2004, they played the vast majority of their concerts without any amplification at all. Not only did this heighten the theatricality of their shows, it caused the musicians to develop inventive vocal and instrumental arrangements in order to constantly engage an audience in such a quiet performance. Several early members were actors and nearly all members have been multi-instrumentalists.
With the departure of Guy Forsyth in 1997, the Spankers began playing more original songs, most written in the roots
Roots revival
A roots revival is a trend which includes young performers popularizing the traditional musical styles of their ancestors. Often, roots revivals include an addition of newly-composed songs with socially and politically aware lyrics, as well as a general modernization of the folk sound.After an...
styles the band had already mastered. By 1999, only Marrs and Wammo remained of the line up that gained popularity in Austin and around Texas. Reconstructing the band under their leadership, Marrs and Wammo began to expand the act's boundaries to include more cross-genre experimentation, more intricate arrangements and vocal harmonies, and, most successfully, more humorous songs, sometimes with pointed social and cultural commentary. Many of their albums from 1999 on have been musically or lyrically thematic. Spanker Madness, primarily country blues music about drug use
Recreational drug use
Recreational drug use is the use of a drug, usually psychoactive, with the intention of creating or enhancing recreational experience. Such use is controversial, however, often being considered to be also drug abuse, and it is often illegal...
, is generally pro-marijuana, but several songs examine the negative side of drug use and incisively criticize the War on Drugs
War on Drugs
The War on Drugs is a campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid and military intervention being undertaken by the United States government, with the assistance of participating countries, intended to both define and reduce the illegal drug trade...
. They have also released A Christmas Spanking; Mercurial, an album recorded live using technology and techniques of 1940s vintage; My Favorite Record, an album about their love of music; X-rated EPs
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
; and an album of songs about children and childhood heavily inspired by Shel Silverstein
Shel Silverstein
Sheldon Allan "Shel" Silverstein , was an American poet, singer-songwriter, musician, composer, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children's books. He styled himself as Uncle Shelby in his children's books...
and Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Bernard Sendak is an American writer and illustrator of children's literature. He is best known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, published in 1963.-Early life:...
. The Spankers have covered songs by a wide range of artists including Prince
Prince (musician)
Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...
, Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
, Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys are an American hip hop trio from New York City. The group consists of Mike D who plays the drums, MCA who plays the bass, and Ad-Rock who plays the guitar....
, The B-52's
The B-52's
The B-52's are an American rock band, formed in Athens, Georgia in 1976. The original line-up consisted of Fred Schneider , Kate Pierson , Cindy Wilson , Ricky Wilson , and Keith Strickland . Following Ricky Wilson's death in 1985 Strickland switched to guitar...
, Black Flag
Black Flag (band)
Black Flag was an American punk rock band formed in 1976 in Hermosa Beach, California. The band was established by Greg Ginn, the guitarist, primary songwriter and sole continuous member through multiple personnel changes in the band...
, Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
, Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...
, Harry Nilsson
Harry Nilsson
Harry Edward Nilsson III was an American singer-songwriter who achieved the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970s. On all but his earliest recordings he is credited as Nilsson...
, The Jazz Butcher, The Violent Femmes, George Jones
George Jones
George Glenn Jones is an American country music singer known for his long list of hit records, his distinctive voice and phrasing, and his marriage to Tammy Wynette....
, Nirvana
Nirvana (band)
Nirvana was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987...
, Nina Simone
Nina Simone
Eunice Kathleen Waymon , better known by her stage name Nina Simone , was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music...
, Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...
, Otis Redding
Otis Redding
Otis Ray Redding, Jr. was an American soul singer-songwriter, record producer, arranger and talent scout. He is considered one of the major figures in soul and R&B...
, Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Jalacy Hawkins , best known as Screamin' Jay Hawkins was an American musician, singer, and actor...
and Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash
John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...
. They are also known for throwing snatches of familiar songs into cut and paste sections of their own construction to form musical montages.
In 1999, Marrs and Wammo founded Spanks-a-Lot Records to release their music. Besides giving the group complete creative control, starting their own record label allowed the Spankers to increase the frequency of their releases, avoid the problems they had experienced with their three prior labels and keep a larger share of the profits derived from their recordings. This move was part of a trend amongst musicians allowed by the proliferation of digital recording technology and distribution. Spanks-a-Lot has released two DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
s documenting the group's live show, highlighting its musicianship and continually evolving theatricality.
Their theatricality reached its apex in January 2008 when the group premiered its stage show "What? And Give Up Show Biz?" off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theatre.
In January 2011, Asylum Street Spankers won The 10th Annual Independent Music Awards in the Gospel category for God's Favorite Band.
Band name
The band derived its name from Austin's Guadalupe Street, where they would often busk and where they played a number of their early shows. At one time Guadalupe Street was nicknamed "Asylum Street" because it led to a state psychiatric hospitalPsychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...
. The term "spanker" is an old musician's term for "one who plays his instrument vigorously and proficiently".
Breakup and Farewell Tour
After the band broke up in 2010, the remaining members announced one last tour, 9 months in 50 cities: "Spanks for the Memories! The Farewell Tour." Down to one founding member, the band built a new show around Marrs, Newman, and returning member Charlie King. The "Spanks for Everything" Farewell Tour concluded with a series of final shows in Austin on April 20–23, 2011.In March 2011, the band raised over $20,000 from fans in order to create a DVD retrospective and documentary centered around their final performances in Austin.
Personnel
- Christina Marrs
- Charlie King
- Nevada Newman
- Mark Henne
- Morgan Patrick Thompson
- Shawn Dean (The Unknown Wrestler)
- Trevor Smith
- Thrad Lee
Former members
|
|
Albums
- Live (1995, out of print)
- Spanks for the Memories (1996)
- Nasty Novelties (EP, 1997)
- Hot Lunch (1999)
- Spanker Madness (2000)
- A Christmas Spanking (2001)
- Dirty Ditties (EP, 2002)
- "Stinkin'" b/w "Goodbye Cousin Early" (single, 2002)
- My Favorite Record (2002)
- Strawberry (Live)(2003, recorded 1998)
- Mercurial (2004)
- Pussycat (2005)
- Mommy Says No! (2006)
- What? And Give Up Show Biz? (2 disk live set, 2008)
- God's Favorite Band (2009)
solo albums by members:
- Why Do it Right? (Nevada Newman)
- Lowriders On the Storm (Wammo)
- In the Land of Dreams (Stanley Smith)
- Fat Headed Stranger (Wammo)
- Faster Than the Speed of Suck (Wammo)
Videos
- Sideshow Fez (DVD)
- Re-Assembly (2005) (DVD)
- Stick Magnetic Ribbons on Your SUV
External links
- Official site
- Spankers YouTube Playlist
- Asylum Street Spankers on Facebook
- Asylum Street Spankers collection at the Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
's live music archive - Asylum Street Spankers Photos - 2008