And then I fucked it up COMPLETELY.

That’s as good a way as any to start this article, which I can assure you has been in post-production for a very looooooooooong time. Earlier in the year, when we were still known as Three Chords No More, I sat down with Martin Reisle and Brendon Hartley from Maria in the Shower to do our first ever in-person interview. Keep in mind that going in, Maria in the Shower were (and continue to be) one of my favourite bands, local or otherwise. So you could say I was pretty determined not to blow it. However my crappy voice recorder, combined with a super-loud meeting venue, followed by hours of transcribing conversation resulted in eight pages of interview and no real way to approach the article.

What does one include? And what to delete?

Well here we are, months later, and a decision has been made. I’m going to post the interview in it’s entirety. Not because it’s too long (it isn’t) and not because I couldn’t decide on what was important to post. On the contrary, I’m posting the entire thing because it’s a damn good interview. I honestly feel that everything Martin and Brendon said is important in understanding the band. And also I know that as a fan this is exactly the kind of article I would want to read about Maria in the Shower. So without further ado, here it is!

Three Chords No More: I guess we’ll just do quick introductions first. You know, basic names, what instruments you play, maybe a little bit about your background if you feel like going into that. Well, why don’t you start off Martin?

Martin Reisle: Well, I’m Martin Reisle and I play guitar and trombone mainly in this band. Oh and banjo and sine wave oscillator make appearances from time to time. Cello, once I make a harness, will make an appearance I promise, but it hasn’t yet. And I write a lot of the music as well. Oh, and I sing as well. And then Jack also helps write and writes his own stuff from time to time and plays accordion and trumpet and sings beautifully as well.

BH: Accordions aren’t that durable anyway.

TCNM: Oh, and then Brendon, you play bass.

BH: I play bass.

TCNM: And a handful of other things.

BH: Yeah, yeah, here and there. A handful.

BH: Occasionally, yeah.

TCNM: Mandolin as well?

BH: Yeah, we’ve done that. Banjo sort-of. Banjo as a drum.

TCNM: So what sort of training do you have in these instruments? I mean, are you both schooled? Like, these don’t seem like instruments that you could just pick up and just frig around with and see if it works. Or is that how it works?

BH: Sometimes that’s how it works.

MR: Funnily enough, we’re both schooled, but neither of us are schooled in the instruments, in many of the harder instruments we’ve fiddled around with and learned to play. I never studied anything but classical guitar. No, that’s not true. I played a bit of trombone and had lessons for two years. And I had a bit of piano lessons. But I’ve never studied cello or sine wave oscillator. But no one studies that! No one even plays that! It’s not really an instrument, but it is an instrument. A technical instrument.

TCNM: That’s with the television and (makes wave motion) woo-woo…

MR: Yeah, yeah!

TCNM: I remember seeing that on stage about a year ago when I saw you guys.

MR: Yeah, yeah. We don’t bring it out too often. But that’ll happen. Our band is percolating. Todd plays exclusively percussion I think.

MR: Yeah, yeah. Playing percussion is like saying, I play, you know, a whole family of instruments.

TCNM: That was him with the chain, yeah? And banging on a rail with a hammer?

MR: Yeah, totally.

TCNM: That’s not orthodox.

MR: He’s not an orthodox…

BH: We should try and play a show where Todd plays the same kit that he plays at practice.

TCNM: What has he got?

BH: A variety of suitcases and chairs, basically.

BH: …it’s very adaptable.

TCNM: How long have you been together? Like, in this incarnation? Has it always been the four of you?

MR: Two years in September.

MR: And so we didn’t play together for some time, and then it came back together but it was labeled Maria in the Shower at that point and we put together a show based on Alice in Wonderland and held a show at one a.m. in an abandoned house that people had to break in through the basement window. It was all lit by candles and [we] painted inside of the house during the show and the last song went on FOREVER. We decided that we would play the song until people decided to leave, but we wouldn’t tell anyone that’s what we were doing. And so we kept on it and people kept dancing for, I don’t know, three hours or something. It was very funny!

TCMN: Sometimes you guys have extra members that come in. Joanna Chapman-Smith played clarinet with your band. The only time I saw you, you had a gang of people dressed up like miners dancing around. So you’re not adverse to going from four to “a lot”. What’s behind that?

MR: Well I think that’s, again, the idea that the whole-istic experience that is happening that night is the prime element of the show we’re putting on. So, yes we’re playing music for people and that’s probably the main element that people…

MR: Yeah, which is very akin to early vaudeville and travelling medicine shows. There was this fabulous Canadian medicine showman called T.P. Kelley and he was in business until 1941 actually. It was very late that he finally died and stopped doing it. He was the most famous Canadian medicine showman ever and he went all over the continent bringing entertainment to towns that would otherwise have no real outside entertainment other than, you know, Grandpa Joe plays the banjo tonight.

TCMN: So it was a musical extravaganza…

MR: …yeah. And so they would travel with a white-face clown and a banjo player. If they could they would have a piano player that would play in various towns. They would also have comedians who would do acts generally in duos, and then they would even carry Shakespearean actors who would do excerpts from Hamlet or whatever to give it a sort of learned edge. People felt good about going to see it if it had some serious theatre in it. And also opera singers, same reason. Some more serious entertainment, I guess you could say.

BH: The crux of it was to sell medicine.

TCNM: So medicine was involved [in the Medicine Show].

MR: Snake oil, basically. It’s often referred to. They would sell medicine that related to people’s sense of the exotic or the unknown. [The members of Maria in the Shower] still try and appeal to the strange or the curious or the exotic that comes with that. That there’s still some sense of magic or wonder and beauty in that cure-all. We’re not going into straight charlatanism, but playing off that charlatanism and playing off the idea of spectacle.

TCNM: We saw [at New Music West 2008], I can’t remember how many bands. Something like twenty-five bands over the course and, I mean, hands down the show you guys put on. It’s not like, plug in the guitars, play a couple of songs and go home, right? It was pretty amazing, and with the whole medicine show thing, I can see that being an influence.

MR: Yeah, and historical performance in general is an influence. All of us are really inspired by strong performers of the past. We all have quite a diverse group of performers we look to as influences of inspiration. But the idea of strong performance and strong showmanship is something that we all really value.

TCNM: A lot of the bands we’ve covered are punk rock bands. What you guys are doing doesn’t fit that [high speed, unpolished] mould remotely and it’s just kind of fascinating.

MR: I wouldn’t say we don’t take inspiration from punk rockers either. There’s a very strong performative element to good punk rock as well. I don’t think there’s really many styles that we would say we don’t take inspiration or elements from to some degree. I really am very appreciative of their intensity and the directed passion of those styles as well.

TCNM: The thing I see with your music in particular is that the songs are long, right? I mean they’re six, seven minutes long. I don’t think any of them clock under five that you have posted online. So it seems like you have something to say, but you’re not in a big hurry to say it. Would you agree with that, or no?

MR: Yeah, I guess I’m a fan of longer narrative forms. I grew up listening to a lot of classical, where composers take half an hour to two hours to make one statement, really. Or to make a multi-faceted statement, but still, you know, one statement.

TCNM: With the bass, when you’re playing punk you play fast music, when you slow it down, what changes?

BH: I don’t necessarily slow it down. I just do that for longer (laughs).

TCNM: So it’s not that much different then?

BH: Well, it is. It is. But as much as I love listening and going to punk shows I never really have played bass in that style. When I was learning bass, I went to Nelson, to the Selkirk [College Professional Music Program] and I was always just interested in playing punk because it was more interesting. And it was more fun to play. You can only play so much E, G and A fast before you get really bored. So I basically just played punk, just out of interest of playing by yourself it’s the most interesting genre to play. And, I guess in quite a few of our songs that kinda comes through.

TCNM: So you feel there’s more freedom to do different things in Maria as opposed to…

BH: …but the Clash did a lot of that. With weird funky reggae…

TCNM: One thing I wanted to ask about your band. There’s a lot of side projects and a lot of side art projects. Brendon, you’re a photographer…

BH: …yeah, I am. I actually just graduated from Emily Carr [University of Art & Design]. Four years was definitely a struggle at times. Actually, that has been quite helpful to being in the band because I know a lot of photographers and I can’t photograph us because we’re playing but there’s a number of people who do, which is great. Also, just basic things like taking a printmaking course and now we print our own cd covers and shirts and stuff. They’re a little rugged, but…

TCNM: And Martin, you bodypaint.

MR: Yeah! I haven’t done any real body-painting projects in some time. We [Maria] end up doing white-face a lot and white-face is so much work that my need to paint people has kind of diminished. There was quite a while where, every night we were doing grease paint and it’s so hard to wash off. It was a real investment to play every show, so I kind of stopped body-painting for a while. I’ve been doing kids face-painting and such at parties and what-have-you. Body-painting will show up in a video we’ll be making very soon. That will involve some whole body-painted dancers. Brendon is quite an amazing painter, much better than myself.

TCNM: Is there any of that online?

BH: Yeah. My painting follows, more or less, the same trajectory as my photography which you can see at my website which is brendon dash hartley dot com.

MR: One of my side projects is stop-motion animation which will feature in this new film we’re working on as well. Eventually I’ll get the footage back, but I did film stop motion of Matt the piercer actually sewing [Brandon’s] lips shut.

TCNM: Were you happy with the way the pictures turned out though?

BH: (laughing) Yeah, yeah. I was like “Oh no. There’s no chance for a re-shoot!”

TCNM: You mentioned that you’re making a new video. I wanted to ask you about the video that you must made “Methods of Exit”. It’s not really a music video…

BH: It’s more like an art film.

MR: For this new video, we’re writing the music for the video. It will center a lot on bones I think. We’re not particularly interested in the music video form as [we are] film to support musical effort. Music and film can work together in a beautiful marriage. [In “Methods of Exit”] there’s music, but experimental music.

TCNM: It’s a mood more than a song.

MR: Yeah, and that’s the role music ought to play in film. I find it a weak endeavour over three minutes to try and describe music with film. However in three or five minutes [you can] create a world in which music happens…that can be very effective I think.

MR: That’s true. It’s not as abstract as that one. The story is about a troupe of musicians in a rundown theatre. So that lends itself to having music-music happen instead of mood music while people die on chairs. Although that’s cool too!

TCNM: Your band does a lot of things around the East Hastings area. You played a benefit for InSite. You’re playing a Canada Day show coming up.

MR: We played Carnegie Hall [the Carnegie Centre is a community centre located at Main and Hastings]! That was a lot of fun.

TCNM: So why do you base so many shows in that particular area? What is it about the Hastings area? Is it the history and the buildings that are still actually old there?

MR: There’s multiple reasons I think. That’s where Vancouver’s history lies. I love to spend time there. Although, who knows what will happen once the Olympics hit here and they try and, you know, “clean it up”? But for now it’s got all the real history. [To Brendon] You’ve photographed a lot of it.

BH: It’s untouched by the development that’s going on everywhere else.

TCNM: You did a series of photographs on the Ovaltine [diner] right?

BH: Yeah, yeah. And basically every local small-run type of business that’s in that area. It’s one of the only areas that’s still untouched by corporations. It’s one of the only places where corporations won’t really go. It also makes it one of the best places to frequent. If I’m going to eat out, it’s pretty much going to be somewhere down there’s so many great restaurants and you know the people when you go in and they remember you.

MR: It’s really a beautiful gem of Vancouver that a lot of people don’t know about. Or are scared to go down…

TCNM: …I’ve walked up and down that street countless times and never been accosted in any way.

BH: You meet some of the nicest and most genuine people there. I’ve been photographing most of the buildings down there, I don’t know why really. Sort of as a memento before change happens I suppose. I often photograph with a large-format camera which is possible very intrusive, but in a lot of ways much less intrusive because it takes fifteen-twenty minutes to set up the camera and figure out what you’re doing and because of that process you’re not threatening anyone. Everyone comes up and talks to you to figure out what’s happening. Anytime you’re down there, whether you’re photographing or playing music or sitting on a bench people want to talk to you and it’s a conversation that doesn’t happen in other parts of the city. The same thing doesn’t happen if you’re walking up Robson Street.

MR: It’ll be interesting one there is some of that press out there [to see] what that expectation will do. People having no expectations is a really big part of our show. Because there’s no expectation we can dress as pirates. We can suddenly be an 80’s band. We can suddenly be all dressed in white with white-face. Nobody really thinks “These guys aren’t really doing what I expected.” One [slightly disappointed] person was informed that we were “Mimes from hell.”

TCNM: (laughing) Oh shit! I think I called you that [on an old website I used to write for]!

MR: I think so!

TCNM: I’m sorry!

MR: Who cares?

TCNM: Well, hopefully you guys can stay under the radar for a little while if that’s where you’re most comfortable.

MR: Hopefully, rather than staying under the radar forever, we’ll simply find a way to both exist on the radar and create new experiences that defy expectations. Although maybe I should say that you can’t print any of that because as soon as we say we’re trying to defy people’s expectations, we’ve just…

MR: Yeah. (laughing) Ultimately I don’t really mind.

Band photo courtesy of Kendra Israelson, whose photograpahy is beautiful and amazing.