The Mermen's Allen Whitman "Basslines from the Marianas Trench" By <a href="mailto:Leomuser@aol.com">Dean L. Farley</a>

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MERMEN

MERMEN www.mermen.com

An incredible instrumental band redefining a new dimention of "Surf"
Jim Thomas - Guitar, surfer
Allen Whitman - Bass, screams
Martyn Jones - Drums, artist/painter, reads strange literature.

The Mermen's Allen Whitman

"Basslines from the Marianas Trench"

By Dean L. Farley

The Mermen's Bassist, Allen Whitman was born to a higher upper-middle class family on February 1, 1957 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the beginning, Allen's primary musical influence was his father's love of singing. Allen sang in the school choir up until approximately 14 years of age when (as a soprano) and without any forewarning, puberty ravaged his vocal range, plummeting it hopelessly downhill.

This major event eventually had Whitman interested in another musical vehicle, namely the bass guitar. Allen had the opportunity to play in many different musical settings/genres, hence a vast musical vocabulary to tap from, therefore forging his own unique bass playing style to the forefront. Whitman's prowess as a bass player is certainly not the only thing obvious in his role as a member of The Mermen. A gifted journalist and writer, Allen has been responsible for all the day-to-day reports from the road tours the band has done and they can be enjoyed and read by all interested parties when accessing the group's eloquently designed Website at www.mermen.com

In addition, he currently writes a column for EQ Magazine as a member of "The Fez Guys," whose primary goal is to educate modern players and musicians on just how to successfully employ the Internet to display their wares to the vastly increasing number of Web-Surfers.Within the context of the band, Whitman provides a relentless and pounding pulse of bottom end fury which to say bluntly, affects your entire body by no means leaving your face untouched in the process! These factors, when combined with the huge sonic wash of Jim Thomas' powerful compositions and the extremely intuitive drumming of Martyn Jones only leave the listener in trance-like states not ever imagining what might occur next.

As is usually and always the case, The Mermen refuse to play their songs the same way twice only keeping you asking for more - irregardless of how many times you have seen them play live or listened to their CD catalog of material. They never get old, they just get better! Let's plunge in and see what Mr. Whitman has been up to lately, shall we?

Dean: Tell us about your early musical experiences and what exactly turned you into a bassist?

Allen: My father sang second bass and he has a very accurate and strong voice and has been singing most of his life. You could say that I grew up in a very musical family even though he was never a professional. He tells me he had wanted to play the clarinet and join a band and run away when he was in college, but he never did that so maybe he's vicariously enjoying his dreams through me now! {laughs}

Dean: So, he wanted to join a band and run away?

Allen: Yeah, in 1955 or somewhere around then he really wanted to play the clarinet... you know, probably some kind of Benny Good-man type thing.

Dean: As I understand it, you first got involved as a chorale singer?

Allen: Yeah, when I say chorale, I'm meaning singing in a chorus and most of it was sacred music of Northern Euporean stripe; Chris-tian or Catholic but definitely Northern European like Bach or Mozart. Hymns...church hymns basically. I sang a lot of those when I was a kid and that's where you sang them, in the school or Church choir.

Dean: What happened to you in the the fourth grade during your audition?

Allen: Yeah, we all had music school or music class in a day school outside of Philadelphia called The Episcopal Academy. The music teacher's name was Mr. York. He had a little tiny moustache about the width of his nose, he didn't look like Hitler, {laughs} but he was a nice guy. As I remember, he was explaining something to the class and we're all wearing these little jerseys and uniforms and stuff and he said "We're going to sing this song, and the song is called 'Blahdy Blah' and for some reason I just piped up and said "Oh, Yeah, yeah, I just sang that song in church last week," and he said "You did?" and I said "Yeah, I know that," so he said "Okay, come up and sing it" and I'm going, "Oh, God in front of the entire class?" There were about 40 of us there so I did sing it and I knew I knew it, so it was no big deal.

I'd been singing all my life so I sang it and he was playing piano, I wish I could remember the piece, I'm sure it was a Bach piece I don't remember which one, though. It was a short piece for soprano, I was a soprano and he asked me to stay after class and went, "Ah, oh" so I sat down. After class, he said to me {puts on deep voice} "Mr. Whitman, I'd like you to consider auditioning for the school choir, I'd like you to join." He was quite specif-ic about wanting me to join...it wasn't like I needed to audition, it was more like "Well, you're in if you want!" The thing was in a school of 800 youths, the choir was only 12 people, so I was walking on air for the whole year, I got to wear the little robe!

Dean: That's really impressive. How many years did you sing for and when did you actually pick up the bass?

Allen: I guess I sang from the ages of three until about 14, full-time. My voice had begun to change but that wasn't the real issue. I had just lost interest in singing and the bass seemed more appropriate.

Dean: I find that kind of remarkable, because you still make all these high-pitched sounds and noises when you're onstage!

Allen: Oh, singing? I have a high voice...I can tell it's in a high register. I can definitely direct it, I can make people notice it, but it's not a very resonant rich voice.

Dean: But it's such a huge constrast to your instrumental bass voice...

Allen: That's partially my dad's voice, he used to walk around the house going "Boom, boom, boom!" so I'd sing bass parts.

Dean: What particular records made you really excited about being a bass player?

Allen: Hmmmm... Mile Davis' In a Silent Way and Tribute To Jack Johnson. I don't know who played bass on those records but I should probably find out. The simplicity and repetitive nature of the bass made me excited because to me, it was a pulse that you created and the other players just jammed around on top of it. But, the bass was the tread that knitted the musical tapestry together and I loved that! Just the simplest repetitive bass-line that grooved and was cool at the same time made me excited. So that and Herbie Hancock's Headhunters. Of course, there was The Mahavishnu Orchestra's first two records {The Inner Mounting Flame and Birds of Fire}. The bass playing there wasn't all that remarkable, but no one had ever done music like that before... and early Chick Corea Return to Forever.

Dean: The Bill Conners Era...Hymn To The Seventh Galaxy? or earlier than that record?

Allen: No, that was actually later for me, I'm thinking about when I first started playing bass. I think I heard Like a Feather.

Dean: Oh, you mean Light As A Feather!

Allen: Thank you {laughs}! That record has {picking up guitar and playing the melody of} "Children's Song" on it. I loved that song.

Dean: So, you were listening to the early "acoustic" Return To Forever with {vocalist} Flora Purim and Stanley Clarke on upright bass? That's the pre-electric Bill Connors stuff. I just needed to set that straight because in my own feelings, Bill Connors is one the fusion pioneers outside of John McLaughlin as far as guitar players are concerned.

Allen: Well, McLaughlin definitely rewrote the book as far as I'm concerned!

Dean: Can there can be any doubt about McLaughlin being the most influential guitarist since Jimi Hendrix? I really believe that's very clear...I don't think there has been many guitar players who have been involved in so many different "mini-genres" and covered so much ground in jazz-fusion music.

Allen: John was definitely the original fusion guitar guy!

Dean: For sure!

Allen: My friend Tom and I were just listening to...do you remember the "Mari Sol" concert in 1974 down in Puerto Rico? That album's hilarious, bad production values and so forth. The Mahavishnu Orchestra played there and there's this jam they do between McLaughlin and {drummer} Billy Cobham that's nothing short of psychic and no one had ever done anything like that. I think that they started that type of music.

Dean: What about your "rock" influences?

Allen: It's interesting...before the jazz influences that I'd mentioned, I was taught to play bass by a friend of mine in school. We were both 14 and his brother I believe was on staff at Vanguard Records, which was Larry Coryell's record company then so he knew what was cool. He showed me about that stuff so that was my influences because of learning to play bass. In terms of rock and roll, the very first rock and roll record I ever got was The Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesty's Request album with the original 3-D cover. I walked up from the train tunnel coming from the other side of the tracks, I used to take the train to school every day and there were hundreds of us kids, so here we are coming up out of this tunnel and right in front of me staring at me was this record lying on the sidewalk just looking at me {laughs}! There were just hundreds of us and nobody is picking it up, so I'm going "This looks like candy!" so I picked it up and I was really excited about it and I kept it with me at school all day, it never left my hands. I got home and played it on my dad's record player and it just blew my mind, absolutely terrified me! Especially the song "Citadel."

Dean: Yeah! That record was basically the Rolling Stones' attempt at going for what their version of The Beatles' Sgt. Pep-per's LP would be.

Allen: Absolutely. The guitar intro of "Citadel" I likened to the Concorde jet taking off in my mind's eye or a dragster, remember-ing that I'm about 12 years old and thinking "Whoa, WOW!" There was Hendrix and The Doors. My God, the first two Doors' albums...my aunt gave those to me and when they didn't have a bass player it really pissed me off, I'm thinking "What's wrong with these people?" but musically speaking of course, I realised they really didn't need it {laughs}! Anyway, it was The Doors, Hendrix, The Stones. I didn't really listen to much of The Bea-tles stuff then even though I realise what an amazing bass player Paul McCartney is. The first Santana album with David Brown on bass was really great. From that point it went into wild flights of fancy like Poco, Cactus and Foghat. You know, wacky stuff like that.

Dean: What about Wishbone Ash?

Allen: I saw you pointing towards that, so I knew we would be getting into them sooner or later {laughs}! I didn't discover Wishbone Ash until I was in high school, until I'd been playing bass about four or five years. Liking Wishbone Ash came because of that really aggressive angular metallic bass attack; playing with a pick. That's when I realised how cool Gibson Thunderbirds were. Plus, they also LOOKED cool which was really important {laughs}! That also grew out of my love of Yes. I don't remember how I first heard Yes but that arguably for me, was the most influential bass player ever, Chris Squire.

Dean: Chris Squire even had me playing bass lines and I was a guitar player...

Allen: Growing up in Philadelphia, I heard a lot of the "Phillie Sound" in the '70s and I played all that kind of music for money and listened to a lot of the soul cats including James Jamerson's work and different kinds of stuff with the singing background. I think Chris Squire influenced my technique and my musical approach to bass playing more than any other bass player.

Dean: How many groups have you been involved in?

Allen: I'd say in the neighborhood of 75. If you'd name a style, I'll bet you I've played it. I even played disco in 1979 with uni-forms, too {laughs}!

Dean: All your experiences with fusion and Top 40 and so forth have seen you going down so many musical paths. Would those various influences explain why your sound is so unique within The Mermen?

Allen: That's a really hard question for me to answer without being completely subjective but I'll try to walk around it. I don't ever think about what makes me different, so I don't think about the "things" that would make me different. I believe inherently that everyone is different and everyone brings a different unique voice to their instrument in music but into their lives in gener-al. When I first heard Jim's songs, I just played the way that made sense to me, that felt right, musical and pleased me which has always been my main motivation for doing anything in life; if it made me happy and that's the way I approach music too, if it makes me feel good. I played what made me feel good, what seemed to fit in my own harmonic language. And so, if that's my individ-ual voice, that's what it is!

Dean: How would you say your style is different when compared with the early surf-music bassist's role?

Allen: In the early '60s stuff, most of those bass players became bassists because everybody wanted to play guitar. You know, somebody...the uncool one or the smallest one or the weakest one would be told to play bass. I'm sure there are exceptions of course, but if you were the younger brother or the lousiest guitarist, you were forced to play the bass. Bass playing was definitely an afterthought but it was essential to the overall tone. On most of the older surf stuff you can barely even hear the bass parts - it's all about the guitar.

Dean: Care to share with our readers some of your observations about why The Mermen are in their own niche which is quite unde-finable?

Allen: The three members of The Mermen have unique and individual voices which they trained themselves to have by doing their own things without any training. It must be mentioned that none of us have had any formal musical training to speak of. So, we brought ourselves together as a band which was never meant for any other reason but to have a good time. We played the music and just liked the music and never gave it a single thought about how anything should sound according to any set of criteria. We're doing what comes naturally as individuals and that means that we're doing everything naturally as a group. What that means is that everything is coming out natural and correct because we're not doing it for any specific purpose, at least not back then. Since The Mermen have their own voice, there's really no compari-son...it has its roots somewhere but you couldn't say that it sounded like anything specific. Here, we are playing with a guitarist {Jim Thomas} who doesn't do anything by the rules, we don't have a set list or any of that...we just play our songs which have places for a lot of improvisation.

Dean: And then it takes on a life of its own! You never know how the band is going to perform a song until it happens. I've never heard you do the songs the same way twice, so consequently, the musical chemistry between the three of you is real intuitive, agreed?

Allen: Yeah, it's pretty weird and definitely true! My favorite phrase about that is the whole (that's W-H-O-L-E) is greater than the sum of its parts. Everything Jim does is born out of his head, and we never play the same set or song order and we never play the damn song the same way, so that's keeps everything fresh and interesting.

Dean: Let's get into the equipment end of things to clarify what makes your tone so unique and what gives your sound this dual-personality. Can you elaborate on the "aggressive" and the "softer" sides of your sound?

Allen: Well, currently I am using a mid-'60s Gibson Thunderbird that has quite an interesting history. Its previous owners are the bass player in Hanoi Rocks and the bassist from the Chambers Brothers. Also, it has been said that this particular Thunderbird has been thru the collection of Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue. I had John Entwhistle sign its pickguard while The Mermen were doing a tour stop in Denver. I didn't get to meet John personally, but his manager took it backstage for him to sign and when he brought it back to me he said that Entwhistle remarked "He's STILL playing this old thing?!" (laughs). This guitar has also had its neck broken and repaired three times! Other than this, it has the stock tuners and bridge with the original pickup's cover removed.

My other bass is a Frankenstein which is a 1969 Fender P-Bass Body with a Boogie Bodies birds-eye maple neck installed. This bass has a custom-made alnico pickup that was wound by Leo Knapp, who is the guy who made the Schon Guitars. He is currently with Yamaha R&D. This was the first P-Bass pickup he made and he asked me to try it out. I did and after about six months, Leo called me and wanted it back, so I said "No Way, Man!" He said he wanted $50.00 for it so I happily complied (laughs)! This bass has a chrome Badass bridge, Schaller tuners and a carbon-graphite nut.

As far as amps are concerned, it's early '80s Ampeg SVTs all the way with two 4-10 enclosures for ease of breaking down the rig. I use no effects or wireless units and I hate most direct-boxes because they have a tendency to suck all the tone from the signal. I use a pick about a little more than half of the time onstage which are Dunlop Tortex .73mm and I hit the strings pretty hard and I like to play LOUD! I am heavily endorsed by D'Addario and I only use XL230 sets which are a really heavy roundwound string gauged .55 to .110.

Dean: Will you please enlighten our readers about the project that you were the producer?

Allen: Yes, this record that I produced is called Brine. It is an "Anti-Surf Soundtrack" which features what I call "Non-traditional Ocean Music from the Dark Side." This CD features The Mermen, Scenic, Loop Guru, DJ Spooky, Plexi, and a whole host of others. It is a compliation 61 minutes in length and is available on Beach Records. There are multiple sources ( both analog and digital) that have been entirely edited in the digital domain.

Dean: That music is very ethereal and very unique, highly recommended! What's up with "The Fez Guys" column in EQ magazine?

Allen: "The Fez Guys" are a duo that consists of myself and Jon Luini that have written a series of articles on "how to" use the Internet to it fullest advantage to promote your own music to the right people using the technology that is available to everyone. We basically explain all the steps involved in the set-up and all the technical factors of doing your own personalized sites using your own computer and the equipment needed to do it.
You can get to the Fez Guys through The Mermen's website at www.mermen.com via the link that is provided there or you can pick up the magazine at all the usual places where you buy magazines. You can also contact us at www.fezguys.com. All of our articles are posted on The Mermen's site too!

Dean: Last, but not least, how's the new Mermen record coming along?

Allen: We are in the process of rehearsing our new material and we are also going to record it ourselves as Jim has bought an entire 16 track analog recording system. We are currently looking for just the right place to do the recording in, so things are moving along in the right direction to complete and finish our new CD.

Article by Dean L. Farley
The interview happened in a three month block between January and March 1997

>>> MORE INTERVIEWS <<<

JIM THOMAS & THE MERMEN

You can also read an interview with The Mermen's Jim Thomas - Jim Thomas is an absolute poet!

Excerpt of Deans Vintage Guitar interview:

"It's a wild night at San Francisco's Paradise Lounge on a typically chilly August night. The Mermen's main visionary and lead guitarist, Jim Thomas, has his work cut out for him. Unexpectedly, a short time before the gig, Thomas had broken his left thumb at the band's rehearsal studio. Most guitarists would have likely aborted their show in such circumstances. But not Thomas. He's determined to get through the gig, broken thumb or not..."

Interview continues at Vintage Guitar...

MERMEN www.mermen.com

An incredible instrumental band redefining a new dimention of "Surf" for some and simply being great, heady music to most:
Jim Thomas - Guitar, surfer
Allen Whitman - Bass, screams
Martyn Jones - Drums, artist/painter, reads strange literature.

All-Music Guide Mermen entry:

One of the odder and more wonderful bands to emerge from the surf music revival, the Mermen race between high-octane surf anthems and spaced-out blasts of psychedelia.

From CD NOW Review:

"The Mermen mine the same treasure of '60s instrumental surf rock that a few indie-rockers-in-disguise have caricatured (i.e. Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet), but not only do they set themselves apart by attacking the style with an almost academic will and precision, they raise it to new, previously unseen places"

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