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Initially, we intended to pop out a second Project Watch this week, looking at a couple of different creative projects, otherwise related to one another. Well, we had some near misses on nailing down that second contender, though the first half of our intended duo certainly came through. And there’s an interesting connection to last week’s entry with that successful interview subject. Then, we talked about Dan O’Saben’s portrait series, The Doors of East St. Louis. This week, it’s his kid brother coming up with some thoughts about his love of horror films, which has extended into a recent series of music projects that are definitely tied-in to his cinematic first love.
If Tim O’Saben’s name sounds familiar, there’s a chance that Fragile Porcelain Mice is your gateway to it, though he’s also played with groups like the long-running Ultraman, the short-lived The Glare of Day, and the currently practicing The Adoring Heirs. As a songwriter, he’s also been toying with multiple projects outside of The Adoring Heirs, with two recently released CDs, both available in digital form.
The Killer’s Journal is, as the name might indicate, music set to the presumed words of a serial killer’s notebook. And The Brain Invasion is the name of an ad hoc group that’s he’s started with veteran character actor Danny Hicks. Together, they’ve released and EP called Slightly Concussed, which, as you might imagine, is getting talked up in various corners of the horror subculture.
St. Louis is a town with no shortage of connections to that world, whether it’s the shock offerings of Wicked Pixel Cinema, or the dozen zombie-themed entries that come with every summer’s 48 Hour Film Project. Adding a music component is O’Saben, who also co-hosts a horror podcast. We touch base on that topic, among several others, as we piece together O’Saben’s love affair with all things chilling.
For those of us not as hipped to the career of Danny Hicks, give us a sense of why he was a such a fun person to work with on a musical project.
Danny Hicks is a really well respected actor who broke into the business with his close friends Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, and is in most of their films. He is probably most remembered for his roles as Jake from Evil Dead 2 and Skip, the one-legged thug from Darkman. Danny and I have been friends for a couple of years now, and he is probably the most down-to-Earth Hollywood actor that I have gotten to know. I think the fact he is a Midwest guy—Detroit—and that really shows through with his attitude toward people. I love listening to him tell stories about his career and life in general. It's pretty surreal to hear him talk about people he's known and worked with, some of which are household names, like Liam Neeson, Ringo Starr, Tim Allen, Kevin Costner, just to name a few.
When Danny was in town to record the CD, we also shot a music video for "The Ballad of Jake and Bobby Joe," that is up on YouTube now. We used my band, The Adoring Heirs, as our "stand-in band" to back us, and some friends and family as the crowd watching us. Danny couldn't have been nicer to every single person who came to help out. When we were finished filming, we had a little wrap party and Danny spent time with each and every person. Everyone who was here was very impressed with him as a decent and fun-loving human being.
We had such a good time doing the CD that we are planning on recording a follow-up this summer.
Talk about the songs for this project, and how they came together—are these old tracks, taking on a new life? New tracks built from scratch? Who wrote what? And how did the recording come together?
I had started toying with the idea of doing a CD with songs about movies that were made or starred people that I have gotten to know in the horror community. I thought it would be fun to actually hand these people songs that I had produced about the movies that they had done, or worked on. I started with two songs. One called "The Hiding Game" for J.D. Feigelson, who wrote and produced The Dark Night Of The Scarecrow; the other was "The Ballad of Jake and Bobby Joe," for Danny from his Evil Dead 2 role. My intent was to record the CD first and then give people like J.D. and Danny the CDs as gifts when I would see them at conventions.
I was talking to Danny one night, and he seemed a little down in the dumps, so I decided to email him an mp3 of a rough demo of "Jake and Bobby Joe" to cheer him up, and he loved it! We got to talking, and I found out that he had always wanted to be in a band and record an album. He even said it was on his "bucket list.” So, we decided that we would do a CD together that was mostly about his career. We enlisted the help of my friend and bandmate from The Adoring Heirs, "Sir" Ian Baird, to help produce and play drums. We kept two songs that I had already completed that had nothing to do with Danny (including the previously mentioned "The Hiding Game" plus "Who Goes There?" based on the book that The Thing was derived from), and then worked on new songs that were based on ideas from Danny. Danny would feed me some lyrics, and also would give me guidance in writing some for him. That was a lot of fun, especially the songs that poke fun at Bruce Campbell. Thankfully, Danny and Bruce are very close. So, Bruce got the joke and has even been helping us promote the CD on his own website.
After the CD was written and recorded, Ian Baird and I spent countless hours in post[-production] making sure we got the most out of everything and the best mix/master possible. Ian also edited and did sound design for "The Ballad Of Jake And Bobby Joe," video. I can't overstate how important he was to this project and how hard he worked on it.
Any possibility of songs winding up on a soundtrack, game, podcast, or other application beyond the disc itself? If so, how's that process work?
As of now, we are just focusing on promoting the CD. The way things are normally done with music in the film industry is you license the music to a filmmaker for a fee, or a piece of the royalties. There aren't any plans to license the music to anyone, but I know we are open to that possibility. With the way this whole project has come together, nothing would surprise me at this point.
Zombies. A continuing cultural phenomenon. A passing fad. Where we at with this, Tim?
Zombies... ah yes. Well, zombie movies are both popular and cheap to do. Which explains a lot. However, I don't think it's the actual zombie creature that draws people to these films. Most zombie movies are really plague/virus outbreak movies. I feel the monster in those films is the virus more than the zombies. A good example would be the recent film Contagion. To me, that was a zombie movie without flesh-eating zombies. Outbreaks of viral/bacterial disease are a real concern to everyone on the face of the planet. Look how people have reacted to SARS and H1N1 over the last decade, and AIDS for the last 30 years. I think the fact that a bite from someone "infected" with a zombie virus is what scares people. I don't think it's a huge leap to see that fears of catching and/or spreading disease accounts for why these films continue to strike a chord with people. These films, when done right, can really explore human nature when the survival of our species is at risk.
Tell us about your longtime fandom towards horror and indie horror, and how that lead to a podcast and a musical project like this?
Well, anyone who knows me personally knows that my true passion is movies. Much more so than music. It's frustrated a lot of people I've met over the years who want to talk music with me. It's not that I don't like it, it's just that I don't keep up with new music or trends or what's "hot." I like to create music and record it for myself. When asked over the years what my goals for music were, I always replied, "to get into films." Whether it was acting or composing didn't matter. I just wanted to be involved with filmmaking. Being an avid fan of horror films also led me to watching other types of films I otherwise would never have seen. I would never have given [certain] movies a chance, like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, and The Bridge On The River Kwai. And now these are among my all-time favorites. Horror introduced me to films and it will always be my favorite genre because of it!
So, about six years ago I started acting and composing music for the now-defunct Hack Movies, captained by Mr. Kevin Strange, who now runs Strange House Publishing. Hack Movies did really offensive, gross-out horror/comedy movies, but had a rabid cult following. We started doing conventions around the country to promote, screen, and sell our films. Over time, I became friends with a lot of people in the film/horror/convention community and truly felt as if I had found a new extended family. When Hack Movies closed its doors, I contacted a screenprinting friend from Toledo named Ben Harley that I bummed around with at the conventions, and we started doing a weekly horror-themed podcast named “The Tim-O and Harley Show.” (Tim-O is a nickname given to me when I was in Ultraman; John John got tired of me and Tim Jamison, never knowing which Tim he was talking to.) Harley and I started doing the conventions together to promote our podcast and sell his horror T-shirts that he designs.
Wanting something of my own to sell at the conventions, I decided to record solo CDs that had horror-related themes, and see if they would catch on in the community. So, I recorded Tim-O: The Killer's Journal, and it really seemed to catch on with some people. Then, the podcast really took off faster and bigger than we expected, and really helped to open the doors for me to do a project like The Brain Invasion, in addition to more of my solo records. I plan to do a follow up to my last CD which will be titled The Killer's Journal, Part Two, and one more Brain Invasion record and have them both released in the next year.
