VISIONS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW by Joseph Robert Jobe - ASSISTANT EDITOR: VISIONSMAGAZINEONLINE.COM

..VISIONSMAGAZINEONLINE.com (Visions): At what age did you start performing live and officially form Bonfire Night?

..CHUCK OWSTON / BONFIRE NIGHT (Chuck): I started playing guitar in 1959 at age 17. My first live performance was at a graduation party for East McKeesport High in 1960. I played songs by Buddy Holly. Bo Diddley and Link Wray and jammed with a drummer and a jazz trumpet player. My first "real" gig was at a teenage dance in Dec. 1960 in McKeesport in a group called The El Caminos.

..Bonfire Night was formed in 2005 as a one off acoustic group to play at the Celtic Harvest Moon coffeehouse that we have had at the Bryn Mawr Church of Christ since 1991. After the success of that show, we kept a stripped down version (that band that night had 9 members) to continue. In May of 2006 we were asked to open for Bella Morte, the goth rock band, who had just come off a tour with the Misfits. We decided to go electric, and NEVER LOOKED BACK! The personnel for that electric incarnation was: Chuck Owston, vocals, electric guitar / Josh Laughrey, keyboards (he played 12 string guitar in the acoustic format) / Lisa Pelky, violin / Harrison Dray, bass guitar / Jason D. Russell, drums.

..In 1991 I began my first Celtic acoustic band, Carnival of Souls, named after the Candace Hilligoss film of the same name, a B-grade low budget horror film. It had a number of musicians, anywhere from 5 to 10 at a time. I don't think the entire band ever played a show will all members present. It was like a band of revolving musicians. My original idea was to have it like a troupe of traveling medieval gypsies, in costume, but the other guys never really bought into the costume thing.

..I left this band in autumn of 1993 to pursue a gothic folk/medieval band called Revelations in Black. The idea was to base the sound around an ethereal girl singer, sort of like All about Eve. It had three different incarnations, with three different female singers, each one who quit for various reasons after we did a show with them. Lots of rehearsals, a few recordings are all that remain. The singers were Marie Alexander (who now resides in Holland), Vonnie Holt, and Sabrina Murphy, who now does concert sound around Pittsburgh.

..The next project, lasting exactly a year from first practice till final gig, was A Company of Knaves. This was an extension of both Revelations and Carnival -- medieval / gothic folk rock featuring Kacey Comini on vocals, tambourine, Tanya Kavalkovich on violin, Brian Lowry on hammered dulcimer, keyboards, accordion and pennywhistle. I played cittern, guitar, mandola and mandolin. We have enough material to do a retrospective CD someday.

..After this group disbanded, I did solo acoustic programs as Owl Stone the Minstrel and programs with my two daughters, Mandy and Stephanie, as Briar Rose. We also did the Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival for 6 years, 1994-1999. I returned last year to do the festival also, but found it unsatisfying, as the powers that be did not give me my own stage. Instead they wanted me to "stroll," which is detrimental to any really creative, artistic expression. You become part of the "quaint" scenery. People never even listen to an entire song. They are too busy running off to the stages and regular events like the joust. I still do bookstore, AARP, and church programs as Owl-Stone, in costume.

..As a side note, totally unrelated to what I do now: In 1998 I was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame (www.rockabillyhall.com) for recordings I did in that genre in the early 80's. These recordings surfaced on LP's and CDs overseas -- Sweden and Spain, and who knows where else. I tried to cash in on this in the late 90's but I was too old, didn't have a big enough pompadour or enough tattoos to make it in today's rockabilly scene. Besides, I'd rather do what I'm doing now -- Rock from the Dark Ages.

..Visions: Most requested song while playing live?

..Chuck: Johnny Scarecrow. That song was written as an acoustic song back in 1997. In the Jethro Tull song "Mother Goose" , Ian Anderson makes reference to a fellow in Leiscester Square called Johnny Scarecrow. That was it. Nothing about him at all. So, I decided to tell his story. He turned out to be a vengeful ghost from the 1700s rather than just a street person. Then I wondered what it would sound like in a band setting, so we put a recording band (Ebenezer Scourge) together and recorded it in 1999. It appeared on my "Traveller In Shadow" CD in 2000.

..Personnel: Chuck Owston, vocals, electric rhythm guitar / Chris Owston, lead electric guitar / Tanya Kavalkovick, violin / Dewey Gurall, bass / Mike Kolesar, drums. It's a very popular song, There's even a metal band in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England that does it in their shows. That's rather interesting, as that's where our family, the Owstons, originally came from.

..Visions: What is your own personal -BONFIRE NIGHT- favorite song?

..Chuck: Personal favorite usually changes. It's usually the song that's the newest. Right now it's "The Iron Wolf," a song taken from Lithuanian folklore. A fellow of Lithuanian extraction told me the legend of the Iron Wolf, and it gave me the idea for a song. My songs come from three major sources: History, Legend, and Folklore. That's it. Nothing from, about, or devoted to or a special person or situation. No, I don't write -those kinds- of songs.

..Visions: I gotta tell ya Chuck... - HELL MARY- is just an INCREDIBLE song that you used to perform. We LOVE that "RETRO -ROCK" sound! Tara & I found the video for it while looking through your work on You Tube. Any chance we will get to see it performed L I V E?? (You Tube VIDEO LINK)

..Chuck: Hell Mary -- This is a very a sore spot with (everyone) in the band. It's a long story --associated with Shy Kennedy, our former singer. It was a song I wrote for her and Lisa to sing. We kept having trouble with the singers getting the song to fit the instrumental passages, that we came to hate the song. I wanted the song to be more powerful and it just wasn't coming together. Plus, it was gothic, rather than a Dark Ages song, and now that we are firmly entrenched in the Dark Ages thing, so it just doesn't fit. Also, that was the only time that I sang it -- that was the St. Patrick's Day show, 2007, and Shy was in Boston, so I filled in. There are plenty of songs in our current format that you'd probably like just as well. You just haven't heard them yet.

..Visions: Can you explain your unique fusion of Celtic Historical Battle Chants combined with power chord Rock and Roll! How did you come about, or in naming your influences to form your distinctive sound? (cultural) (historical) etc..

..Chuck: My influences are many and varied. I began doing early rock n roll: Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Link Wray, Jimmy Reed. None of that 50's pop crap ... the real gritty stuff. Influenced very early by instrumental groups like the Ventures, the Jupiter C's. Had a 60's band called The Tempests that started out as strictly an instrumental band (not surf, we had no ocean, so there was none of that style), but later added a more rockabilly vocal sound. I evolved with music. When Bob Dylan came along, I was hooked on that, plus REAL American / English folk music. Not the commercial, Kingston Trio type of stuff. The gruesome murder ballads.

..Then in the late 60's, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, "Psychedelic Music", early King Crimson; into the 70's with the Who, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Black Sabbath, Free. They were all influences. In 1968 I discovered Pentangle, a mostly acoustic band that did a lot of Traditional English folk material. Great interplay between Bert Jansch and John Renbournon acoustic (later some electric) guitars. Great singer, Jacqui McShee ,who I met for the first time last year in England.

..In 1969, inspired by a review in Hit Parade, I discovered Fairport Convention and later Steeleye Span. Both did electric folk rock.It had an ancient, medieval feel to it. I was hooked on their sound, and they have been a BIG influence on me. Two of the greatest female voices in English folk -- the late Sandy Denny from Fairport -- who later recorded with Led Zep on ZoSo, and Maddy Prior from Steeleye.

..In 1991 I met Fairport for the first time near Philadelphia. The bass player invited me to come to -CROPREDY-, their giant festival in Oxfordshire. I sold an antique guitar to get the money to go. Ended up doing concerts in England, and busked on historic Cropredy Bridge. As I did last year also -- there's a video of me doing T.Rex's "Ride A White Swan" on -YouTube-, a bit of medieval whimsy on the mandolin. Everything that came before has going to be into Bonfire Night -- that's why we have a Celtic / English sound, plus a hard rock sound, plus I like clean vocals, so there's that.

..Newest influences have been the Scandanavian folk metal bands: Turisas, for example, from Finland, who sing Viking songs, dress like Norsemen in fur and battle paint. Enisferum, Tyr, Battlelore, Eluevitie, Arkona (from Russia), Noman's Land (Russia). I like all these bands, but we don't sound like any of them. Also power metal bands like Hammerfall and goth rockers The Fields of the Nephilim are influences. It's quite a melting pot.

..Visions: Speaking of distinctive sound: Do you or the other guitarist’s use any special tuning?

..Chuck: I use two tunings on my guitars. I -NEVER- use standard in this band. All the songs are written and played in either D Modal (DADDAD) or E Modal (EBEEBE). I chanced upon this tuning back in 1986 and have used in for acoustic and electric Celtic / Medieval / Norse music ever since. I think this is why we have the distinctive sound we have. There are lots of drones available in these tunings. Dean Krimm, the other guitarist plays in standard tuning, as did my son, Chris, when he sat in with the band. Chris, now in Iraq, had a power trio, Crimson Burnout, in Northern Virginia. They played several shows with us.

..Visions: Who are your -professional musical- influences?

..Chuck: Influences range from early rock n roll to the latest Finnish and Russian Folk Metal bands and everywhere in between. Probably the biggest influences are the late 60's folk rock bands from England: Fairport Convention, Pentangle and Steeleye Span. "Without those bands I probably would have never been influenced to try the ancient music that eventually led to Bonfire Night".

..Plus there are many influences from (literature and history): The works of Robert E. Howard, Harold Lamb, books on the Barbarian Invasions of the Roman Empire, Ivan hoe, Robin Hood, histories of the Crusades, the Black Death, the Inquisition, Genghis Khan, Attila, Tamerlane, the Vikings, the Saxon Chronicles of Bernard Cornwell. Many books on English and Germanic folklore. And then there are the (movies) I saw while growing up: The Adventures of Robin Hood (Errol Flynn), Ivanhoe, Knights of the Round Table, Helen of Troy, The Vikings (Kirk Douglas), Sign of the Pagan (Jack Palance as Attila) and of course, Conan the Barbarian, by Crom!

..An example of all this is the song "Mother Dust." I teach a class on Wednesday nights at our church called "The Mysteries of the Crusades." Way back in the summer we were studying the First Crusade and spent an entire lesson on The Siege of Antioch. The road to Antioch was called the Road of Bones because so many Crusaders perished there in the mountains and on the Turkish plains.

..That day I had also listened to Within Temptation's song "Mother Earth." The thought came to me while driving home, "In the desert when you die, you don't return to Mother Earth, you return to Mother Dust." I immediately had this mental vision of a dusty cloaked and hooded female figure, reaching out for the dying Crusaders with rotting hands, dragging them into her deadly embrace. This was the imagery behind "the specter Mother Dust." By the time I was home I'd already written two verses and a chorus for the song. I never consciously sit down and say, "I think I'll write a song." They just come to me like that one did.

..Visions: Why no -COVER SONGS- played in your live sets?

..Chuck: We used to do "Matty Groves," (VIDEO on YOUTUBE), it's a song that's 500 years old and has been done for years by Fairport Convention. We plan to add Jethro Tull's "Broadsword" to our set someday. It could have been written especially for us. The problem with cover songs is that there just aren't many of them that fit what we are doing. Certainly "Deuce" by KISS, "Free Bird," or "Every Rose Has It's Thorn" don't fit the format. Besides... I'd rather write my own stuff -- that makes it fresh and new to a listening audience.

..Visions: What was the -BIGGEST GIG- that you have ever played? ..What was the -WORST GIG- that you have ever played?

..Chuck: Biggest gig was at Pegasus in April 2008. We opened for gothic rockers Ego Likeness and solo artist Voltaire. The place was packed and the audience was amazing. There's a video of us doing "Matty Groves" on -(You Tube)- from that show. That's my son Chris on lead guitar in the hood and the white mask. Worst gig -- Bloomfield Bridge Tavern. The sound was terrible and no one came to the show. Our rock audience generally doesn't leave the South Side of Pittsburgh. Our gothic audience only comes to see us at goth shows. Go figure...

..Visions: What’s the status of your -STUDIO- CD? What will the -SETLIST- be?

..Chuck: Been working consistently on the studio CD. It'll probably be out next Summer. We don't want to rush it. I spent two hours the other day laying down vocals and rhythm guitar parts on three songs. It's being recorded at StarGlider Studios in Gibsonia, PA with engineering by Rowan Poole of Persephone's Dream, the prog rock band. He seems to understand where we're coining from, and has given us valuable input. Also on one song we feature classically trained Tiffany Apan sharing the vocal chores, with her partner Jason English on incredible shredding guitar work. Think Nightwish with Yngwie Malmstein on lead guitar. Tiffany will probably also adding some ethereal vocals over the top of my parts on several songs. We still have to work all that out. She lives next door to the studio, so that's an easy one.

..The cover was done by Laura Sava from Timsoara, Romania. I saw her work online and was immediately impressed by it. She took photos that my girlfriend Debbie took and did amazing things with them. The front cover shows myself, my bass player John, and model Becky Bauer (as Elsa of the Rhine) in an action shot, dressed as 8th century warriors. John and I are in battle paint. The back cover is a band shot in costume, with swords, axes and shields. The set list varies. Songs come and go. New things are added as the band learns them. On the CD, we also have Lars Stavdal from the Norwegian band Wallachia on a spoken word intro as the Voice of Odin, speaking in Norwegian at the beginning of "Welcome To The Corpse Hall", our song about Valhalla.

..Visions: Do you use female back up singers? Why don’t we see them live on stage?

..Chuck: From Sept. 2006 to May 2008 we had Shy Kennedy in the band as a backup and occasional lead singer. She left to pursue other things. The Bonfire Night concept was just not her thing. The same can be said of our former violin player and occasional backup singer, Lisa Pelky. She moved to Hawaii. She really was not committed to the Bonfire Night concept either -- she also fronted an indie pop type of band, and that was her real passion. We have used Tiffany Apan in shows occasionally (and will on the CD) and also Katie Ramone has done some backup singing with us. She added a real different flair to the band at the Penn State "Battle of the Bands," which We Won!!

..Visions: Since we met you, the line-up has had some critical changes in your band, Bonfire Night. How long does it take to break in the new guy? Do you do a lot of rehearsal time.

..Chuck: Not really critical changes. Jim Orr came aboard after Shy Kennedy left. He had sung with me in Carnival of Souls (1992-93), so he was familiar with this type of material. He didn't do the Cafe Supreme (in Irwin, PA) show because he had to work the next morning and it was too far to drive to get there. I gave him a CD of material and he was ready by the next rehearsal -- he'd learned everything. An amazing harmony singer.

..Visions: What are some of the other bands you have shared the stage with both known -LOCALLY- or -NATIONAL- acts?

..Chuck: Local bands: Science Fiction Idols, 4 Barrel Ghost, The Cosmosonics, Radioactive, Pain Dogs, Chip Dimonick, The Burning Path, Narse, Vequinox, Four Roses. National Bands: Bella Morte, Gypsy Nomads, Voltaire, Ego Likeness, Crimson Burnout.

..Visions: Blood and Thunder/ Darkest Angel sound as if they belong in a film’s closing credits. These are very commercial sounding original works from you. Is this where you want to see your work taking you?

..Chuck: That would be nice to be in a film soundtrack, hear yourself up there on the big screen. The closest I ever got to that was my song "Home Fried Blues" was used in a WQED TV special by Rick Sebek called "Pennsylvania Diners." I recorded the song back in 1977 (during my 'blues phase') with my brother Jim on electric piano, the late Nick Brack on bass, HB Bennett on drums. I did a spoken wo4rk sort of Tom Waits thing (it was dedicated to him on the LP) about Scotty's Diner in Wilkinsburg. It's a place where the musicians all hung out after gigs in the 70's.

..Visions: Where do you usually play -LOCALLY- here in Pittsburgh? How can BONFIRE NIGHT be booked?

..Chuck: Excuses, Rex Theatre, 31st Street Pub... Goth shows. "We could play other venues, but our audience probably wouldn't show up".

..Either e mail at: chuckowston@yahoo.com or by phone at 412/418-6631. This is our CURRENT LINEUP: Chuck Owston -- vocals, songwriting, lead / rhythm electric guitar, octave mandolin. John Kerr -- bass guitar. Jason D. Russell -- drums. Dean Krimm -- lead / rhythm electric guitar. Jim Orr -- harmony vocals. That's it!

Jan 10 2009 10:00P 31st Street Pub Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Feb 13 2009 10:30P Excuses Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Feb 27 2009 7:30P Borders East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Mar 14 2009 9:00P Smiling Moose Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Come and MEET US! ..VISIONSMAGAZINEONLINE.com.. <Tara & Joe> ...... We will be shooting NEW VIDEO FOOTAGE of these EVENTS!!

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