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A B O U T

The Mermen are an American rock band from San Francisco, California that formed in 1989.  The group’s sound was originally rooted in instrumental surf and psychedelic music of the 1960s. Although their music delves into many genres, the sound is non-commercial and is mainly influenced by the band’s founder, songwriter and guitarist Jim Thomas’ modern melodic visions. The band’s music is entirely instrumental and “does a good job of defying description”, not fitting neatly into any musical genre.  In concert, the Mermen always perform as a trio: electric guitar, electric bass, and drums (Jim Thomas on guitar,  Jennifer Burnes on bass, Martyn Jones on drums).  Their music is rooted in the kind of instrumental “surf” music sound made by the Ventures, Dick Dale, Link Wray, and Jack Nitzsche (e.g. The Lonely Surfer).  Their sound is often described as distinctly of the American West (especially the West Coast).  This is an American sound; think Aaron Copland and bluegrass, (Jim played in the bluegrass flatpicking championships in Winfield, Kansas in 1977).  It is a unique sound influenced by Native American, cowboy and transpacific sounds.  One writer dubbed the Mermen’s sonic signature as “the sound of California”.  During live shows, Mermen songs often morph into lengthy improvised variations on a theme -a la the Grateful Dead- with new pieces of music created on the spot.

The Mermen have received an extraordinary amount of positive critical review from music press where the songs are described as “instrumental tone poems”,  “sonic landscapes”, “wordless odes”.  With well over 100 original instrumental compositions to their name, the Mermen have a diverse, expansive repertoire spanning many moods.  The Mermen have received numerous “Best Of” awards and have released 12 albums.

Words used to describe Mermen music:  “tribal”, “melodic”, “ethereal”, “soulful”, “earthy”, “poetic”, “dreamy”, “oceanic”, “dramatic”, “beautiful”, “hypnotic”, “heavy”, “muscular”, “deep”, “dreamy”, “emotional”, “symphonic”— even “spiritual” and “mystical”. The music has appeared in dramatic films, plays, commercials, documentaries, surf films, television shows, and on radio.

The Mermen have toured extensively in the USA, headlining venues such the Fillmore in San Francisco, The Continental Club in Austin, Texas, Esalen in Big Sur, and the Viper Room in Hollywood. The Mermen have performed with a diverse number of artists: David Byrne,  Jimmy Buffet, Tiny Tim, The Cramps, Todd Rundgren, David Lindley,  Junior Brown, Hot Tuna, The Yardbirds,  The Dirty Three, Morphine, String Cheese Incident, Midnight Oil, Pennywise, Rancid, Agent Orange,  Social Distortion, Nancy Sinatra, Lee Hazelwood, Cake, Dick Dale, The Ventures, and many more.  They performed at Burning Man Festival 10 years in a row.  The Mermen have performed most years at the big wave surfing competition at Maverick’s in Half Moon Bay,  California.  Jeff Clark, well-known Maverick’s big wave surfer called the Mermen, “the official band of Maverick’s”.  Grant Washburn, big wave surfer and filmmaker, currently working on a film about big wave surfing legend, Greg Noll, (in production, release slated for late 2018), had this to say about The Mermen:

“Jim Thomas and his fantastic Mer-people have inspired me from the moment I heard them.
They have the rare ability to create music that conjures the kind of adrenaline we find in giant Maverick’s surf.
Greg Noll is the ultimate extreme surfer, and this historic film demanded serious music.
When I’m looking for Big-Wave sound, I come straight to Jim.  Powerful, heavy, elegant;  this stuff makes me want to charge!
It fits Greg’s legendary footage like a glove, and I couldn’t be more stoked with the magic combination that has been created.
Simply epic.”

-Grant  Washburn,  (big wave surfer/filmmaker)

JIM THOMAS

Guitar, Composer, Founder

In past lives, Jim Thomas was a pink-shoe clad nightclub dancer, prankish restaurant waiter, and cookie baker by moonlight. Now, as founder of the Mermen, Jim is the guitarist and composer of their music and the producer of their albums. He grew up in the late 50’s and early 60’s, a New Jersey kid of Greek and Polish heritage raised in the shadow of New York City, the son of an electrical engineer. Though popular and even admired in school he dumped the social whirl for the surf, eventually living out of his car. At a certain cataclysmic tipping point he was directed towards the West, eventually ending up, like so many, staring with sleep-deprived eyes at the Pacific Ocean and planning his next move. He worked for a while selling public address and sound reinforcement systems, where he met future Mermen bassist Allen Whitman in 1989. While Jim was writing and recording the original songs that would eventually end up as the first Mermen album “Krill Slippin”, Allen heard his compositions, and together they decided to make a recording. A short ad in a local paper stating simply “Surf Bongos” brought in Martyn Jones, and the Mermen were born. This was a new era for Jim, now 35 and who, up until this point, had never heard Dick Dale and had only played music for himself.

Jim went on to compose and produce five more highly-acclaimed albums with the Mermen over the next eleven years. Ever restless, walk into Jim Thomas’ work space these days and you get of glimpse of the obsessive and inquiring mind behind the music. Here is a fully equipped recording studio, cluttered with surfboards, guitars, and all kinds of electronic gizmos and inventions are books on music, art, technology, poetry, the ocean and surfing. Jim cites the soundtrack of definitive surf movie The Endless Summer as imprinting upon him the dreamy and poetic notions of the surfing ethos, and a sense of something that is quintessentially “California Dreamin”. A passionate surfer for over 30 years, he will tell you The Endless Summer movie may have been the most influential inspirational event that led to his “life” as a surfer/so-called surf musician. Somewhere along the line music making became inextricably fused with surfing. The threads have woven together in a lush Hendrixian, “1983 A Merman I Will Turn to Be” orchestral tapestry that is the Mermen’s music. The band’s name “MERMEN” was derived from the Hendrix tune.

The Mermen tale has unfolded over the last 20 years, but is not yet finished. Jim is currently busy composing and recording the band’s as-yet-untitled next release. Never far from the sea, he resides in a beach town in Central California.

Individual projects include:

• Thrasher Magazine article: “Meet the Voodoo Chile”, April 1993 (click to read) 
• Featured speaker at The Exploratorium, San Francisco, on topics ranging from natural sounds to Indian music, October 1997
• Composer of original music for the film “Ocean Tribe” (1997)
• Composer of original music for the feature film “Steal Me”, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005
• Performances with the likes of Prairie Prince, Bobby Vega and the punk outfit “Agent Orange.”

 

Interviews with Jim:

MARTYN JONES

DRUMS

Martyn was first exposed to music as a toddler while watching the house band at THE AKEY DACKEY, a burlesque club in Liverpool England owned by his father. He was fascinated by the drums and would sit in the wings and bang on biscuit tins while drummer Stubby Stubbs pounded out stripper rhythms on stage. The club was sold in 1964 and Martyn immigrated to San Francisco with his parents.

Although he majored in film and television production in college, playing the drums has always been his priority. He has performed with the likes of THE KRONOS QUARTET, TINY TIM and JOHN LEE HOOKER.

Martyn also works as an actor; He recently appeared as a security guard in NEIL YOUNG’S ROCK OPERA, GREENDALE, as the drummer and Jewish porn king in MY DEAD UNCLE’S BAND, and as the mean spirited corporate goon in TEENAGE LYCANTHROPE. Martyn also acted as consultant for the surf music chapter of THE DRUMMERS BIBLE.

Martyn has a small home recording studio and is currently working on two projects:

DONNER; A MUSICAL CELEBRATION OF AMERICA’S FAVORITE CANNIBALS  and SPIRITS DRIFT, THE STORY OF INSECTS AND SNAKES.  (a rock opera about The Beatles and Monty Python).

He has also made a mellow guitar album for preschool and kindergarten children to be played during nap time. This one is called-
NICEY NICE NICE, Nap time favorites.  Here is a link to some samples.
www.scungeindustries.com/music_menu.htm
www.scungeindustries.com

Martyn currently resides in San Mateo, California and welcomes any correspondence:
phone: 650 455 5111
email: scunge33@yahoo.com

JENNIFER BURNES

 BASS GUITAR

Step into any club where Jennifer Burnes is playing and you’ll likely think the walls are coming down. That is because she is known for her earth-shaking, straight-ahead bass style. This girl likes to rock!

Jennifer was always influenced by the sound of drums and guitar, with no understanding of the bass, and no musical background, besides controlling the volume and “Feeling” knobs on a radio. When she was 17 years old, her big brother bought her a fretless Fender Jazz Bass, she learned 40 songs in 4 days, and started playing music that week four nights a week with a group of local legendary musicians “George Rios & the Get Tights” in Nevada City, CA, for 7 years. During that time she formed an all original female band “G-String”. In the early 90’s Jennifer connected with various groups throughout Northern California including “The Crazy Daisies” from Hayward and “Freudian Trip” from Sacramento. She then went on to form a hometown popular six piece band,” Motherwheel” with drummer Brian Daniels, who later introduced Jennifer and her bandmates to The Mermen. Upon hearing the music, Jennifer was an instant fan, and went out and bought all their records. She finally was able to see The Mermen live in Lake Tahoe in 1997, and within a year she was collaborating with guitarist Jim Thomas, and drummer Shigemi Komiyama, on a surf cover band “The Shitones”. In 2000 Jennifer Burnes joined The Mermen as bassist.   

The Mermen play a sophisticated music and Jennifer meets the challenge of playing demanding improvisational instrumental music. Her bass playing has been described as, “Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane) meets Stooges, meets Iron Maiden”. She has a bombastic powerful tribal meets punk sound. She sometimes plays her bass like a drum, smashing out big harmonic chords, and then playing lyrical and melodic, intuitive and sensual bass lines. In the world of rock bass, few can match her raw power or her ability to express deep feeling in her one of a kind and unique style of bass playing. Jennifer’s Fender P-Bass, equipped with a whammy bar, a vintage Ampeg SVT tube amp and a custom pedal board with custom pedals board with Custom pedals help to create her deep feedback, pulsating tremolo and whale sounds. In addition to playing music, Jennifer has also held roles as booking manager and poster artist for the Mermen and Shitones. She is a jack of all trades from building recording studios, to repairing cars, homes, instruments and equipment. One of her greatest passions in life is producing sounds that are “full of life and rich in tone”.

“Turn Up The Feeling” is a phrase Jennifer used  from childhood, when asking her mom to crank the tone knob up.
She has a deep respect for the ocean and rivers. She is active in the surfing community helping out at Richard Schmidt’s surf camp in the summertime. 
 

PREVIOUS & OTHER MUSICIANS

ALLEN WHITMAN

BASS GUITAR

Allen’s page coming soon

SHIGEMI KOMIYAMA
R I P

DRUMS

SHITONES page coming soon

DANIEL GUAQUETA

DRUMS

Daniel Guaqueta – Topic

PRAIRIE PRINCE

DRUMS

prairieprince.com

VINCE LITTLETON

DRUMS

JOE GOLDMARK

STEEL GUITAR

joegoldmark.com

 JOHNNY HAMILTON

BASS GUITAR
SHITONES

DAVE JESS

BASS GUITAR
SHITONES

THAT 1 GUY

(Mike Silverman)
BASS

MIKE SILVERMAN

BASS GUITAR

ROGER ROCHA

GUITAR

 RANDY CLARK

GUITAR

KEITH GRAVES

BASS GUITAR, DRUMS

ST. JOE of R ‘n’ R

VOCAL, COWBELL

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