Profile: Casco Bay Weekly August 20, 1992

Descending into John Etnier's suburban basement, one's appreciation for innovative design is bumped up a notch. Typical of such environs there's a bit of "watch your step here- sorry about the mess" detritus of contemporary living at the foot of the stairs, but with a right turn one enters his studio, whose modest size contains some of the most advanced technologies available in sound recording.

Etnier settles into a rolling swivel chair and glances around the banks of samplers, delay lines, computers and other staples of the business. He points out the latest in digital advances, a toaster oven-sized eight-track recorder. Resting beside his new mixing board, the recorder appears almost low-tech by comparison, but Etnier offhandedly points out that the box has significantly fast-forwarded the recording business since its recent introduction. It's one of the musician/engineer/producer's latest weapons in the battle to get the best possible sound.

Etnier has always been intrigued by better design. Sitting surrounded by the oppressive sameness of his machines' black facades- the way virtually all equipment has looked for the past decade- he smiles and recalls how he and an old friend hated the silver metal of '60s and '70s technology they spray-painted all their equipment flat black more than 20 years ago to get a more industrial look. He's clearly amused by the shift in the zeitgeist.

As usual, Etnier is working on several projects simultaneously. He's doing some "sound design" for a dance piece being performed at the Portland Performing Arts Center's dance festival at the end of August. Another collaborative project involves a writer, a visual artist and a bookbinder (something to do with a mythical island, four different periods from prehistory into the future, etc.- the usual thing). The Maine Composers' Forum has contracted him to record their current season's worth of six or seven concerts.

But for months the project closest to his heart has been a new recording of his own work. He's bouncing his ideas off longtime associates Mark and Joe Wainer, who have played with him and assisted him throughout the right musical doors for almost 20 years. He claims the latest project is both just about finished or just beginning, depending on how he views it. Clearly he's dead in the middle of the creative process.

Etnier's first kick at Maine's musical stasis came in the early '70s. Fresh out of high school, Etnier moved to a commune in Brunswick and organized the Granite Farm Band. With ideas a bit outside the mainstream ("listening to Ornette Coleman and Stockhausen was the tree of life"), the multi-instrumentalist guided that band's evolution into The Same Band, a compelling jazz-punk ensemble that accurately reflected the disarray of the times.

"It was chaos but it was controlled," says Etnier. Ultimately he released a recording of that seminal band, but with mixed results. "As far as I know nobody in the group likes the record," he says. "They all hate it. One guy took the five or six copies I mailed to him and buried them in his back yard."

His next project was simply titled The Demo. With a "Here's what we can do- give us a chance" attitude he took the finished product around to radio stations and record stores in New England trying to get a record company to take notice. Beautiful packaging, interesting and well-played music might just add up to... nobody noticed.

After10 years of knocking around the periphery of pop music, Etnier began working on a string of commissions writing music for Portland's choreographers. Stoney Cook, Stephanie Leighton, Dance Formation and Ram Island have all used his compositions.

"I was doing a lot of stuff developed by the process," he says "A lot of pieces were written because the technology made some certain thing possible. You could create loops of certain sounds and the process of making almost became the process of composition." The dance music was commercially released under the titles Performance and Arterial.

To finance all the opportunities to work on these projects, as well as the lean periods between, Etnier has worked in recording studios making other musicians sound better. After being partners in a couple of ventures (Planet Of The Tapes and Megaphone), Etnier finds it easier to work at his home studio in Cape Elizabeth. Speaking as to why he is only now making another rock recording, Etnier is as straightforward as the flick of an on/off switch.

"I was motivated by the fact that it had been 10 years since The Demo, he says. But asking him about the artistic muse elicits answers as elliptical and unintentionally elusive as much of his dance composition. Etnier takes a long pause and searches for an explanation.

"I seem to be compelled to do this," he says. The reason to do it is to do it." He looked a bit vexed by the question.

And what are the possibilities for the new project? "I don't think there is any point (in tailoring the music to commercial concerns)," he says. I don't have any illusions about my own ability to work within a commercial framework for very long without doing something stupid to blow it all. For anybody... to base their hopes for getting signed with a major label... it's stupid. You might as well hope to win the Megabucks.

"The last person (from Maine) who made a national splash in the music business was Rudy Vallee or maybe Dick Curless," Etnier concludes. He holds that hard reality in check for a moment, then slips in "I guess we're due for another one.".

Jim Pinfold