Wild fire
Prolific musical pinch hitter and live wire Ben Chasny shreds with Comets on Fire and probes the pages of Octavio Paz as Six Organs of Admittance.

By Kimberly Chun

MYTH MAKING IS for suckers who want to set themselves up for outsize expectations, tractor-loads of derision, and heavy-duty comedowns. And Six Organs of Admittance's fractured folkie, Wire ("New Weird America") magazine cover kid, and Comets on Fire axe-grinder Ben Chasny is no rum dummy, ready to serve himself up as a quirky bizkit, looney tune, or loose cannon. "I'm an extremely average person," he swore from a key club turned recording studio in Benton Harbor, Mich., where he's making a new Six Organs full-length for Drag City. "Now I'm walking a completely straight line."

There's a line around here somewhere. Despite the camouflage of normalcy, the Oakland singer-songwriter doth protest too much. After all, by most accounts, Chasny is about as humdrum as a kick in the craw, as predictable as a dust storm, and as average as Bobby Fisher, sans the dementia and anti-Semitism.

Comets on Fire vocalist-guitarist Ethan Miller, for instance, cracks himself up recalling Chasny's high jinks. There was the time when, while under the influence of ex-Velvet Undergroundling Angus MacLise, Chasny decided he wouldn't play if he wasn't feeling it or if he sensed bad vibes, and so he threw his guitar down and sped out the back door of a Eureka club. He was already down the alley in back when his then-band, Plague Lounge, realized he was gone. "That band fucking hated him for it, and obviously they couldn't stay together for too long, because he'd do that kind of shit at all kinds of shows!" Miller marveled, obviously tickled.

Chasny's spontaneous combustions continued as Comets on Fire tried to promote him from an occasional touring member to a permanent, writing part of the group, after their second album, Field Recordings from the Sun (Ba Da Bing!). "We'd come out and fucking start the first song, and he'd just fucking go crazy and take his guitar and smash it into the ground and just throw it at somebody that's standing at the bar and then tip his amp over and just go running out the front door or something – within four fucking seconds of the start of the first song. It was like, 'What?' " Miller gasped. "And he'd say some bullshit later: 'Dude! Do you want to give them some fucking stupid rock 'n' roll for 40 minutes, or do you wanna give them the most intense performance of their life in four and a half fucking seconds, man? Now that's fucking intense. That's fucking awesome!'

"It's a funny story now, and we weren't mad then, but it's just, like, dude, there's a whole side of us, and a side of Ben too, which has to do with listening to each other as musicians – to create some music!" Miller continued. "That's one of the main points of this group, not fucking performance."

Yet somehow, despite antics that are the stuff of legend, if not myth – and they've gone down as recently as this year's South by Southwest showcase for Alternative Tentacles (which rereleased Comets' first self-titled album) – music still gets made. A lot of it. Chasny has acquired quite a reputation as a madly prolific and accomplished singer and guitar picker, recording seven releases on his bedroom four-track since the crash and burn of the rock-improv Plague Lounge and the 1998 start of his solo Six Organs project, named after the Buddhist reference to the senses.

CDs such as Compathia (Holy Mountain, 2003) and For Octavio Paz (Time-Lag, 2003; Holy Mountain, 2004) demonstrate a range one might compare to Neil Young's. Compathia (named after Chasny's favorite Paz term for the closeness and empathy that linger after a longtime couple's romance and sex life have faded) captures a vaguely sacred and elated, ethereal union of drone, ragalike meditations, dissonant folk, sitar, and ragged, jagged climactic noise (the latter two generated by Miller), whereas the recently reissued For Octavio Paz throws a light on Chasny's technical prowess with beautiful instrumentals that wouldn't be terribly out of place alongside his father's Leo Kottke, John Fahey, and John Martyn recordings, which he grew up listening to and learning from in once-rustic McKinleyville outside Eureka.

Ben Goldberg, who runs Ba Da Bing! and released Field Recordings and Chasny's single-song Manifestation EP (2000), is a convert. "I think Ben is the greatest guitarist I've ever seen perform in my life," he testified. "I think sometimes he can't even keep up with his own talent. He is so manic in the amount of records he puts out and amount of stuff he does – I think he's only done one-twentieth of what his potential is."

A member of Badgerlore with 7 Year Rabbit Cycle's Rob Fisk, as well as Comets, Chasny believes there's still plenty of music in him to go around. "Mmmm," he hummed, prefacing each comment with a soft, small "om"-like drone of his own. "I always see a couple records ahead. I just hear these sounds, and I just have to put them down. 'I have to do this record. I have to put out the next record because I hear it in my head.' "

Chasny went to Eureka High School – along with Miller, Comets bassist Ben Flashman, and drummer Utrillo Kushner (a.k.a. Belcher) – growing up in the area's "surreal, almost supernatural small-town environment," as Miller put it, which was populated by "little-kid bike gangs trying to dig up torn-up Playboys in the gulch or something, running from a pack of wild dogs or heavy metal dudes trying to steal your bike." A few years ago, boredom and mutual friends eventually drew Chasny to Santa Cruz, where Miller and Flashman were living. He moved into Echoplex player Noel Harmonson's house just as Harmonson relocated to San Francisco, and after he got Harmonson's job at the local Streetlight Records and then "moved into" his band, Chasny realized, "I'm kind of slowly taking over his life."

Now that he's well worked into Comets (which is now completely based in the Bay Area), Chasny appreciates their uncompromising songwriting style. "Usually somebody comes up with a riff, and then it passes through about five days' ridicule, harassment, embarrassment while everybody makes fun of it," he explained, "and if the riff still stands up on its own two feet after that, it might work its way into a song, which is why we don't have very many songs ... the weak stuff rarely gets through."

Call it rock according to Darwin, which explains Chasny's scrappy response when he, for instance, fielded mild heckles from Freedom From label owner Matthew St. Germain at a Hemlock Tavern performance last year. Chasny turned around, started improvising lyrics about St. Germain, and eventually sassed his visitor back as good as he got. "I deal with hecklers pretty well because I'm usually pretty hammered and I can just ... attack them," Chasny offered.

"I heard on his last Six Organs tour that he was full of that kind of fire!" Miller said affectionately. "That's not even feedback into a loud amp – that's a dude with an acoustic guitar singing pretty songs, fucking insulting and assaulting the audience between songs. I heard it was a real menagerie."

The tussles haven't stopped the Six Organs releases: 2005 will see the new Drag City CD, recorded for the first time in an honest-to-om studio; an album under the name August Born; and possibly another CD. It suits Chasny, who said he'd much rather make like a badger, hide out from the limelight, and issue a stream of recordings than tour at this point in his 30-year existence.

"I don't even like going to Comets shows. I don't like going to shows! I'm getting old – I don't like to stay out late at night," he griped. "Y'know, it reaches a certain time, 12 o'clock, and I should be drinking in my house."