Two-Time Loser, Three-Time Winner
Justin Pearson
A lot of what I have been part of this far in my “career” has been dictated by chance, mistake, ignorance, and if it actually does exist, luck. I’ll be honest, I’m not really a fan of reading owner's manuals. I’ve never been diagnosed with ADHD, but it seems like I have elements of that in my personality. If you take a look at the projects I have been associated with for the last twenty-nine years, it would certainly lead one to assume so.
There was a point where a band that I am in, The Locust, was touring pretty relentlessly. And by touring, I mean six humans driving around in a van with a shit load of gear, all over the planet, playing to a handful of people for very little monetary payment. We never really made a decent enough amount of money to feasibly warrant days off. If we had one, it was a logistical decision to get us from one location to another. Because of this, when we’d have issues with our gear, we would end up compromising our live set - there was never enough time to stop at a place to purchase gear we needed, or a repair shop to get things fixed in the short amount of time we had.
In 2003 or 2004, just after Plague Soundscapes was released, we were on a tour that ran off of a previous tour and was about to lead to another. I remember being somewhere in Florida and my Line 6 FM 4 pedal had crapped out. Bobby Bray and I both depended on them for our sound and to get through our live set. So we’d normally buy a new one, gut it, and swap out the innards, which would allow us to return the broken one with a new casing. At some point, I just decided to lug a back-up FM 4 with me on tour, as a means of security. I had also downsized what was on my pedal board at that point, and ended up putting both on it, partially due to the fact that neither one had all four of the programmable setting switches working. I accidentally started running one into another, which created one of the most wonderful and horribly annoying tones I have ever created. This specific tone made its way onto songs like “Marry Mortuary” by Some Girls, and, more recently, “Church of the Motherfuckers” by Dead Cross.
It was the accident of running one pedal into the same exact pedal which created a sound that sounded unique to me. Was it correct? I don’t actually know what is musically correct for the most part. As far as notation, as I assume it shifts the actual note from bass to something that is not accurate when it comes out of my amp. But in my mind, and to my ears, it sounds like a jacked up semi-truck engine, a broken spaceship, or a master computer about to overheat and blow up. It’s actually more percussive than anything, which is how I tend to think musically. See, I wish I were a drummer, and probably should have tried to make that my preferred instrument. Anyhow, once I started figuring out this “technique” of using multiples of the same pedals, I realized that I wasn’t an innovator at all. As a matter of fact, I recall Mick Barr running his set up with three Boss Metal Zone pedals. Why? I have no idea, but it certainly seemed bad ass. Charles Rowell also ran one Boss Harmonist pedal into another, creating this weird sound that made me think of a defective brass instrument when we were writing and playing in Some Girls and Ground Unicorn Horn. So I guess my subconscious, in cooperation with necessity, ended up generating impractical ways to create new sounds with pedals.
More recently, I got a hold of the EarthQuaker Data Corrupter, which is a monophonic harmonizing PLL, and functions almost exactly like my Schumann PLL. So it only made sense for me to run one into another. This was a fantastic situation, and created sounds and tones that are, again, not really musical aside from things being percussive. It was almost impossible to figure out notation, and also impossible to make or play riffs that were based on a riff. There are notes that you can pick out, but again, the real gold in creating something with two PLL pedals is all about the percussion. Plus, you need space to really hear the texture and timbre of what is happening. So the less of a riff, the more payoff you might get.
Luckily for me, I have a handful of rad EarthQuaker pedals, as does my comrade and bandmate Luke Henshaw, over at his studio where I am more days than not when I’m not on tour or out of town. Running one Organizer into another Organizer creates this metallic vibe; not metallic as in heavy metal, but metallic as in metal grinding to certain notes or tones.
So why would someone spend money on two of the same pedals when there is a sea of pedals out there to choose from? Well, to make a mistake and discover something with chance and “luck” that few others (or perhaps nobody) have created yet. My life has been full of mistakes. Some of them I am grateful for.
Friday, July 7th, 2006. Joey Karam and David Scott Stone playing an all-synthesizer instrumental set at The Che Cafe. The beginning is footage from around the Che and during the sound check and the actual set begins at 18:55. Filmed by Aaron Thornhill.
Photo by Becky DiGiglio
Justin Pearson's most well-known of his long resume is probably The Locust or, most recently, Dead Cross. The Crimson Curse, Some Girls, Holy Molar, Head Wound City, Retox, Deaf Club, and Planet B are only some of the others – each unique, but also unified in their intensity. He has collaborated in various capacities with musicians as diverse as Mike Patton, Martin Atkins, Dave Lombardo, Kool Keith, and even Satanic Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves.
