 I like combs and I just rediscovered my comb are we on oh hey hello everybody my name is Ibnar as maybe you saw on the screen Avelik Strativus and to my left is Kylie Dally and in the middle is Jamie McKinnon and our first-time guest on the show Edward Burke hello thanks for coming on Edward thank you for having me yeah really excited to have Edward show us his instruments that he makes and where do you make the instruments I make the instruments at a place called the generator down off of Pine Street on Sears Lane yeah yeah that's a new space right it is a new space we used to be in Memorial Auditorium yeah I've been in there that's fascinating so that's closed they moved everything to the Sears Lane yes I started at the generator in last year as a volunteer cool so do they still take volunteers and they do yeah and chores once in a while oh yes I've yet to get down to the new space but yeah every first Friday of the month maybe with the art hop or the first Friday gallery openings you know yeah I'd say there are practically tours given there every day so is it something that like if you if you just stop by you could get a tour or is there a schedule yeah if you stop by there's likely to be somebody at the front desk and they can show you around there's an official orientation you have to take before you become a member of the generator but come by and somebody will show you around we inevitably so that orientation that's because they have like a lot of a lot of cool equipment there to use it's like about learning to use the equipment they do yeah the generator is what's known as a maker space and others who work there would probably be more qualified and more knowledgeable to talk about it than I would be but if you live in Burlington and have an idea for a project and you need a jumpstart on getting that project off the ground whether you need the right tools or some knowledgeable info and suggestions from people who have made similar projects to what you're thinking of the generator is the place to get that jumpstart you're looking for mm-hmm so I'm I kind of want to hear you talk more about what you've been working on yes mm-hmm I make essentially musical walking sticks and these are folk percussion instruments played in various parts of the world my primary influence is the Australian logger phone L-A-G-E-R and then phone fo any logger as in logger beer that's the cap yeah bottle caps bottle caps make the fun time while you're making these things I get my caps from various sources this is an example of one I don't know if it's fully in the frame but I made this out of an old walking stick that somebody else had carved and essentially it is a stick with a bunch of caps on it a handle rubber tip at the bottom and various other fun little sound toys and you play it with specialized drumsticks and I make those homemade as well these are called ratlers so-called because they have furniture tax or you can use thumb tax to that make the logger phone rattle when you rub the rattler on the logger phone like this so you can bounce this on the ground and then hit with the stick you get a lot of interesting rhythmic variations so once you got those main elements and I hope people can hear my voice at the same time I'm playing this once you got those elements you can add in other crazy sounds like this yeah or this yeah at the top that is a sink strainer oh I love that yeah makes such a good noise too it it is and I was really surprised by the noise it made the first time I picked it up and struck it with a pencil or it might have been a pen that I had in my pocket I always test out what sounds things make before I put them on these logger phones but yeah sink strainers are strangely resonant so yeah where do people mail their sink strainers to you yeah I do have some contact info that I can give after or towards the end of the show here so that's an example of just one of the instruments I've made I've made a bunch since May this is another one it's kind of a little bit different because I've added a striking surface that's metal here so it's not bare wood and it gives kind of a different sound the rattler the rattling effect doesn't quite work here but it's a totally different feel and they basically in a musical situation can stand in for the typical drum set and you got the rubber tip down here for your bass drum and then striking surface to get a snare type sound in conjunction with the bass shake it like a tambourine little resonant piece on top for a cymbal mm-hmm yep adaptable to any musical situation right here pretty much a parade everywhere you walk say that again pretty much a parade everywhere you walk hmm if you ever bang them on the street you know going down church definitely one man parade no one's that's right mm-hmm also great for using as a walking stick or to repel bears if you're hiking grizzly country yeah yeah so once I have all those basic elements did I knock something important over I think I don't think it's a big deal oh okay so I have these basic elements and processes that I use now so I'm into making themed logger phones this one is themed for st. Patrick's day it has green spray paint swirls on it and caps up top from Guinness bottles the Ireland pride there green bells oh yeah green jingle bells mm-hmm you never know what I'll add to a logger phone bike bell right here definitely and then some ridges that I added with a Dremel a new toy that I bought with a stipend that the generator gave me I am the maker in residence for January and February and also March so I'll have my studio until the end of March yeah I encourage people to come visit me so this is what the riches sound like here yeah so I have some other things to show you here I hope I didn't bring too much no okay so I talked a bit about the Rattlers too just as I've experimented with different designs and shapes and sounds for the logger phone I'm experimenting with Rattlers too this one is a is a tree branch I stripped the bark off and I sanded it and stained it wrapped some paper tape around the end for a handle yeah paper tape by it's a product I've found around town that I have really come to enjoy using yeah and so that's just one design of Rattler this one is pretty unique this one was also a tree branch cool thing about this one the color of this wood right now I've stained this but it it's the same color that the wood was before I stained it so usually staining gives your wood a different color a different luster and you know unique look but yeah the wood that was under the bark was yellow like this I've never seen wood this color before so I call this the banana Rattler yeah and this one uses black duct tape so I'm experimenting with different types of tape different woods I really have no preference yet I'm early in this whole logger phone making career have you tried hollowing a stick out at all and seeing what kind of sound that might make no maybe a special resonance as you yeah cross that's a great idea and Ibnar is holding my favorite Rattler that is a dowel that I bought in a hardware store yeah and I decorated the top of it using a dremel this little drumstick like shape here so I call this the Jupiter Rattler actually because it has a knot in the wood that kind of looks like the red spot that swirling storm on Jupiter yeah that's what I saw in the knot and so yeah various designs and looks this one right here is made of bamboo a little piece of bamboo that I actually found here in the old north end so I took it to my studio and made it into a striking stick or Rattler I should say do you give all of your rattlers names I don't know only those two oh okay yeah oh actually yeah this is Rudolph's Rattler because I used a red and green thumbtacks on the spur of the moment and it has some green and white paper tape so this actually goes to a Christmas themed logger phone I have in my studio it is covered with jingle bells instead of the standard bottle caps so in the future I'm going to experiment with replacing the bottle caps with some other resonant objects yeah that's that that's made of reindeer horn no I wish it's a tree branch yeah yeah it's a paper tape with some mod podge painted over it okay yeah cool yeah yeah yeah do you have any questions for me about my process or anything about my work here I'll just be curious what kind of special techniques you've been developing in your space as you've been working along and working with other people and seeing what they've been doing if that's influenced you at all yeah if it's if there's one thing the generator thrives upon it's inspiration from other people working on their own stuff around you to put it more eloquently the generator's bread and butter is collaboration I personally haven't collaborated with anybody on a project there yet but and I'm trying to remember your question oh just about like what maybe you've seen someone else doing and yeah maybe I could do something like that oh yeah yeah the my use of the tremel I was inspired to get myself a tremel after seeing somebody else use one and they actually allowed me to borrow their tremel for like a few hours and so I experimented with it and I really liked the results so with the stipend I got from my residency I decided to put it towards a dremel of my own and for those of you don't know dremel is both a brand name of power tool and the name of the tool itself it allows you to engrave and also has some other attachments trying to think of the other details here dremel yeah yeah the handle of this bamboo rattler I decorated with the dremel so I definitely have used the engraving tool but it has other attachments it can sand it can cut through glass if I'm not mistaken yeah has some diamond tipped blades but I'm not a spokesperson for the tremel so this is not a product endorsement yeah what did this come from do you know these metal yeah it's a very beautiful decorative yeah I yeah these metal parts I I don't know what they they were originally but I saw them in a store and I really loved the look of them and I wanted to incorporate them into my instruments like hammered tin yeah yeah I'm wondering if maybe they were part of a door frame or something looks like something like that yeah yeah or maybe like they maybe they decorated a bookshelf yeah so I don't know I'm inspired by really anything that has an interesting look and that sounds good when I tap it yeah I'm wondering about like when you walk around town are you the way you see the world is it influenced by your work as a logger phone maker like you see something and you instantly think oh I want to know what sound that makes or yeah is has it affected you like that how I view the world isn't specifically based on making logger phones I would say it's based on my identification as a sound junkie I walk around and I'm very aware of every every little sound from the rustling of the leaves to the doppler effect from cars whizzing past you to you know the sound of children yeah life is a big symphony to me yeah that's cool yeah definitely yeah and Burlington offers us plenty of sounds yeah I bet you could write some really great poems about like the soundscapes you hear right I am having your description just now that leaves wrestling and yeah sorry to cut you off there yeah I do write poetry as well some song lyrics yeah you won't find me published anywhere yet but yeah I do do some writing that's great yeah and I brought some examples if you if you would like to hear some yeah yeah okay right now sure okay it is a poetry show yeah all right I wouldn't call these real refined poems they're just a little snippets I write down when it wherever the whenever the mood strikes me sounds like poetry yeah so let's see here sometimes I find I write when I'm out enjoying a drink at the bar and I've nobody else to talk to go inside my head so this is an example of one of those let's see it's untitled but here it goes taste of fermented wheat so sweet so many feet on the floor in this bar noise crowds my head no thoughts to be fed I wonder where I'm being led what are all these people talking about what are these people talking about I hear noise not conversation the moisture on my coaster condensation the dim light glistening through the beer the popping bubbles whispers of my ancestors do I hear remember us remember us we laid your foundations paved the roads for your bus we toiled and we fought of the comforts you enjoy today we thought we enjoyed a cold one after a day's work when it really meant something remember your ancestors from even longer ago who first procured the golden liquid the witch we whisper yeah I like that I have two more if we have time for them yeah okay so this is a poem that I or like just an assemblage of words I wrote down last year and it paints a moment sitting and thinking lingering fingers exploring the buns of my cell the evening breeze is swell I'm on no one's time no one's dime I wish I had a rum and coke with lime no drama no crime just a few moments of my time on this bench outside of this south and deli my legs like jelly feet sinking into concrete I feel complete why must I go home yeah and then the last one I planned for today is a poem with that I'll say it's a poem that's very timely timely here and this one is not titled either but I could entitle it I watch the wasp there we go I wrote this last year during summer I watch the wasp climb up the bus stop window a tough guy reaching high yet falling down at random moments how many of us fall due to our swagger our false pride how many of us over exert and try yet fail the people at the top have further to fall yeah it's very timely I feel yeah yeah I can picture when I see like wasp or a hornet or a little flying creature like that that's it's seemingly trying to find its way back outside I got behind a glass and so it's crawling up the side yeah and it's must be exhausted because every once in a while it tumbles down and it's the seal and has to fly back up some very vivid image mm-hmm yeah yeah I am I want to make sure I read one poem by local poet who has recently passed Marilyn Grigas and I have I did meet Marilyn and I enjoyed a few conversations with her and so let me let me read one this is her book called shift that okay well anyway it's a gorgeous cover that's called shift so let me I love Marilyn's poetry so I want to share one here I could read I could just pick just about anything out here so I will read this one though this happened to be where I opened up it's called package and sad sad wrapped in anxious anxious wrapped in a slew of questions shrink wrapped in a warped frame still wishing for connections even with weather mild and kind even with new romantic dreams and oops and dimly lit rooms my mind recoils not anchors not answers not icons or echoes but just a thin strap would do stars above burn in their constellations dog star wrapped with a white dwarf white dwarf bound in gravity dog star the axis of it all even as every sad and limping thing collapses and radiates nice yeah could maybe one one more okay and then you brought some poems to read to Jamie Kylie yeah okay yeah Jamie's been writing like crazy okay yeah okay well this okay about muscle if there's no need for movement then no need for a brain I've learned a fact demonstrated by the sea squirt a small creature that swims freely in its youth until it settles on a rock then it devours its own brain and spinal cord it simply doesn't require them any longer God don't let me settle parentheses need for movement leads to need for muscle the the brain evolves in order to plan and execute reaching grasping turning according to the expert on Charlie Rose which I watch on my iPad while walking on the treadmill to rebuild my strength plenty of species thrive without brains he says it could be different on another planet I suppose but here evolution of the brain is about muscle just ask Arnold Schwarzenegger or an evolutionary biologist yet the brainless sea squirt still gets upset still squirts maybe it's innate like a horse is hide shuddering to dislodge a fly maybe that's why I started moving and arranging boulders last fall I thought I was making a terrace but afterward it looked more like a grave Marilyn Griegus powerful beautiful actually yeah thank you to Marilyn some new poems there's something like that bus went out sure they're we're working on a new thing here with some photographs of flowers that were all taken down south and either Tennessee North Carolina or Virginia and alongside that is a little story kind of like a poem kind of more like a run-on sense however you'd call it so do the first one then maybe we'll do another one later that's later on set out from north VT across the Great Lake Champlain down near Ticonderoga and straight soaring over suspension bridge past battle battlements in age old fortress well all of New York being an age old fortress either cities or trees through all that Roland Calcune on Delaware a hundred feet across to Damascus PA great rocks and river and orange sand for dirt kill the engine and stop first great rushes over now enjoy eating with family and beautiful abode on quite still stilts and for one that's lit a little later on in the journey here swarm to the sunny south in the springtime in search of pollen and just watch us do our dance it's what the honey does sweet nectar and my god proviscusing about and slurping from sugar streams and buzzing with furry legs jittering about on flower stocks and buzzing up a talk insect droning on and on in UV ray spectrum fragmented through a million faceted eyes and loop-to-loop flight paper wings and starlight folding and flapping iridescent and burning among soft sepals and pedals these are all the photos you haven't written poems about yet but so all the so the one that that one's inspired by is at home but that one it's it's this like yellow tree flower that is just like yellow and bursting in every direction looks like a little firework like this that's a trout really actually yeah but the the other one it looked I don't know it makes sense that Jamie wrote the bumblebee poem for me for my part I really liked the part about the proboscis we can keep talking but I think we might have wrapped up is that it okay yeah probiscus the other yeah yeah your use of language in that passage I mean I'm not much of a poet so yeah I liked the part about the proboscis and like soaring from flower to flower I can't remember exactly what you wrote there but that that was a good passage mm-hmm maybe we'll do one more here yeah this one is the smokies coming in from Asheville to Cherokee after eating biscuits with herb gravy and bacon in the city which is quiet on this city on this sunny morning but loud the way out weaving through industrial lots of all conditions finally to a mega highway caped in trees and mountains and only the constant roar and rush of ocean road and metal waves propelled by gasoline wind to remind you of your troops surroundings anyways made up to move on from road to path and thus in the backcountry office obtaining a pass to camp river sites up into the big valley below the high peaks and fabled Appalachian trail here we are dirty but well-fed in a parking lot full of window peepers and AC Seasters kiosk layers and photo nannies never leave the road and there we go backpacks bobbing into rhododendron would you call AC Sears AC Seasters AC Seasters I just been like right writing as fast as possible kind of and just seeing what comes out yeah yeah I'd say that's the kind of writing I do too yeah it's good for your mind you know I feel really liberated are we done here? are we done? oh one more? okay yeah one more? don't read another one from there sure Kylie did you want to read something? yeah could I read I was reading a couple of poem books today oh these are sketches I made from my same track these ones I think I want to read the Mary Oliver I've read Mary Oliver on here before probably but this one was like it was the first one I opened up to today and it was just perfect for the moment I needed the cricket doesn't wonder if there's a heaven or if there is if there's room for him it's fall romance is over still he sings if he can he enters a house through the tiniest crack under the door then the house grows colder he sings slower and slower than nothing this must mean something I don't know what but certainly it doesn't mean he hasn't been an excellent cricket all his life I like that one yeah oh glad you read that and you brought one of your paintings yeah Jamie brought that along but I painted it this summer offering rocks and this is your latest I think right? yeah I would say still in progress I'll still add some stuff to it but the glitter effects nice I like getting into that and this it looks can I look at this yeah it looks like like tissue paper stained like glued on but it's actually transparent brush strokes or something maybe yeah and then the texture is actually if you ever heard of silly string like the string that sprays out of a can of course it's not really string at all it's I don't know weird foamy material but I sprayed the whole thing with that first to like build up an interesting texture that is very creative I like that yeah you can see like in that bottom corner there that texture is like the silly string oh yeah more thick in the right side you can see some of that pink and blue there yeah I always wondered what silly strings made out of I'm in a kick these days of using my the voice recognition software on my phone to ask a question like that like what is silly string made out of yeah yeah or like what's the origin of twizzlers you know yeah growing a tree yeah I'm a really big trivia nerd nice yeah everything nice painting right there putting glitter on your logger phones yeah they kind of have their own shine already it's likely that I will use glitter at some point I would totally recommend glitter glue it's like mm-hmm that has both glitter glue and just like shake it on glitter yeah the glitter glue like won't fall off you won't you don't have to worry about it like flaking off at all mm-hmm so that's really nice about it and speaking of the gender speaking of logger phones I made them at the generator space 40 Sears Lane off of Pine Street mm-hmm so I definitely encourage all of you to come out and visit us if you are down in the south end come by my studio until the end of the month and you can visit me and yeah I encourage you to find out more about us generatorvt.org excellent mm-hmm thanks for coming yeah thank you Edward thank you yeah I've enjoyed myself mm-hmm we had some jams in the studio before we came up too oh excellent under a quarter in the free pile and Edward was like a master at it I had beginner's luck that's all I'll say that sounded pretty good to me luck of the Irish so those are going to be a big logger phone parade on St. Paddy's Day you think yeah it could be fun if you have like a few I don't have that much past experience in organizing things