Introducing "Sound Surrounds": Walter Martin on the Mysterious Power of Reverb

In which I speak with musicians about their early experience of sound and how they shaped their ideas about music and creativity. Read if you like, but this can better be enjoyed as a podcast episode!

Welcome to “Sound Surrounds,” a new (very occasional) feature from Dispatches From the Fringe!

My guest today is Walter Martin. Walter is a songwriter and musician known for his work with the New York bands The Walkmen and Jonathan Fire*Eater. Since launching his solo career in 2014 he has released seven solo albums, including several critically acclaimed records and two Parents Choice award-winning family albums. Martin also writes music for film, television and advertising. His work appeared in the Golden Globe-winning animated film Missing Link, and he has received both Clio and Cannes Lion awards for his work. Since May 2024 he’s hosted the weekly Walter Martin Radio Hour on WEXT and here on Substack. His work has been featured in outlets including the New Yorker, The New York Times, NPR, the Atlantic, and Pitchfork. He lives in upstate New York with his wife and two daughters.

I’m excited for today’s episode for a number of reasons. The first being that it’s the first one, and who knows what could go wrong? The second is that Walter and I have a point of convergence: We actually went to the same school, though we didn’t know each other then, and so the sound—or, I should say, the place—he’s going to talk about I’m very intimate with, and it means a lot to me. It actually really makes me wish I were in DC right now so that I could record just the ambient sound of this place and try to capture a little bit of the awe that it inspired in me. You’ll hear a little bit of music recorded in this place, so I think you’ll get the drift. Okay, here we go!

Photo by Linda Glisson

Walter: It’s funny, when I saw what you wrote about Elvis Costello and about sound as a kid, and first processing non-musical sound, really the first thing I thought of was: I went to a Cathedral School (there are several schools on the grounds of Washington Cathedral), and so we spent a lot of time in that cathedral, that big echoey cathedral, you know. And so I think I just the sound, it’s…it’s an indelible sound of voices through the microphone and echoing in that huge building, and just the sound of people in that huge building, and also obviously the sound of singing and of music in that huge building.

Seth: Well, two things. First of all, were you a choir boy?

Walter: No, I was not a choir boy, but I certainly heard the choir boys a lot.

Seth: You know, in southern France, those complexes of caves—Lascaux—do you know where that is?

Walter: Right! Exactly, I’ve been there, actually.

Seth: Oh, you have! Okay, so I learned this a few years ago, and it’s one of those things that gives me chills. Obviously the place is famous for the cave paintings. But what people realized at a certain point was that where those paintings occur, is where there’s a specific sonic resonance, where the caverns are big enough to create reverb. These are—I know, I’m projecting—these are the holy places, and this is where the art has to be.

Walter: I did not, I’ve never heard that before. That’s really interesting, isn’t it? That’s so cool. I think I was too little when I went through those caves or whatever. No, I was like a teenager, so I was too probably spaced out absorb that information. But that’s really cool. That’s really interesting, isn’t it? What a wonderful thing!

I don’t know, I thought of this maybe a few years ago, just because I do have a belief in reverb. There this thing where…dry sounds in music? It takes a lot for me to really hear, I don’t know, magic and mystery of music that’s super dry. Where I feel like, when there’s a room sound, or something that you can picture people in the room, or there’s echo, or voices blending, or instruments blending in a way that creates its own sort of mysterious combination, mysterious extra flavor I feel like I need. I so much easier fall under the spell of music if it has a reverby, roomy kind of echoey sound to it.

And I was thinking about it, you know, and how much reverb I use in my music. And, all the guys in The Walkmen and Jonathan Fire*Eater all basically went to the same school, so we all spent so much time in that cathedral and how much reverb we’re addicted to. And it did make me wonder if being in that cathedral so much from a really small age had a big effect on how you got used to hearing sound, and how you wanted to hear sound, and how, for me, how it became like, the easiest way to access sort of a magical feeling in music was if it had an echoey quality to it. You know what I mean?

Seth: Can you think of a specific sound—maybe relating to the cathedral, or maybe outside it—where you realized: Oh, that’s not music, but…what is it? What is that thread, I need to follow that to its end.

Walter: You know, I don’t know. It’s hard to think of that. I mean, I have vivid memories of responding to music when I was really little. It’s funny, for my radio show, I just did an episode on wood blocks and it’s a mystery to me—because I do have a thing with wood blocks. I mean, I think a lot of musicians do, but I particularly have this thing with wood blocks, and it does make me wonder if...

So this doesn’t exactly answer your question, just those sounds that we’re drawn to…. When I hear a song with wood block, for some reason I always feel like: Okay, that’s my song! That’s the song for me on the album. It does make me wonder what sounds—as a child or when my brain was forming—got into me that made me feel that way, because there must be some connection. It’s mysterious, but a reverby wood block is something I feel very connected to. You look at old pictures of your family, and you feel a connection there. Reverby wood block? I’m like: That’s my people there, and I don’t know why!

Seth: Every musician I know—and certainly myself—as a kid you’re absorbing sounds, and you’re not really associating value with them, right? Like, sound is just sound, and music is just a sound. It’s ironic; just this morning I found a recent study by a university in Finland that says basically, before the age of 10, kids are absorbing sound, that’s one way they process the world. And then in teenage years, there’s—I think the term they used is the “reminiscence bump”—where music takes over and it helps you create emotional meaning. And that’s why the music that we absorbed between the ages of 14 to 19 or whatever…that’s going to be our core identity pretty much forever, right?

Walter: What about you? What are your your sound memories? You must have something that you’re thinking about when you’re putting this together.

Seth: You know, it’s really funny you ask that, because that hadn’t occurred to me. Growing up in DC, I don’t know where you lived specifically, but the second home we lived in—which was near the reservoir, off MacArthur Boulevard—that was the flight path to National Airport, and so starting at like 4:30pm, if you’re on the phone—of course, there’s no mobiles, it’s a hardwired phone—literally every 45 seconds, you have to say “Hold on” because it’s that loud.

Walter: It was that loud there? I have so many friends who live there, I never noticed that….

Seth: Well, we’re roughly the same age, but jets were way louder back then, just a technology thing, right? And that’s just something that kind of embedded in me. And it’s not exactly musical, but it’s not unmusical either. You know what I mean? It’s kind of the same way I thought about doing something on all the new wave / punk songs that have a police siren guitar break in them. You know what?

Walter: Totally, yeah. I think of “White Riot” (The Clash). I think of like…what else is there?

Seth: Well, there’s the there’s the Robert Fripp solo in “Fade Away and Radiate” (Blondie). That’s not quite it, but…

Walter: I also think of the vocal in “Street Fighting Man,” the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man,” was written based on those London sirens. I don’t know if Mick confirmed that, but somebody said…Keith probably said that.

Seth: And the Buzzcocks…

Seth: There’s a few others where it’s obvious they’re referencing the same thing. But whenever I hear that, or I should say—whenever I’m listening to music and a siren goes by—it always sounds right to me, even though it has nothing to do with the content. It could be a totally different genre, but it’s like, oh, that’s cool. That collision, right?

Walter: It is cool! You know, Paul Maroon, from Jonathan Fire*Eater, did that with the guitar, faking the sound of a siren. With an E-Bow or something. So it was like long slide up and down as an intro, which really sounded like a siren until he turned it into a guitar.

Seth: Or I’m thinking, what is it? Is? Is it a flatted fourth? The devil’s triad?

Walter: Right? Yeah, yeah. Is that what that interval is?

Seth: Yeah, I think so. Kind of like a European…

Walter: Those European ones. And I guess they’re all the same, but London ones I always think of in particular, I guess from those punk songs, because it’s a better siren than over here. I was jealous!

Seth: Well, obviously, anything English was just cooler than anything we had….