Bird From Mars was the 1987 through 1991 duo
collaboration between Wade Marsten and Rob
Birdwell.
Wade and I met while at the Dick Grove School
of music and began collaborating on songs after we graduated.
Wade, a terrific guitarist and singer, convinced me that I should
take up the bass. I did. 3 months later we played our
first gig - it was pretty fun.
We performed under the name Plus 11 for a
while among others. Steve Wagner (a singer/songwriter
and real nice guy) played drums during that time.
We played the 8121 Club in Hollywood. I think my car got
towed this night. Good times.
The culmination of our collaboration was a pretty cool
collection of songs called "Two Voices" which was
released in 1991 on Red
Planet Records.
There are some public access videos in some vault somewhere of
Bird From Mars (or maybe we were still Plus 11). I was
playing keyboards at the time although I did play Trumpet on "The
Man In Motion" - it was lower than low budget but it was fun to get
makeup and do the camera thing. It wouldn't exactly happen
again any time soon!
I'm posting the "Two Voices" credit listing here for my own
memory/archive. So many things get lost in the mix and
everyone here contributed to the first and only Bird From Mars
release.
Dwight Baldwin (Percussion), Jeremy Graf (Guitar), Mark
Heimback-Nielsen (Artwork), Mark Heimback-Nielsen (Design), Paul
Stevens (French Horn), Rob Birdwell (Bass), Rob Birdwell
(Percussion), Rob Birdwell (Arranger), Rob Birdwell (Vocals), Rob
Birdwell (Assistant Producer), Wade Marsten (Guitar), Wade Marsten
(Percussion), Wade Marsten (Vocals), Wade Marsten (Producer), Chris
Bleth (Oboe), Charlie Ramos (Paintings)
I have boxes of songwriting tapes that Wade and I made. We
wrote songs every night for months that ran into years. Ah,
to dream.
I'm still dreaming...
