The Obelisk Questionnaire: Jeremy Warner of Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Jeremy Warner of Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I create music with the goal to make (myself) one feel elevated via a sonic physical-mental puzzle, construction, resolution and dissolution. My hope is that it creates and displays and conveys a bit of the AWE-FULL-ness of everything. Basically, we make a big low distorted sound and push it and rotate it, slowly, through space.
I started playing guitar at 13. Initially I was obsessed with Slayer and Guns and Roses, Danzig and the Black Crowes, and I spent a lot of time trying to learn their songs. In 2000 I saw Six Feet Under and that made a big impression on me. In 2003 someone gave me a Relapse compilation CD and it opened a new vision in me of what metal could be. Since then, every week or so I would turn on my amp and tune down to D or B and write riffs, trying to figure out a recipe. I was always in a band, some punk, some metal, and played a lot of local shows, but I didn’t take the steps to build a doom band.
Over the years my wife continued to get more and more into heavy music. We went to a High on Fire show in 2008 and she was completely captivated by it. Instead of slowly going away from music, as many people I know have as they get older, we got more and more into it, going to more shows, and practicing more and more. We endlessly discussed starting a doom band. Finally, we found our drummer and put TTBS together.
Describe your first musical memory.
Listening to ABBA. It was the only tape we had. I still love “Fernando.” I think I’ll put it on now.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
I think the most moving and emotional experience I’ve had recently was seeing Royal Thunder at Psycho in 2019. They played first on the small stage in the middle of the casino. It was noon. Something about it was magical. On the last song Mlny Parsonz kept singing, alone, and jumped off the stage, belting it out. I saw someone crying and I started crying. It was a moment when music took over for me, total emotion and the high of sound.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
I started a business, and it was a failure. My belief that doing it from the heart, as honestly and as well as I could, working every hour of the day, for years — that these were the primary things needed to make a business grow and succeed. It just wasn’t true in this case. I guess I believed that was ALL that was needed.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
We are here and awake. We have something in us that we feel and want to express. Some may have more of it or a clearer path to it. Some dig a well to it. They uncover it. A way to express it finds us. Others discover a different part of it. We let it out, clumsy at first. If we are really lucky we get a chance to refine it and grow it, others find it. It approaches and recedes from an apex of different dimensions, it is successful in different ways at different times. It is polished. It is. Eventually, it is destroyed and forgotten.
How do you define success?
Success is having someone be moved — engrossed — disrupted, en-Hightened, lightened — by your music. Success is talking shop, music structure, sound, guitars, amps, pedal boards, cowboy boots, gossip, with a fellow awkward weirdo at a show. True instant friendship of music.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
I saw three small raccoons near our house crossing the road, in a line, late at night. An oncoming car hit the last one. We stopped in the road and in the headlights the two unharmed raccoons kept going off to the side of the highway. The last one’s back legs didn’t work but it crawled on its front legs toward the others, slowly.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I’d like to create mantra meditation songs.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
For me, art resets something inside my mind, gives me something different to contemplate. It gives me a different place to stand and look at everything, and relieves something in me.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
I’m looking forward to winter.
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