Marc Orleans departed the planet on 25 June 2020, leaving behind a vast circle of people he had touched in a myriad of ways. Marc was a very funny guy and a true oddball, as well as being a monster musician. Originally from Maine, he spent a few academic years in the Midwest, but most of his 53 years were spent in the upper portion of the East Coast, particularly Brooklyn, where he moved to (from Boston) in the second half of the 1990s.

I had not seen Marc as much as I used to over the last few years. And that seems to have been the case with many of his old pals. His focus was intense, and during the past decade he started working seriously in the area of film production (doing both sound and camera crane operations). His musical interests had also shifted away from rock based sounds and more towards playing mandolin in the bluegrass tradition. But as I contacted various people whose arcs had collided with Marc's over the years, one thing became apparent – he was involved in more different musical ensembles and projects than just about anyone I can name.

Probably the largest chunk of the musical sub-underground knew Marc best from his decade-long tenure with the Massachusetts freak collective Sunburned Hand Of The Man. From 1997–2007 (and sporadically afterwards), he was one of Sunburned's primary members, lending his searing Gibson Firebird tone to many recordings and shows. Asked about their first meeting, Sunburned’s Rob Thomas recalled Marc as being among the very few people who actually enjoyed a show Sunburned's precursor band Shit Spangled Banner played opening for The Dirty Three (then on their debut US tour). Marc approached Rob after the set for congratulatory purposes, and the seeds for Sunburned were sown. Jams at Thomas and John Moloney's Charlestown loft were interspersed with sessions in Marc's Allston basement (where he also kept his Moog synthesizer). The original version of Sunburned consisted (at least technically) of Thomas, Moloney, Orleans, Rich Pontius, Conrad Capistran, Brian Donnelly, James Coleman and Chad Cooper. And those guys remained its core for a good long while, no matter how many other folks passed through the ranks.

During the years he was most active with Sunburned, Marc formed a trio called Fall In Love with Kyp Malone (TV On The Radio) and Kevin Shea, who played loudly and sporadically around Brooklyn for several years. He worked extensively in the experimental beard rock trio Enos Slaughter, with Dave Shuford (No Neck Blues Band) and Carter Thornton (Izititiz). He performed and recorded solo as Ozone Layer (documented on a Manhand label CD called Formidable Circle) as well as under his own name (documented on a gorgeous 8" lathe of American primitive guitar on the Moran Tape Label). Marc was also in the final version of GHQ (with Marcia Bassett, Pete Nolan and sometimes Steve Gunn), and worked with Matthew Bower in the NY iteration of Sunroof!. He also had a duo with Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra) called OF. But he was most omnipresent with Sunburned, who played far and wide, stunning the punters with their reckless abandon. Near the centre of Sunburned's vortex was Marc's enormous riffing on his trusty Firebird (and later, lap steel or dobro). Rob reports he had abandoned playing the Moog after just a few gigs.

Besides his many musical activities during this period, Marc was a madman for street hockey. No Neck Blues Band’s Keith Connolly recalls, “He’d delight in graphically recounting cross-checks given and received, a testament to his scrappy nature.” When he gave up hockey, Marc became an avid chess player.

“I remember when we were on tour with Comets On Fire,” says Moloney, “Marc would always be playing serious games with (bassist) Ben Flashman. They'd be getting out their strategy books and all that. He peaked with that around 2004, 2005.”

“Then he stopped for a while. He had to,” adds Thomas. “He was really getting obsessed with the game. I don't think he felt it was good for him anymore. But that's what he was like. Whatever he was interested in he would just focus on to the exclusion of everything else.”

Prior to Sunburned, Marc had been in a loud, punky quartet called Spore, who made three albums in 1993–94, and managed to get one of Marc’s tunes onto the soundtrack of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. Following this were a few loud, strange units of intense obscurity: Ambulance Driver, Pinball and Electric Bunnyhole, and a stretch concentrating on work with a great German influenced post-rock trio called Juneau, who released two exceptional albums, without causing much of a stir outside of Boston. Which set the stage for Sunburned.

Marc moved down to NYC around the time Sunburned coalesced and was a well-known figure around Brooklyn, despite the fact his main gig was in Boston. Of particular interest was a Brooklyn band he had called Eschaton, who were supposedly a very nuts space/improv unit but appear to have been witnessed solely by Thurston Moore, Chris Corsano and Keith Connolly. Other combos of this era include Ozone Swimmers (with his then wife Ela Orleans). This duo became the 3i's when Pete Nolan joined. Other units from the period include This Trouble, a trio led by Suntanama’s Darren ‘Catfish’ Zoltowski, with cellist Kirsten McCord, who recorded a still unissued single. There was also a quartet called Knot The Bottle with Connolly, Phil Franklin (Sunburned) and Wednesday Knudsen (Pigeons) After he stopped being a regular member of Sunburned, Marc still played occasional gigs with them (the last was in 2014), but his main interests were elsewhere.

Dave Shuford was starting a new, overtly country rock band called D Charles Speer & The Helix. Jason Meagher (No Neck) played bass, Robert ‘Moose’ Gregory (Suntanama) did percussion, Hans Chew (a Tennessee ex-pat also involved with the Helix's brother band Coachfingers) played piano, and Marc played lap steel, electric and resonator guitar. This led Marc into investigating the pedal steel, which he played with Meg Baird, among others. Following his appearance on Steve Gunn's Boerum Palace LP, he also formed the quartet Orleans Gunn with Steve and a rotating cast of characters. Moloney declares, “The Orleans Gunn band show at Zebulon was one of the best concerts I ever saw in NYC.” After that he turned his attention to mandolin and bluegrass, both of which he pursued avidly after being encouraged in his pursuits by the late Jack Rose (with whom The Helix toured), Marc was also involved with Brooklyn avant-country outfit Trummors. And he formed a new band with Tom Carter called Eleven Twenty Nine. Initially a duo, Eleven Twenty Nine became a trio with the addition of drummer Michael Evans of God Is My Co-Pilot.

“Eleven Twenty Nine was built around our guitar interplay,” Carter writes. “I was heavily into West Coast stuff at that time and it shows, which counterbalanced Marc's manic energy (can't remember who said, 'playing with Marc was like grappling with lightning', but that was accurate and it led to exhaustion for most people).”

Eventually, Marc started working primarily with members of NYC's bluegrass scene. This led to him forming The Gotham City Pickers with guitarist JP Gilbert and fiddler Bruno Bruzzese.

Marc's other non-musical passions included fly fishing. And as with anything that captured his interest, he went all-in. He tied flies, soaked up the literature and travelled all over the place to stand in the water and cast. He also returned to some aspects of his visual art. Marc had studied painting at the Chicago Institute of Arts and Antioch College, although friends more easily remember his meticulous work with Polaroids. But his main focus remained music: playing it, listening to it, talking about it... Marc was nothing if not persistent in his passions.

And he was a real good guy, absolutely true to who he was. And he will be missed.