The Funeral March premiere video ‘Stars at Night’ on Side-Line – Available now
The Funeral March - Jeff Goins, Joe Whiteaker, Darius McCaskey
Out now, and premiering exclusively on Side-Line, is “Stars at Night“, the second and final video-single from the last The Funeral March album “It All Falls Apart“. The video was filmed last year, shortly before founder and bandleader Joe Whiteaker died. The song and video also features guest vocalist Ria Aursjoen, from Octavian Winters.
Ria Aursjoen says this about her participation: “In the fall of 2023, I got a call from William Faith asking whether I might be interested in lending vocals to a project he was working with… as soon as William sent me the song, I was completely taken with it! I asked William what the band was looking for from me; he was reluctant to provide me with specific direction and told me to follow my own instincts. I sent a couple versions, getting feedback from Joe and William along the way, and ended up laying in countermelodic backing vocals in the choruses that I felt would really bring out the hook and enhance Joe’s lead vocal, as well as an ethereal section in the bridge.”
Bassist Darius McCaskey, who took on the task of bringing Joe Whiteaker and The Funeral March’s final musical statement to release, says: “The videos were both shot entirely in Rockford, Illinois, because Joe’s health prevented him from traveling to Chicago where we’d initially planned on filming… Ria’s shots in ‘Stars at Night’ were filmed in San Jose, California, while Octavian Winters were filming a music video of their own… These music videos are the last time Joe would be captured on film.”
Ria Aursjoen continues: “…in February of 2024, Octavian Winters was shooting our video for ‘Nebula’… and Joe reached out to ask whether I might be able to provide some footage for the video for ‘Stars at Night’. The timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous. We only had one day for the Octavian Winters shoot, but the director / cinematographer David Kruschke and I both thought we would have enough time afterwards to capture some footage for ‘Stars at Night’. We shot everything at the beautiful gardens around the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose… I am so very honoured to have been a part of such a great song, as well as the video.”
The U.S. post-punk/gothic rock band The Funeral March, based in Rockford, Illinois, lost Joe Whiteaker to pancreatic cancer in May 2024 – shortly after completing what would become the band’s final studio recordings with producer William Faith.
Joe Whiteaker was able to hear the final mixes before he passed away. Darius McCaskey remembers Joe as “an incredibly supportive guy” who had fostered Darius’s own love of dark alternative music, and who was a proactive supporter of the local goth, post-punk and darkwave scenes between Rockford and Chicago over several decades: “I wasn’t much into post-punk or goth rock before I met him, but I quickly became a fan of The Funeral March. What Joe and company were doing spoke to me in a way other genre bands didn’t. That I got to join the band and participate in creating some fantastic songs is a real gift, one I’ll always cherish.”
Joe Whiteaker is survived by a wife and two children, with all proceeds from the release of “It All Falls
Apart” going directly to support the family.
About The Funeral March
The Funeral March of the Marionettes – more often simply ‘The Funeral March’ – originated in Rockford, Illinois in 1987, drawing inspiration from seminal English acts like Bowie, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, and Joy Division.
The band’s name, meanwhile, was a nod to Charles Gounod’s ‘Funeral March of a Marionette’; best known as the theme music for TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents. During this first phase of the band’s career, The Funeral March was active from their first gig in August 1987, until the mid-1990s, as Whiteaker later explained: “I looked up, and I was the only original member left, and after many years of fits and starts, when it all fell apart again, I decided it was time to leave it to slumber in its crypt… dreaming the blood red dreams of madness.”
Intermittently reactivated during the early 2000s, another long hiatus followed from 2007. Finally, in 2017, Joe felt that the band’s thirtieth anniversary was the right time to resurrect the project in earnest, and released their long overdue debut, “The Raven” EP: a remastered collection of unearthed recordings from the band’s early years.
Revitalised by a new cast of revolving members, The Funeral March would go on to record and release a string of new EPs: “Resurgence” (2018), “Solace” (2020), “Flood” (2021), and “Persephone” (2023) – with several standalone singles bridging the gaps between them – before entering the studio in 2023 to record what would become their final release, “It All Falls Apart”.
While there have been many incarnations of the lineup over the years, Whiteaker was joined in The Funeral March by guitarist Wayne Thiele in 2020, and bassist Darius McCaskey in 2021. This trio recorded “It All Falls Apart” together with producer William Faith at 13 Studio in Chicago. The band is also joined on the album by guest contributors Ria Aursjoen of Octavian Winters and AURSJΦEN on additional vocals; Rob Hyman of [melter] on drums; and Renard Platine on Bass VI. In the final live version of the group, meanwhile, Joe and Darius were joined by guitarist Jeff Goins, and drummer Joel DeLuna.
Rounding the recordings out to the band’s first album-length release, “It All Falls Apart” also features remixes from Tweaker, BELLHEAD, and The Joy Thieves.
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