You’ve toured the country?
Yes.
Then why do you live in Baltimore?
Because Baltimore is the greatest city in America.
I’ve been to Baltimore and it kind of scares me.
Oh, I love Baltimore. It’s one of the least pretentious cities I’ve ever been to and all my friends live there and it’s very affordable and there’s lots of large available warehouse space to live in and have shows in and all my friends live there and it’s awesome as shit.
And that’s where Wham City is, what’s that all about?
Wham City is a group of wicked-wicked beasts and cool dudes that are awesome that try to do just as much fun stuff as possible until we die.
And you live there?
And we live there. It’s a place where we live that does cool things. It’s like a venue, an art space. We just became a not-for-profit, the website is
whamcity.com
Not dot org?
Not dot org, fuck these orgs. I don’t think we’ll be a non-profit forever.
Peter Pan.
Uh huh. What? About the production I’m putting on?
Can you tell me anything about Peter Pan?
Sure, I’m putting on a production of Peter Pan, hopefully in September. It should be a um- did I tell you about this?
No.
Really?
That’s why I’m asking you about it.
It’s a re-telling of the original story but in- it’s not really a re-telling, it’s just using the existing public domain characters and putting them in a more of like a surreal sort of absurdist world where- I don’t know, sort of my aesthetic and the aesthetic of my friends and sort of like a large Wham City piece. I don’t know, I think it will be fun. It should go up in September in Baltimore somewhere and hopefully tour around, but there’s not really much more I can say on it I guess. It should be pretty awesome.
What pays the bills?
Shows, I play shows. I had a couple of temp jobs for a while but I just couldn’t really take it. And I don’t have many bills, but I guess I’m going to start having more bills, but I guess just playing shows and living as cheaply as possible and eating out of the Dumpster Collective and stuff like that.
What’s the Dumpster Collective?
There’s a bunch of kids in Baltimore that go to dumpsters and get all the thrown-out food and then it’s stored at our house and we get to eat as much of it as we want. It’s part of Food Not Bombs.
How did you hook-up with Liam Lynch?
He found me on the internet through something and then just contacted me. Nothing exciting.
And does your uncle work at that NBC affiliate, or how did that happen?
No, this guy Justin Barns who goes under the name Werewolf Unit is an audio engineer there and he sets up noise and experimental shows in Savannah and somehow he convinced them that I was like Moby or something and they allowed me to play on the show and then afterwards they were really-really upset that I was me and not like Moby. But I didn’t think anything would ever come of it. I thought it would be like this lark TV experience that I would tell my friends about but we put it on the internet on
standardoilrecords.com, my old record label, and someone from there put it on College Humor and then it just like spread like wild fire and it was crazy.
What’s next?
I’m hoping to do more and more productions rather than just solo performances. When I got my Masters, I wrote a lot for ensembles, and you know, sound environments and installations and I’d like to go back to doing a lot of installation art and writing for large ensembles and with like a mixture- like, sort of like what I do now but with like a small orchestra. And Acorn Master [EP] is my first release since like Twacky Cats which came out like over two and a half years ago so I’d like to go back to my pace of like four releases a year and keep that going. So the next release should be Spiderman of the Rings [full-length] and that will also be on Psych-O-Path Records. And then Bronst will most likely either come out on Wham City Records or Wild Fire Records. Bronst will be the score to Peter Pan and then Bronpst will be another piece, like a large-scale ensemble piece. And I’m just touring nationally through the summer with this band Ecstatic Sunshine and then in October we’re going to do this east coast tour, the Wham City tour, where it’s going to be like 20 bands going round for round, which should be cool, it’s just the east coast. But then again in November I’m going to do another national tour and a Canadian tour with this guy Cex, he’s a rad dude. So hopefully that will go well and then, from there, not sure.
