* Performance artist, songwriter, classically trained harpist, circus
sideshow veteran.....Is there anything you can't do?! and which is
your preferred hobby?

Well, yeah. I guess I've live a pretty chaotic life. Not so much by
choice though. I've never been much of a hobbyist. I'm way too
obsessive for that. I used to be a tree climber though but that was
just one more profession. I don't know if it's the times we live in or
the fact that I'm from the US but everything for me has become a way
to make a living eventually.

Maybe that makes sense and maybe it's just some horrible
money-grubbing entity that's worked it's way into our DNA.

* Apart from the above, do you have any special party tricks you might
use as an 'extra' at your gigs?

Sometimes I levitate virgins. What else?... I looked high and low for
a ventriloquist to open for me but they were all too snooty. One of
them was hugely insulted that anyone would expect him to even leave
his house for less than 200 quid!

I had a bit too much to drink one night and stayed up til dawn
googling ventriloquists and writing them emails. I got a lot of wierd
responses but the most memorable thing was finding out that there are
hundreds of ventriloquists living in Bismark, North Dakota.

Now whenever I get unhappy or discouraged in my life I just picture
all those ventriloquists in Bismark and it picks me right up.

* You were in the circus. wow!! could you teach me anything?!

Would you like to become a human blockhead? All you need is a hammer
and nails for that one. Or I could teach you how to lay on piles of
broken glass and have concrete slabs broken over your head. If you
were a boy I could show you how to lift weights with your penis. That
ought to be enough to get you started.

* What can the audience expect from the Lancaster gig?

hymns, dirges, and Shirley Temple songs

* There have been many comparisons and descriptions of your music. How
would you desribe it?

My music is really hard to describe. I seem to have sort of a split
personality. There's clearly two sides and one of them is very
vaudevilly circussy and the other is quite serious. I kind of balk at
describing the serious part. I guess it's fair to say that my
influences there are kind of arcane and have very little to do with
contemporary music or even twentieth century music or even 19th or
18th century music. That end of me is very anachronistic.

Some people are kind of taken aback by how "old" it sounds. It's not
something I ever tried to do it just always came out that way.

* Pie or cake? (which is your favourite)

I like pie. Are you going to make me a pie? How sweet of you!

* If you could gouge a musicians' eyes out with a rusty hook (or
perhaps something else) due to their contribution to music, whose
would it be and why?

That's kind of hard to answer. I try not to hate particular people
even dead ones but there is a something that I hate very much. But
that something is always a nobody like there's nobody there. I mean --
and this is a very bad question to assk a person like me -- The kind
of music that's generally on the radio -- mainstream pop music --
whatever you want to call it, et's obviously pretty dreadful.

But the point is that the dreadfulness of contemporary music can't be
pinned on an actual person. It's like there's this big nobody out
there and they're out to kill bazillions of souls by dint of a few
automotons (and many wannabe automotons) but the worse a thing is the
more it's not there. So it's not possible to gouge the eye out of a
thing that's not there.

* Who are you keeping your eyes on for huge musical success? (any new
bands you're particularly fond of?)

Huge musical success is not a thing I have any insight into. I'm
really happy about Antony's success and I think I'm benefitting from
it since most people only know about my work because of my connection
with Antony. I probably wouldn't even have a gig in Lancaster if
Antony hadn't gotten so huge.

There are wonderful people out there. I just met a singer / bass
player named Aimee Curl who's voice just knocks people dead. Her voice
is very quiet and small but at the same time very big and intense. You
have to hear her live though. It's hard to explain. It just gets into
your heart in an almost visceral way. I can't explain it. She covers a
song of mine on the Durtro/Jnana Compilation "Not Alone" for doctors
without borders.

She's working now with another wonderful musician, Sxip Shirey. Their
duo is called The Whisper Eaters. I think they're coming to the UK
this summer. Sxip has a band called the luminescent orchestri. I like
them a lot. Who else? I love Mr Quintron and Panacea. They ought to be
big stars. I played with a band called Wierd Weeds in Austin and
thought they were wonderful. There's an awful lot of wonerful people
out there but me thinking they're wonderful isn't going to take them
very far. But then I always thought that Antony was wonderful... Who
knows!

* Tell me about your most bizarre gig...

O God! There have been so many oddballs. One of my favorites was at
the pyramid. There was this legendary strip club genius named Otter
who did a night there called Trip and Go Naked and she had a thing
called the What Will You Do For Fifty Dollars Contest.

Now this particular thing had been going on for months and by the time
I started working for Otter it was in decline -- the decadent end of
the most decadent club night that ever existed. You never knew what to
expect with Otter -- fistfucking dwarves at a tea party --
bloodletting footfuckers -- she used to blow fire out of her vagina (I
was there the night she started the stage on fire. I beat it out with
somebody's knapsack which turned out to belong to a photographer. It
was full of cameras and lenses)

Anyway it had degenerated to the contest and the same person had won
for the last months or so. He was called "the bottle guy" and his act
was to have Otter break beer bottles over his head. And every week the
crowd would insist on adding another bottle so when I arrived he was
up to about six beer bottles which is a lot of beer bottles to have
broken over your head for a lousy fifty bucks.

But I guess fifty bucks was worth more back in the nineties.
Inflation! That explains it.

Anyway, I would drag my harp through the broken glass and the blood
and play Debusee's Clair de Lune. And the neat thing was that people
really listened! I loved Otter. I think she lives in New Orleans now.

* Get many groupies at your gigs?

No, but that's a good thing because I'm spoken for. Hooray!

* Been up to any rock n' roll antics of late? (lobbing tellies out of
windows and such like).

Well... I just played at the Living Room in Manhattan and I had one of
my tall tricycles with me. It's a little chamber version. I got it for
riding around in peoples' houses. I can go anywhere on it. It fits
through almost any doorway. So I'm riding around in the Living Room
and just before I'm supposed to go on the bouncer who was a real prick
told me I had to get off the tricycle -- this was in the bar outside
where the stage was -- but I didn't want to get off. I wanted to at
least ride back into the main room and make my big entrance (that's
all the trike is good for really)

So I refused to get down and sped off toward the stage with the
bouncer in pursuit. It was a very Marx Brothers moment. I got in the
hall, did a big cheesy "Hi Everybody!" and dove off the trike and
dissapeared under the tables. I made my way up to the stage on my
hands and knees the only part of me visible was my stinger (I was a
bee that night and I have a very big stinger)

After a lot of bumping around I got up there and did the act and even
dedicated a verse of one of my hymns to the bouncer but it didn't
help. The part that goes "You're not the only faggot on the force...

At the end of the night he was just as mad as ever. There's no
pleasing some people. I guess he just doesn't like liturgical music.
That's quite a common attitude these days. I try not to let it get me
down.

* Finally, you looking forward to playing Lancaster?

O yes very much so. I'll have my brand new harp. It's the cutest
little thing you've ever seen. Actually it's very old but recently
restored. I used to keep a harp in europe but it got stolen and I
never got it back but this little harp is such a treasure it almost
makes it worth losing the other.

It's so good to be out working again. I was stuck in Cleveland for too
long. I'm not very enthusiastic about Cleveland. There are very few
cities in the world that I don't like a lot better than my home town.
It's worse than Nottingham even -- without the merry men.

-----------------------------------------
Lauren Holden