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Interview: Dan Deacon breaking the ice

Written by: admin

January 1, 1970 · Filed Under Blather

A jetlagged Dan Deacon has come to the UK waving a flag for the bands of Baltimore. Sporting lime green socks, scruffy cut-off shorts, Timmy Mallet glasses, a huge Yoda head key-ring and a toddler’s yellow sun-hat with a lion’s face, Dan Deacon cuts quite a figure, as if cocking a snoop at new rave. Having headed to the airport straight from a festival, he claims not to have showered for four days. Music Towers assures him he doesn’t smell as we sit in a scrap of green in central London in the sunshine. 
In a few hours, club-goers at The End’s Durrr night will be experiencing his first-ever British performance. He has big plans for them; “I might try to start the audience chanting, saying a ridiculous phrase, using very elaborate nonsensical count-downs, maybe create a circle for dance contests. But a lot of it changes from night to night, so we’ll see.” In practice this is a lot more fun than it sounds. Deacon’s show is a blend of music, audience participation and hilarious comedy all presented in such an unassuming, unsophisticated, silly way that everyone joins in with wild enthusiasm.
According to Deacon who studied electro-acoustic composition and counterpoint at New York’s Purchase College, “I’m a composing performer or a composer and performance artist. The term singer songwriter doesn’t really apply. Actually I’m not really a singer but I sort of sing.” Music Towers wonders why he doesn’t just call himself a musician. “I guess I pretty much am a musician but I’m being a jerk about it,” he concedes. “When I started playing shows it was very performance driven. Most of the stuff was pre-recorded, like all of it, no vocals, so I’d have this weird elaborate stage performances where I’d pick people out and have them do weird things. But I felt like I was putting on this weird play so I got some pedals, found two signal generators in the garbage and started doing weird drone things. But that bored the hell out of me so I tried to incorporate the two; having audience interaction, some pre-recorded stuff but then focus on the vocal effects processing, vocoding and processing the sine or square wave live.”
His new album, Spiderman Of The Rings on D.C.’s fashionable Carpark Records is a brand of quirky, homespun, glitchy pop shot through with humour. A self-confessed fan of pop, Dan admires Devo’s and Talking Heads’ twisted take on it. 
“I think pop is very important. But it’s weird how so many people say my album isn’t even music! When I first started I did a lot of noise shows so to the noise guys I was like the total pop guy but to the pop dudes I was the noise guy. Back then I would sell CDRs of plunderphonic collages, noise pieces, albums of just droning sine waves and people would say, ‘Why don’t any of your CDs sound like your show?’ I’d say, ‘I’m working on it. I want it to be good.’ So this album’s been a long time coming. My composition style is so different now that those older tracks would stand out like a sore thumb. I think I’ll put out a CD that bridges the gap between my old CDRs and my new album.” He pauses, then laughs.  “I sound like the most boring pretentious dickhead right now!”
To an extent, Dan Deacon the performer is very much a product of Baltimore’s unique music scene and its Wham City collective. “I came out of the DIY scene, just bands hooking up bands. I don’t want to say I’ve grown out of that scene but I can’t play a lot of those house venues any more, they can’t accommodate the audiences. I don’t want to lose touch with that scene that was so good to me for so long, so I still try book as many shows as possible. I’m part of this group called Wham City,” he adds. “We’re just a group of jerks and weirdos, a mixture of musicians and performers who book bands that we know personally or friends of friends. We don’t make any money out of it. We only book two shows a month, sometimes in proper venues, sometimes in houses, warehouses, alleys or in the park. Baltimore doesn’t have any proper mid-sized venues so everything happens in these illegal spaces. The problem is the scene has gotten too large and there’s all these weird rave laws. If it’s a ‘party’ you can get a fine, if it’s a ‘rave’ you can go to jail for twenty years because you are ‘enabling the drug use that occurs at these functions’!”
Rave laws or not, Baltimore is brimming with activity. “There’s a lot going on underground that doesn’t get in the media,” Dan explains, “by its very nature it has to be kept out of the press.” Of all the Baltimore bands, he recommends Ponytail, Video Hippos, Lexie Mountain Boys and especially Santa Dads. “Santa Dads are really innovative, bizarre, awesome,” he says. “It’s a two piece; a ukulele, beatbox and Gregorian chants. The beatboxer wears this homemade tiger suit and Josh the singer wears this red dress that I found in the garbage - I like finding things in the garbage. They’re incredible but I don’t know how much longer they’ll be around as Josh is going on some weird spiritual quest.” 
Wham City isn’t just about bands, being active across the arts. “We also have a monthly theatre night and this ridiculous live format talk show called the Ed Schrader Show,” says Deacon. “We have a large visual arts contingent but we never had a gallery space until now and the main thing about Wham City is we do everything in our own space - until we get evicted for being too loud!” 
Dan Deacon tours Europe and North America August- October, see <A href="http://www.myspace.com/dandeacon">http://www.myspace.com/dandeacon</A> for dates.