Colorful Garage Punks Quintron & Miss Pussycat Hole Up at New Orleans Museum of Art
By Andrew Clayman
Published in The Nashville Scene, June 2011
Where trends and target demographics are concerned, Quintron and Miss Pussycat would appear to be happily out of step with the known universe. For fifteen years, the husband/wife duo from New Orleans’ resilient Ninth Ward has blazed the trail for a brand of musical performance-art they call “swamp-tech”— likely the world’s first and finest electro-punk dance party and puppet revue. Sure, there might not be an obvious, built-in audience for this kind of thing, but as a consequence, there are also no limitations on where the Quintron and Miss Pussycat show can go.
“That’s really important to us,” says Quintron, whose real name and background remain intentionally murky (depending on your source, his birth name was either Robert Rolston or Jay Poggi). “Music really is everywhere and involves everyone. And I feel very fortunate that what we do-- not just musically but with Miss Pussycat’s puppeteering, as well—takes us into social circles where maybe a regular rock band wouldn’t go. It’s important to always remember that you’re a member of the wider human race, and not just whatever part of the human race you have a t-shirt for.”
That philosophy pretty well sums up how the same artists who typically play gritty, underground clubs can wind up looking right at home at the New Orleans Museum of Art— which welcomed Quintron and Miss Pussycat (aka Panacea Theriac) for an extended residency and music/puppetry exhibition in 2010. The unusual experience also birthed the group’s latest album, Sucre du Sauvage.
“I wanted to go in with a clean slate,” Quintron says of the museum sessions, “because I didn’t know how that environment was going to affect the recording process or how we approached things.”
As it turned out, the NOMA experience forced Quintron— inventor of his own customized Hammond-Rhodes organ and light-activated drum machine (the patented Drum Buddy)—to dig deeper into the nuances of his traditionally raw, boisterous, and minimalist music.
“With our sort of self-imposed work schedule at the museum, we were literally sitting there for hours and hours, pushed to the end of the creative rope,” he says. “But it was also awesome that we could take a break at, say, four o’clock in the morning and just roam the premises, looking at the artwork.”
Impressively, Sucre du Sauvage manages to condense hundreds of hours of music and field recordings into a cohesive 14-track effort that ranks among the most bizarre and enjoyable in the Quintron canon. Still, as fans well know, the record only ever tells half the tale. It’s the live show—with Quintron behind the headlights of his car-shaped synth contraption and Miss Pussycat chiming in with backup vocals, maracas, and surrealistic puppet interludes—that really delivers the goods.
“We definitely don’t go out there and just perform our records on stage,” Quintron says. “You might hear ten percent of the new record or a 100 percent of it. Just depends on what the night needs.
“Miss Pussycat and I have kind of a rule in our music that we try not to count past two. We still never have anything that’s really planned, as far as when things change in a song or how many times we’re going to do this or that part. There are only two of us, and we operate on a non-verbal, psychic communication level where anything can happen musically with any of our songs at any time live… and it’s okay! I think that allows a lot of the older songs to still breathe after fifteen years or whatever. Failure is always an option.”
As for his own concert-going experiences, Quintron doesn’t expect every band to deliver colorful costumes and wild puppet shows, but he still appreciates the way a stunning visual can complement a sound.
“Sometimes the drummer’s hair is plenty enough,” he says, “or just the look in somebody’s eyes when they’re playing the bass or something. That kind of subtle thing can be amazingly engaging. And then sometimes it’s also cool to see a band that might blow up goats or something [laughs].”
“That’s really important to us,” says Quintron, whose real name and background remain intentionally murky (depending on your source, his birth name was either Robert Rolston or Jay Poggi). “Music really is everywhere and involves everyone. And I feel very fortunate that what we do-- not just musically but with Miss Pussycat’s puppeteering, as well—takes us into social circles where maybe a regular rock band wouldn’t go. It’s important to always remember that you’re a member of the wider human race, and not just whatever part of the human race you have a t-shirt for.”
That philosophy pretty well sums up how the same artists who typically play gritty, underground clubs can wind up looking right at home at the New Orleans Museum of Art— which welcomed Quintron and Miss Pussycat (aka Panacea Theriac) for an extended residency and music/puppetry exhibition in 2010. The unusual experience also birthed the group’s latest album, Sucre du Sauvage.
“I wanted to go in with a clean slate,” Quintron says of the museum sessions, “because I didn’t know how that environment was going to affect the recording process or how we approached things.”
As it turned out, the NOMA experience forced Quintron— inventor of his own customized Hammond-Rhodes organ and light-activated drum machine (the patented Drum Buddy)—to dig deeper into the nuances of his traditionally raw, boisterous, and minimalist music.
“With our sort of self-imposed work schedule at the museum, we were literally sitting there for hours and hours, pushed to the end of the creative rope,” he says. “But it was also awesome that we could take a break at, say, four o’clock in the morning and just roam the premises, looking at the artwork.”
Impressively, Sucre du Sauvage manages to condense hundreds of hours of music and field recordings into a cohesive 14-track effort that ranks among the most bizarre and enjoyable in the Quintron canon. Still, as fans well know, the record only ever tells half the tale. It’s the live show—with Quintron behind the headlights of his car-shaped synth contraption and Miss Pussycat chiming in with backup vocals, maracas, and surrealistic puppet interludes—that really delivers the goods.
“We definitely don’t go out there and just perform our records on stage,” Quintron says. “You might hear ten percent of the new record or a 100 percent of it. Just depends on what the night needs.
“Miss Pussycat and I have kind of a rule in our music that we try not to count past two. We still never have anything that’s really planned, as far as when things change in a song or how many times we’re going to do this or that part. There are only two of us, and we operate on a non-verbal, psychic communication level where anything can happen musically with any of our songs at any time live… and it’s okay! I think that allows a lot of the older songs to still breathe after fifteen years or whatever. Failure is always an option.”
As for his own concert-going experiences, Quintron doesn’t expect every band to deliver colorful costumes and wild puppet shows, but he still appreciates the way a stunning visual can complement a sound.
“Sometimes the drummer’s hair is plenty enough,” he says, “or just the look in somebody’s eyes when they’re playing the bass or something. That kind of subtle thing can be amazingly engaging. And then sometimes it’s also cool to see a band that might blow up goats or something [laughs].”
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