The Man in the Eyeball Mask

“Hardy was kind of like a premature old man or Yoda, wise and cynical and merry. He seemed to have had the courage to think clearly for himself early on. Hardy’s odyssey was sexual in part which takes courage and energy. He explored himself and other people until he found the place he liked.” –Gary Panter

1954 HW

For those not familiar, Hardy Fox is co-founder of the Residents and their primary arranger and producer. Spent the better of two pandemic years talking to friends and family of the late Hardy Fox for a story close to my heart, about how a weirdo from small town Texas deals with familial alienation and Texas-sized repression to find solace and salvation in art/ music. It’s also the true origin story of the Residents, well before their days in Shreveport and San Mateo.

“Texas is so straight and insane that smart people there sometimes –as a form of protest or simple mutation and rolling of the dice– want to raise a more bizarre form of hell than people who are happier elsewhere.” –Gary Panter

The Man in the Eyeball Mask for Texas Monthly

Don and Moki Cherry’s Beautiful Thing

“Moki’s tapestries were a living part of the music because they were all over the place; they were everywhere. They provided a creative and emotional impetus, they were like mandalas in a way. The tapestries you could go deeply inside of them. There’s the whole thing, but you could investigate different sections of the tapestry. You’re just in this environment where they’re all over the place so you found yourself being subtly influenced by these colors and these images that she did, these quilts and tapestries with all these different designs. It would have been impossible not to be influenced by them. They were part of the home, but also you begin to see how they became part of the music.”

A few years ago, I got the chance to talk with Neneh Cherry about her parents’ vision of music and art, her mother’s mantra: “The stage is the home and the home is the stage.” Now I got to see it through with a story investigating Moki Cherry’s presence and work alongside Don Cherry, with crucial insight from her, Terry Riley, and Hamid Drake.

Don Cherry is a deserving giant of jazz. Now his wife, Moki, gets her due as his visionary collaborator. for Washington Post.

Extra reading: my review of Brown Rice.

Lisa Alvarado’s Transformational Art

Right before the global pandemic landed, I was in the process of flying out to Chicago to profile visual artist Lisa Alvarado for Texas Monthly. And while that didn’t happen, I was able to spend a year in conversation with her, while also wholly immersed in the music of her group with husband Joshua Abrams, Natural Information Society.

“Looking at Lisa Alvarado’s canvases, you get the feeling that you can see more the longer you gaze at them. Lines start to slip, patterns teem, sharp angles shift, colors brighten, curled paint starts to loosen its coil, your eye imagining just how the shapes might move if they weren’t fixed in paint. In exhibition spaces, the oversized pieces exude a distinctive sense of presenceLooking at her canvases, you get the feeling that you can see more the longer you gaze at them. Lines start to slip, patterns teem, sharp angles shift, colors brighten, curled paint starts to loosen its coil, your eye imagining just how the shapes might move if they weren’t fixed in paint. In exhibition spaces, the oversized pieces exude a distinctive sense of presence.”