The Wild West

Taking its inspiration from Oscar Wilde’s visit to the mining town of Leadville in Colorado for a lecture back in 1881, The Devil’s Spine Band is more a new concept in performance than a band. In a stunning visual setting by artist Alice Maher that captures the spirit of a Wild West saloon, it features Japanese butoh dancers Gyohei Zaitsu and Maki Watanabe, guitarist Ed Deane, percussionist Noel Bridgeman, keyboardist and director Trevor Knight and special guest vocalist and performer Cindy Cummings in the role of Madam Mustachio.

But where and how did this adventurous, some might say downright bizarre, multi-disciplinary melange come about? As Knight, who played with Auto Da Fé and has an impressive CV on Ireland’s rock and blues scene, explains, “When I was in Leadville in Colorado with a show called Catalpa I spotted a plaque on a wall saying that Oscar Wilde had been to Leadville as part of a lecture tour he once did. That intrigued me. I’d also been looking to do something that had a cowboy, Wild West, aspect to it.
“Meanwhile Olwen Fouere, the Irish actor, had been offered a short script by Malcolm McLaren, which portrayed Wilde as the inventor of rock’n’roll when he went to Hollywood. Another part of the jigsaw was seeing the band Left, Right and Centre with Noel Bridgeman, Ed Deane and John Quearney. They have a repertoire of 160 songs and don’t have a set list. So I wondered if it would be possible to put them into a performance situation with the butoh dancers as well as Olwyn – and with Alice’s tree sculptures. We workshopped it for three years, but for the upcoming Dublin shows Olwen had to drop out and Cindy came in. We’ve also added a film contributed by filmmaker Vivienne Dick. So it’s hardly surprising that the show has been described as a David Lynch movie with music by Captain Beefheart!”
On the music front, Knight has been writing with guitarist Deane, and they fly in the songs and instrumentals at particular points during the show. “There’s a warped, somewhat Tom Waitsian, version of Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’,” he says. “There’s also a song called ‘The Devil’s Own Brigade’, and there are songs about lynchings and other themes. The band members wear what might be best described as Tex-Mex outfits on a set that looks like a cross between a mariachi bar in Mullingar and a wild west saloon!”
While the content of the show will be a challenge to Irish audiences who like to know exactly what they’re getting, that’s not the only differences in The Devil’s Spine Band offer. In what many may see as a major shift in audience/artist attitudes, not only can a performance last for up to 5 hours, which might even make Bruce Springsteen fans feel somewhat short-changed by the boss, but the audience is encouraged to come as go.
“That’s right,” confirms Knight, “It gets into Grateful Dead territory in that sense of the length and the improvisational elements of the show. I can’t describe it as a piece of theatre. I want it to be something that moves away for being tied to a text and a plot as with most theatre events, and is driven by the music. With The Devil’s Spine Band, the performers inhabit the space for a specific amount of time, and there may even be moments when there’s not a huge amount happening other than people looking at the set, but even that’s part of it too. In one sense the audience is actually part of the show, and a lot can depend on how they are reacting to what the performers are doing. The mood of the audience and even the mood of the bar can be important factors in determining what happens next. If somebody wants to go to the bar and get a drink, or go out for a sandwich and come back in, that’s fine. They can go home for their dinner! There’s a much more relaxed and casual relationship between the performers and the audience. Each Devil’s Spine Band show is improvised to the point that we don’t know which way it starts until that moment arrives.”

The Devil’s Spine Band is at The Banquet Hall @ Smock Alley Theatre, January 19-20 from 8pm-11pm and January 21 from 5pm-11pm