“See that bump you just walked over? Someone’s buried under there.” With these few casually uttered words I am thrust into the bizarre world of Clint Maedgen, creator of the Ninth Ward musical juggernaught known as Bingo! and the electrified pageantry of Liquidrone. We are exploring the grounds of Fiorella’s Café where Maedgen works countless hours on a bicycle delivering fried chicken and po-boys to the denizens of the French Quarter. During this day job, soaking up the city’s audial and visual feasts, Clint derives much of his musical inspiration. More than providing great lyrical fodder, working at Fiorella’s has supplied Clint with an ideal setting to showcase his carnivalesque Bingo! show Thursday nights in the café’s cozy back room. The supposed dead body underneath the uneven creaky floorboards of the café is just one of the many secrets woven throughout the building’s storied history. Prior to being a café, the old building adjacent to the French Market was a bonafide brothel. With a gleeful smile, the spiky-coiffed Maedgen heads up a ramshackle death trap of a staircase to the café’s uninhabited, ghostly upper floors, where sure enough, large rooms have been segmented into several miniature rooms, big enough for a twin bed and little else. We end up in a large, cluttered space that has the look of a madman’s den. I look over at Clint and realize I may not be too far off. We are surrounded by ancient clown and carnival memorabilia, all sorts of instruments in various states of disrepair, antiquated noisemaker toys, and of course, vintage bingo accessories and cards. I feel as if I have stumbled into the nightmarish Land of the Misfit Toys from that old Christmas special that still airs every year. This is Clint Meadgen’s playpen. It is among the bizarre and the tossed-aside, the mythical and the eerie, that this modern day bard feels most at ease.
RIDING ON THE BACK OF A GIANT INSECT
Because his parents split up when he was three, Clint was shuttled between 12 different states before settling in Lafayette with his dad and stepmother. Being a musician was not what his father had in mind for his son. “In my dad’s eyes I’m supposed to be pitching for the Astros right now, or at least a halfback for Texas A&M. He’s the most testosterone-driven man I’ve come across: Texan, ex-Marine, Vietnam vet, deep sea diver…he snorts fire and kicks ass.” Still, it was his father who introduced Maedgen to the old school country sounds of Hank Williams, Sr., and Bob Wills, an influence heard strongly in his current songwriting. It was his stepmother that introduced Clint to modern rock music. “I saw my first rock concert when I was eight. I saw Heart. Before the age of 12 my stepmom had taken me to see Alice Cooper, KISS, Ozzy Osbourne…these all being huge landmark events in my life.” In an attempt to deflect his dad’s obsession with his son’s baseball career, Clint’s stepmom directed him to the school band. He chose the saxophone in 5th grade more by default than choice. “My dad had played the saxophone for five minutes back in like 1958, but he still had the horn around, so that’s what I played.” Clint saw the horn as his enemy until 8th grade when a friend introduced him to jazz with Spyro Gyra and Grover Washington, Jr. Of this watershed moment Clint exclaims, “That was fucking it! After hearing that, I started shedding all the time.” In high school, Maedgen played in the stage band, marching band, and most importantly, symphonic orchestra. “I miss it so much,” muses Clint, “Being an agent in the symphonic orchestra is like riding on the back of a giant insect. It’s just all fucking rattling around you, all the counter melodies popping up, flute lines going Flooooooooo! The timpanis banging, the church bells! I arrange symphonies every day in my head. I’ve got pieces I’d just about kill to be able to roll into a symphonic setting…” My assumption was correct. Clint is a madman. He was dancing all over the room, a flurry of manic energy mimicking all the different parts of his yet-to-be-performed opus. It’s clear that he was in dire need of either heavy sedation or the Louisiana Philharmonic. While the latter may seem far-fetched, it slowly dawned on me that maybe Clint could pull it off. He certainly has the energy.
DINOSAURS AND SUPERNATURAL SAXOPHONES
Clint first moved to New Orleans in 1988 when he enrolled in the music program at UNO, harboring dreams of becoming a bebop musician. Maedgen worshipped on the altar of Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Sonny Rollins, Bird and Coltrane. Tempering his bop fantasies was the birth of the grunge movement into which Clint dove headfirst. “I saw Soundgarden twice at Tipitina’s which pretty much changed my fucking life. It was like watching dinosaurs on stage fucking shit up.” It was the loud rambunctious energy of groups like Jane’s Addiction and Mudhoney that later proved to be the inspiration for what was to become Liquidrone. Soon enough, the hedonistic nature of the city took hold of him. “I was living in Bienville Hall [UNO], going downtown hanging out by the river, tripping all night, sleeping all day, waking up just in time for last call at the dining hall. My romance with the city started then.” After a semester and a half at UNO, Clint needed a break from his Dionysian lifestyle. He left the city for Baton Rouge and enrolled at Southern University. “The semester I left they [UNO] brought in Ellis Marsalis to revamp the jazz program…That’s how my luck usually runs.” At Southern, he was mentored by legendary educator Alvin Batiste, who made a huge impact on Clint’s musical worldview. When Maedgen met up with Wynton Marsalis’ altoist, Wess Anderson, he realized that his dream of being a true bebop musician was in jeopardy. “After a couple lessons with Wess, I quickly realized that if I was to contribute anything to the form of bebop, I wasn’t going to be contributing anything for 15 years, working in the shed for 12 hours a day. Those guys are magical!” Clint is not simply using hyperbole when describing his heroes as magical. Relating a story of seeing Pharaoh Sanders at Jazz Fest one year, Clint recounts the supernatural powers of the sax giant. “It was at the end of his set, all acoustic instruments, I was right fucking there, way up front. He’s making his horn sound like a spaceship [imitates sound, kind of like the Wayne’s World dream music]. He takes his mouth off the mouthpiece and his horn keeps making that sound for like 30 seconds! I jumped up and yelled ‘GOD…DAMN!’” Realizing he would be hard pressed to conjure phantom notes from his saxophone, and with his dream of becoming a true bebop musician looking bleak, Clint eventually put down his horn. There were other musical avenues to explore.
ELECTROCUTED ON THE MISSISSIPPI
Living in Baton Rouge, Clint witnessed the birth of two major forces in his life. The first being his son, Trinity Aristotle, and the second being his first real band, Liquidrone. As much as music and art captivates Maedgen, it is his son who truly enthralls him. Boasts Clint, “He’s like God walking around. He’s much smarter than I am.” His beloved eight-year-old is the result of a marriage to his first wife (Maedgen has been married twice, and divorced both times), who still lives in Baton Rouge. Every Tuesday, Clint travels to Baton Rouge to see his son, a trip documented in one of his finest and most emotive songs, “Airline Highway.” Maedgen is well aware of the strange position in his son’s life. “I try to take advantage of any opportunity to be cool in front of my son while I still can, because once he gets 11-12, that’s it. I’m just the weirdo dad who’s in a band. It’s like Tom Waits said, [in a dead-on Tom Waits voice] ‘Yeah, I can write some fucking songs, but what we really need is a physician. I know your chest is hurting, but let me write a song about it.’”
Indeed, Clint Maedgen can write songs. As soon as he put his saxophone down, he began writing tunes, one of the first being the macabre “She Loves the Circus,” a staple at both his Liquidrone and Bingo! shows. He started Liquidrone with his best friend Mike Miller when he was commissioned to do the soundtrack to a Joe Orton play. The music was atmospheric, loosely derivative of the surreal Twin Peaks score. It was just the spark Clint needed. Soon enough, Maedgen was enlisting a rotating collective of Baton Rouge musicians to perform the new material he was churning out. Thus the Liquidrone machine began. “If you ask nearly any musician in Baton Rouge, odds are they’ll tell you they did their time in Liquidrone. As it stands today there are 40 ex-members of Liquidrone,” says Maedgen. The name is derived from a day spent lying in bed with the flu, heavily medicated, staring at a Liqui-Gel cap. A lot of rock bands pick their names because of its silliness, or the way it rolls off the tongue. Not Clint. He chose his band’s name very carefully explaining, “The term ‘liquidrone’ means being submerged in murky water and being electrocuted, not enough to hurt, but just enough to hum.” Right. As far as the band’s concept and sound, Maedgen was inspired by his mentor Alvin Batiste and Branford Marsalis (with whom Clint had an earth shattering, life-changing 20-minute conversation one year after a set at Jazz Fest). Both Marsalis and Batiste stressed the importance of listening. “They taught me to apply everything—the way a door squeaks, plates falling off the shelf, whatever…that’s what bebop was! Liquidrone is taking every influence I have and putting it into a blender; a big scoop of Mudhoney, some Mingus, maybe a little Fleetwood Mac…the Interstate when it’s raining, the calliope like a motherfucker, car alarms, a baby’s laughing, everything.” Liquidrone’s wild mixture of found sounds and unorthodox instrumentation coupled with Maedgen’s songwriting and stage presence made Liquidrone a much buzzed about band in Baton Rouge and Louisiana. Things weren’t always so rosy, unfortunately. After recording and pressing their first album, Dark Ride, the actual CDs came upon a watery death. Following an unfortunate disagreement, Clint’s first wife threw 425 copies into the Mississippi River along with eight Underwood typewriters and a sousaphone. “That must have been quite a sight floating down the river,” muses Maedgen. Why Clint had eight Underwood typewriters lying around is still a mystery.
Tragedy struck the band in 2000 when one of their own, Melissa Barrington, died of cancer. A self-taught musician, Barrington was a creative force to be reckoned with. “She was a dynamic woman,” states a more subdued Maedgen, “She inspired everyone she came across.” The loss was a crushing one to the band. Still, they continued on amidst a whirlwind of personnel changes and the recording of a subsequent album, Factory. The current line-up—Mike Miller on guitar, Ryan Farris on drums, Casey McAllister on keyboards, and Marty Lastrapes on bass, have recently recorded a new album to be released in the fall. Their sound has evolved into an eclectic mix of rock bombast, bop-tinged dissonance, and muscular punk energy. Now based in New Orleans and going on its 11th year, it has become clear that Liquidrone will always be an ongoing project in Clint’s life. It has yet to reach the popular heights of his Bingo! project, but Clint holds out hope that at some point their time will come. “With Liquidrone I feel like I’ve got this big old ace of spades in my pocket. It’s our little secret. The band is a motherfucking freight train. Given the right push, I think Liquidrone can take over the fucking world,” declares Maedgen. He adds with a straight deadpan, “All we want is a ten record deal and a tour with Radiohead.”
BINGOPALOOZA
After six years away from the Crescent City, Clint decided it was time to move back, eventually settling in the bohemian paradise known as the Ninth Ward. “There’s an energy there that is unexplainable, a darkness that is both horrifying and beautiful in the same breath. It’s a strange feeling to live in a neighborhood with so much fucking violence and so much beauty at the same time.” Maedgen bought a house at 1010 Bartholomew, coincidentally the one-time residence of Lee Harvey Oswald (the coincidence doesn’t end there, as Clint’s uncle, a cop, arrested Oswald on Canal Street for handing out controversial literature). Maedgen blossomed amongst the oddball characters and quirky independent lifestyle that defines the Bywater. Neighborhood regulars like Stix duh Clown and Pierre Pressure provided a bevy of material for his songwriting. After arriving in New Orleans, he had begun writing tunes that didn’t quite fit the Liquidrone canon. He soon decided to start another band showcasing the gentler side of his songwriting. Most of the earliest tunes were written on a pump organ that Clint had found at an antique store in Baton Rouge. For the uninitiated, the pump organ works by squeezing bellows together with your knees to create the sound, the wider you hold open your knees the louder the volume. “It’s a very sexual instrument,” insists Maedgen. Around the same time, lightning struck when Clint came upon 850 old bingo cards at an antique store on the corner of Dauphine and Elysian Fields. He bought the entire set for 20 dollars. The band’s concept slowly came into focus. An updated version of the number-calling nursing home standard was the hook. In between sets of manic high-spirited bingo games, he would show off his new band and new material. Following Jazz Fest in 2002, Clint and his band gave their inaugural Bingo! performance. Within weeks the Thursday night Bingo! shows at Fiorella’s were standing room only.
Bingo! is Dr. Jekyll to Liquidrone’s Mr. Hyde. A good portion of the tunes are love songs displaying Maedgen’s strong lusty tenor, while others provide a glimpse of Clint’s bebop saxophonics and carnival antics. Lyrically, the Bingo! songs are the most personal he’s written. “It’s hard to get up there and show your heart like that. It’s easier behind a wall of electricity,” says Clint in reference to his other, more amplified band. As much as Bingo! is the brainchild of Clint Maedgen, the success of the project is due in large part to the ensemble. Violinist Brynn Sauväge, upright bassist Steve Calandra and Liquidrone veteran Ryan Farris on drums all play a major role in the group’s dynamics, employing additional low-fi instrumentation such as pots, toolboxes, toy saws and the like when necessary. Key non-musical members indispensable to the Bingo! experience are resident clown/bingo caller Ronnie Numbers and Ann Finney, who provides every lucky bingo winner an unforgettable celebration dance. As Clint Maedgen’s girlfriend, she also provides the songwriter with his necessary muse.
Proving the Bingo! show wasn’t merely a regional phenomenon, Clint and his comrades traveled to Brooklyn last summer completing an incredibly successful five-week run at an alternative theater in the neighborhood of Bushwick. Because of a paucity in funds, Bingo! used guerrilla promotion in getting people to their shows. They’d pack all their instruments, sirens, bullhorns and clown make-up into the bus, drive to where the subway would let out, play a quick 15-minute set and move on. Unconventional maybe, but it worked. “Most nights we had a hundred people show up. And people kept coming back, like here. It became this event.” They’d play bingo on the subway, enough time for a quick game and their infamous “Bingo Theme” before peeling out when the subway doors opened, leaving flyers and slack-jawed passengers in their wake. One of these impromptu performances caught the eye and ear of a popular punk band called Mindless Self Indulgence. The following night, in front of 1800 liberty-spiked punk fans at Irving Plaza, Bingo! opened for their new-found friends. Remarking on his new band’s luck and success Clint asserts, “I had more luck with Bingo! in nine months than I’ve had with Liquidrone in 11 years.”
MADNESS
Clint Maedgen is possessed. Songwriting is his exorcism. He’ll be on his bike delivering red beans to a regular on Chartres Street when he suddenly gets a vision. “A song will come and wrap itself around my head so I have to stop, peel it off and look at it a bit before continuing on.” Adds Maedgen, “I can carve a song out of just about anything, as anybody can if they’re as haunted by sounds as I am. I have to get it out or I start losing my shit.” As much of a success as Bingo! has become, there are a few detractors. Some label his music as pretentious art rock, too immersed in its own wit and novelty. Others discount the music as a Tom Waits knock-off (as Clint is admittedly a huge Tom Waits fan). “That’s cool,” says Maedgen of his critics, “I like it when you love it, I like it when you hate it. Just don’t be ambivalent about it.” The irony is that Clint Maedgen is nothing like the cooler-than-thou pretentious hipsters that can be found teeming the Ninth Ward. In fact, he is unabashedly romantic and goofy recalling his band’s fortune. “It’s funny. This has all turned out the way I dreamed it would. It’s startling when dreams come true.” From anyone else, this statement would sound corny or false. When it comes from a guy wearing a polyester leisure suit, hair waxed into a spiky fortress, fanning himself with an old bingo card that reads “Ladies Auxiliary Fire Department” on its back, you take him for his word.
