Beowulf Kingsley, who is also Dr. Toddzilla, who is also Rev. Todd Perkins, who is also me, is a kind of eccentric musician living out on a farm in Southeast Michigan, close to Detroit and Ann Arbor, with my lovely and talented girlfriend Cynthia, two feral cats, a mad ferret, coyotes and deer and a whole lot of guitars. I grew up in the 60’s, surrounded by the swirling smoke of the counterculture (I remember that swirling smoke pretty well), and the amazing poets, political activists, crazed multimedia artists and musicians of the day. The MC5 lived just down the street, and I was in and out of their house quite a lot (I also worked the light show for them on a few occasions), and Iggy Pop and I would have these strange stare down contests on the campus diag now and then…Iggy always won those, by the way. I always loved music, but actually started playing around ’68 while I was living with some Surrealist/Dadaist Guerrilla Theatre Troupe members in a commune in Kalamazoo Michigan. There was a band they had called the Shultz Food Band, which originally occasionally used food as musical instruments, along with the Electric Slinky and the Feedback Autoharp Device. They were very influenced by Archie Shepp, Pharaoh Saunders and John Coltrane. I think they were weird even for then! But what a great place to start playing…there were very high standards, but no real rules at all. Much later I studied Music and Ethnomusicology at Washtenaw College, Wayne State and U of M, but the early subversive work had already been done, all too well. I wound up playing with lots of Rock, Blues and Jump Swing bands, like the Blue Front Persuaders and Big Dave And The Ultrasonics, who I toured with across the U.S. and Canada for 5 years straight before bailing out. Later I became the touring Bassist for Rocker Michael Katon (www.katon.com) and traveled with him for another 6 years, playing in Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, Slovenia, Norway, Sweden and Spain. I’ve been lucky enough to share stages and festivals with acts as diverse as Eric Burdon, Gatemouth Brown, Blue Oyster Cult, Motorhead, Lucky Peterson, Golden Earring, Wishbone Ash, Booker T and the MGs, Koko Taylor, Mitch Ryder and John Mayall, and lived to tell the tale! Recently I’ve been doing more engineering and production, doing recordings for Mark (T.H.E. Modfather) and Multimedia Artist Jesse Richards. And 2 CDs of my own stuff, done in that much loved, little heard of but I'm assured ever-popular Psycheldelic/SwampGoth/FolkRock/WhenAreWeEverGonnaGetPaid genre.Oh, and a while back I collaborated on a Poetry/Music project with Celeste Oatmeal (Science Fiction Writer Denise Shawl) that we performed at the Detroit Institute Of The Arts, which was pretty cool. Right now I’m playing with my friends the Witch Doctors and with Jesse Richards, and finishing that 3rd CD, as well as chasing the ferret around the room in my off hours. That’s hard work, too…he’s a fast little bugger.
