Photograph by Doug MacCash/The Times-Picayune
Quintron and Miss Pussycat
May 18
8 p.m.
$12, $3 minor surcharge
2706 Olive
314-535-0353
Mr. Quintron grew up in St. Louis, but his destiny was New Orleans. That’s where he met his wife and musical collaborator, puppeteer and percussionist Miss Pussycat, and where he invented the Spit Machine, “a hand organ which used saliva as a tuning conductor”; the Drum Buddy, an oscillating, light-activated drum machine; and the brand-new Singing House, “a drone synthesizer [that] can be installed into any building in order to provide its inhabitants with a pleasing chord that is constantly changed by the weather.” (It registers the light of the moon, too, which translates to an electronic purr.) When they play rock clubs, with Quintron singing and manically playing a jury-rigged Hammond B-3, Miss Pussycat singing backup and shaking maracas, and the Drum Buddy sputtering beats and throwing fragments of light all over the walls, the lazy thing to do is think of them as indie. The reality is, they’re New Orleans; that’s why they call their sound “swamp-tech.” They live in the Ninth Ward (where they run The Spellcaster Lodge), had a long collaboration with late R&B legend Ernie K-Doe, and performed on Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys’ 2011 Grammy Award–nominated record, Grand Isle. New Orleans TV broadcasts Miss Pussycat’s puppet show, North Pole Nutrias, every Christmas, and last year, the pair spent 12 months inside the New Orleans Museum of Art. NOMA exhibited Miss Pussycat’s sets and puppets, as well as a live Quintron, who showed up every day to write music and record an album in public. Quintron has called the double disc, Sucre du Sauvage, his best yet. And yes, those songs translate live. As Quintron once noted, “This act somehow has equal relevance in sleazy nightclubs, pizza restaurants, and university lecture halls.”
