Music Makes Fine Art: The Craftwork of Quintron and Miss Pussycat

Any successful one-man band must have a knack for craftsmanship and New Orleans’ Quintron doesn’t disappoint. He owns an organ that is fitted with a ’70s-style Lincoln Continental grill and, as cool as that is, the natural inventor’s most famous creation is a patented, hand-built sound machine called the Drum Buddy, a light-activated analog synthesizer that is “played like a turntable,” Quintron says. It’s an instrument immensely popular with those in the know—just ask Laurie Anderson, Wilco’s Nels Cline or Atmosphere DJ Mr. Dibbs, all of whom own a version of the machine. The Drum Buddy debuted around 2000, and each new line has improved electronics tweaked by Quintron himself and possesses different components depending on available materials—the 2007 line’s cabinetry was made with sinker cypress, for example, which could be a hundred to a thousand years old.

Since 1994, Quintron has taken his otherworldly electric dance spectacle to many worldly places, like the Spellcaster Lodge (his underwater-themed club situated below his house in New Orleans’ 9th Ward), a tour across Europe, the Jenny Jones show and BBC Radio’s “Peel Sessions.” His next foray into cultured venues is “Parallel Universe: Quintron and Miss Pussycat Live at City Park,” a multimedia exhibit hosted at the New Orleans Museum of Art. There, his lover, partner, housemate and sometimes maraca player, Miss Pussycat, will premiere a new episode of her live-action puppet soap opera, Trixie and The Treetrunks, and curate an entire room representing her puppeteering career. Simultaneously, Quintron will spend five days a week for nearly three months as a temporary employee of the museum. His job? To record a brand new album from scratch and in front of the eyes of any who choose to watch. A public recording studio will be housed inside the gallery alongside a display of past versions of the Drum Buddy.

Filter met with Quintron and Miss Pussycat at the Spellcaster Lodge on a particularly cold New Orleans afternoon, where the couple talked about the beginnings of “Parallel Universe,” choosing portraits to line the walls of Quintron’s studio and the most awkward thing visitors might see during the open recording sessions.

This is quite a different endeavor for a musician. For an artist, being in a museum is the epitome of legitimacy.
Quintron: I’ve never been involved in the gallery scene at all, except for having friends who are artists. The museum’s a whole different thing. We go to museums all the time on the road and I really like the environment, as strange as that might sound. I like the white walls, the committees and curators, the collectors and the historical significance, and historical artifacts combined with random choices of who’s an important modern artist.

You were able to go through NOMA’s vaults and handpick artwork to surround you in the studio. What were you able to find?
Quintron: In the room I’m in, I’ll have realistic portraits—nothing abstract. I want to look into the eyes of all these people. NOMA has work from a little old lady at an Uptown art school who did portraits of her relatives. I wanted to find [portraits of] people I’d like to hang out with.

What will it be like when you start recording? Inevitably, people will show up to watch you.
Quintron: I’m going to ignore them. It’s not a performance. I’m not setting it up as a show and tell. I have to be careful with the signage—I don’t want it to be all, “Shh, quiet!” and a careful environment. I want people to feel free to talk, but make it clear I’m not there to entertain anyone or show anybody how the Drum Buddy works. It will be as though I’m a blacksmith in colonial Williamsburg: I’ll be going about my work, on view, and not looking for any type of interaction. If it happens, it happens, but my intent won’t be to make beautiful music at every single moment. They’ll hear me yell at headphones sometimes. Or, they’ll hear a bassline going on for two hours. If you’ve ever been in a recording studio, that’s one of the most awkward things. I might just work on beats for the first two weeks. I can’t wait. I’m very good at spacing out and tuning out the environment.

It’s performance art without performance.
Quintron: It’s an experiment that I know will work. Something good will come of it. Why not put myself in this bizarre circumstance?

Since you first came out with the Drum Buddy, how has the product evolved?
Quintron: Once I came up with the basic form that did what I wanted it to do—which was to be a cylindrical, rotating, light-activated drum machine—and once I got the basic four oscillator kick/snare/bass/bass down, I haven’t changed the look of it much other than refining the woodwork, the cabinetry, changing the lights. Internally, it’s changed a lot. The parameters of the analog oscillator have changed and I’ve added features. The last one was turning it into a play-through instrument, as well as a sound-producing instrument. So, now there’s a tandem effect, like an effects pedal, where you can plug an instrument into it and play it through the Drum Buddy.

What are you going to do with the final product of the album-making process?
Quintron: I deliberately haven’t talked to any record labels or started writing songs. That first day, I want it to be a white sky, a blank slate.

Miss Pussycat, when you created your set for the installation, did you start from scratch?
Miss Pussycat: I have lots of puppets, but I wanted to have some new stuff, so there’s a series of photos and an installation as well as the new episode of Trixie and The Treetrunks. Puppets are so great because they’re utilitarian. In the museum, you can’t really touch anything, but puppets are made to be used.
Quintron: I think a lot of what we’re bringing in is accessible. They’re going to get mauled at some point.
Miss Pussycat: That’s what they’re for. Puppets get better the more you use them. It would be like having a car but never driving it. It’s exciting to think of new things to do with the puppets. It’s fun to think of them having a life of their own in the museum.

What do you think it’ll be like to see people playing with a Drum Buddy?

Miss Pussycat: Well, the guy who made the boxes [for the new line of Drum Buddies] came to pick his up the other day. It turned out so beautiful. He played it for the first time, his own special Drum Buddy.
Quintron: I traded him cabinetwork for a Drum Buddy. Hearing somebody play the Drum Buddy for the first time always blows my mind.
Miss Pussycat: It was beautiful. I had to go record it. I’d been working on the soundtrack [for Trixie and The Treetrunks] and I came down to the basement and recorded him. It was angelic. I’m using what he did in the soundtrack because it was so great.
Quintron: They won’t get to play a new Drum Buddy, but I built an interactive “arcade” version that’s behind glass. I wanted to build a museum version, but I knew if I just let everybody go nuts on one it’d be dead in two weeks. I’d spend all my time repairing it. It’ll be similar to an arcade experience, where you can play forever on one quarter. F