So, I'm walkin' through SPX in one of my far too infrequent and much too short breaks looking at all the comics on the tables hoping to find something interesting... something special... something new... And I see this dude who looks like a young R. Crumb and talks like Tom Waits if Tom Waits was from Kentucky... And this dude is from Kentucky... And he's got this huge book that looks really crazy called
In Tongues Illustrated... and the artwork is mezmerizing like it's the backwoods basterd child of a psychedlic Richard Sala and a countrified Rory Hayes*... and he's got a c.d. of his band
The Smacks and I'm listening to that now as I'm writing this and they kick ass like a hillbilly punk rawk band should... AND he tells me that he used to play with
Hasil Adkins (and he kindly corrects my mispronunciation of Hasil's name - sounds like "hassle" not "hay-zel") and it doesn't get much cooler/weirder than that... And then there's the first paragraph of "About The Smacks" on their myspace page:
An immortal psychic werewolf and an ethylene huffin' Old Testament prophet walk into a bar...and they play a giltter-billy rock and roll show. We are the Smacks! We are from Kentucky. And what we really wanna know, 'cause we're so tired of saying it, does cross-dressing count as lycanthropy?
SOLD!
So, anyways... I guess what I'm saying is
J.T. Dockery is
rad, and
his book and
music are among the best things I found at S.P.X. 2009!
* I apologize for using too many references because it doesn't do justice to Dockery's originality.
