Zippy X Juan

Good Dude

“We were driving up here listening to The Mystery Method.” He tells me.

“Like the VH1 show? (The Pickup Artist)” Wondering what he’s talking about.

“Yeah Matthew bought an Ipod and on it was the audiobook version. It seemed like an amazing gift.”

I began talking with Juan Wauters and crew when I mentioned that I had seen them play in Madrid a few months back. We were in Connecticut; Wauters was constantly wearing a dirty white balaclava inside and walking around with his fly undone. Wauters presence seemed at once at ease and erratic, as part of his stage presence is the act of being caught out of his element. “It’s fucking cold” he said, worried that an icicle from the roof would kill either of us. The show in Madrid was acoustic, like all of his others, with the exception of two Japanese girls who played flute and some sort of hand-drum. “I remember that show cause my friend gave me some weed and I was a little faded in the back of a car. My cousin lives there and kept touching me face asking if I was okay, but it just freaked me out more.” Juan talks with a never-ending sentence structure, the only pauses coming from his occasional “you know?” Most of the songs Wauters played were in Spanish, and here the majority English, a deliberate attempt at recognition.

His crew this time consisted of Matthew Volz and a five-foot guy from LA on the bass, whom Juan introduced halfway through the show as Cola Boy. Evidently the neighborhoods recognition of his consumption of the substance. Volz was in charge of Wauters’ strange basement band setup and aesthetic. Complete with canvases covered in painted designs of luchador-like wrestlers lit up by single light bulbs, which Volz turned on and off from his position behind an American flag. Wauters played keyboard too, on what sounded like some Yamaha you played premade drum beats off at your friend’s house. Wauters switched to the keyboard halfway through the show, his stage presence was jumpy, citing all of the old rock’n’roll ploys. He jumps and lands into a collapsed V, remarking, “that was stupid” to Cola Boy. This of course led us all to laugh. But Wauters was clearly comfortable. Given the loneliness of being an outsider in a huge city, he wanted to push the limits of citation, using similes such as “like a good movie, you require my attention”, Wauters’ lyrics paint a humorous and accurate picture.

We were smoking a cigarette outside a while after the show, him and Cola Boy splitting a menthol. I asked him if people ever thought his name riffed off Jon Waters. He seemed as though no one’s ever asked that, replying, “We are going to Baltimore in a couple of months, I should try to collaborate with Jon Waters.” He said he had to drive home that night and I went to another party down the street. Wauters is able to do things few other artists can do, like express his feelings in a manner straightforward, sounding cited, but timeless, however unpunctuated. At the end of his song “Ay Ay Ay” Wauters sang, “This is a good song.”

Places I’ve Slept