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Burgled babes and
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Mirror: Lily, who is Hank Pine, and Hank, who is Lily Fawn? Lily Fawn: I’m gonna start. Hank is a mysterious figure in a mask, goggles and a cowboy hat, a renegade member of a doomsday cult. As far as I can tell, Hank is sort of a wanderer, one of those guys who walks along the train tracks and looks for adventure, but I get the feeling he’s running from something. So, I decided that he looked interesting and fun, so I’ve been tagging along ever since. M: Hank? Hank Pine: Lily Fawn is a half-deer, half-girl forest creature who has spent most of her life in the woods. She’s the product of the love between a reindeer named Buck and a Southern belle named Daisy. When I came across her, she was in the act of burying babies. When I questioned her on this, she said she was trying to rescue them from the modern world and raise them in the woods—like she was raised, and she turned out just fine. She thought these kids would have a better chance living in the woods than with their parents, so that was her deal. M: The story of how you two met, and the adventures you’ve had since, are explained in your series of comic books. Hank, you’re the one responsible for the etching and scratching thereof, want to tell us a bit about them? HP: Sure do. There’s gonna be about 10 of them, I guess, and the storyline basically chronicles our adventures on our way to New Orleans. Lily’s been searching for her mom and I’m trying to bury my dead girlfriend in New Orleans, and the two are related—but we don’t know that yet, because we’re only on issue three. M: Which came first, the musical act or the comic books? HP: The comic came first and then we started to do music based on the comic, and now they play off each other. Gospel on the goM: Lily, between the songs, the comics and the stage show, Hank Pine & Lily Fawn becomes more than a mere musical act. It’s a whole multimedia affair, with an apparent audience-participation aspect—or so one would gather from the inclusion of a songbook with North America. I guess it’s hard to bring a gospel choir on tour, so you gotta make one where you can find one. LF: Yeah, we’re trying! M: It’s also worth noting that you’re playing a showcase of theatrically oriented music in Montreal. Tell us a bit about all that. LF: We try to come up with a stage show that matches each album, so for North America, we’ve got that sort of gospel snake-oil-salesman circus-sideshow thing happening. We made snake oil and trance tonic to sell, and when we travel, it’s hard to get the whole choir, so we made the songbook in hopes that we can get the audience to clap and sing along, and incorporate that fun energy from anyone we can get our hands on. We’re trying to collect a couple of choir members and bringing costumes for the Fringe Festival. It’s fun for us to bring part of the comic book to life, that’s what we’re all about. M: Hank, you guys are playing one show that crosses over with the Suoni per il Popolo festival—that’s Italian for “sound for the people.” The music you two create is both community-oriented and misanthropic, so I’m curious, are you a people person or an anti-people person? LF: (giggling) You want the truth? HP: Well, I’m kind of the eternal optimist. I always hope that people will surprise me by being totally awesome, and you can’t give up on that. Y’know, every once in a while, that comes through. At our live shows, I’m sometimes overwhelmed by my love for people, because when everyone sings together, there’s such power that comes from that shared energy, and moments like that make me glad to be a human being. Won’t you think of the children?M: Lily, another of your shows here, on Sunday, June 14, is an afternoon set especially for children, for which I guess you’ll be doing an extra solo set of material from Brightest Darkest, your children’s album, right? LF: (giggling) I guess so! We’ve done kids’ shows before and we’ve always had a great time. I don’t know why they keep asking us, I think we’re a bit scary for kids, but the kids love it. Though with the lullaby songs, we’ll probably pep them up a bit, make them more clap-along and sing-along for the kids, because right now, on the album, they’re slow and dark and creepy. We’ll sort of cutify them. M: I hope not too much— HP: I don’t think cutification is possible— LF: Okay, okay! I’m not sure what we’ll do, but I do know that every time we’ve done a kids’ show, it’s very different from any kids’ show I’ve ever seen. HP: I love playing for kids. They’re so willing to jump up and clap and sing along. Adults need booze but kids are just ready to go. M: I think adults have this way of underestimating how much fun kids have with the dark and creepy stuff. HP: It’s true. When I was a kid, I loved being terrified. My biggest fans are these nine-year-old boys who see me in my mask and outfit, and run up to me— LF: And then Hank’s showing them his knife when I come along, or his fire ring, which shoots flames! But I think you’re quite right, I shouldn’t be afraid of doing the whole creepy thing. Yesterday, I was over at my friend’s house, and she was telling me that her little girl has kept my lullaby album on her CD player for a week, and showing it to her six- and seven-year-old friends, going, “It’s a little bit creepy—but you’ll like it!” Reviving the robotsM: What do you two have planned for the near future? Where would you like to take things next? HP: We have very lofty plans for the whole multimedia experience that we’re going for. We’d like to make movies, animated movies especially, and marry that with these kick-ass live shows. LF: We also have two new albums in the works. HP: We have one totally completed, The Velvet Vacuum, which is more cabaret—it’s more show tunes, taking that theatrical element and working with that. Then Crank City is more of a dance album. The comic takes place in a city run by robots, so it’s a robot dance party. M: The whole gestalt of Hank and Lily seems to be about revisiting older music, technology and ideas—even the format of the comics is now retro, in the era of Web comics and graphic novels. I guess doing a robot dance-pop album is retro now too, what with the ’80s revival. HP: Totally. I’ve always seen us as revisiting our favourite musical styles but through our own skewed lens, putting our own stamp on them. After our first album, we decided to be more focused about it, so we’ll do one full-tilt, as opposed to all of them half-assed. The stage show of course will change—right now we’re doing the Depression-era tent show. Next is the robot dance party, so I’m work ing on building a robot. LF: He’s trying to get me fired! WITH BRAD BARR AND LADIES OF THE |
