You may not know who The Residents are, but you’ve heard, seen, and felt their influence on contemporary music for the majority of your life. The Residents have existed in one way or another since 1969, keeping their identities to themselves by donning masks and costumes to remain anonymous; they’re fiercely DIY, making their brand of avant-garde music that exists in lockstep with experimental visual art. You may not know who The Residents are, but no one really knows who they are.
Last week I got to sit down with Homer Flynn, the primary visual collaborator and almost but not quite a spokesperson for The Residents since 1971. His involvement with The Residents predates their first official release, and for the majority of their career he has remained one of the only unmasked components of their multimedia origination. I was able to speak with Homer because the Residents are about to embark on a 23-city tour wherein they will be playing their beloved 1979 record “Eskimo” in its entirety.
If you only have a cursory familiarity with The Residents you are probably more than familiar with them as the eyeballs wearing top hats band. “Eskimo” is the album that introduced the iconic eyeballs into their body of work. Many fans consider it one of The Residents’ greatest works, and bringing it to the stage is, in many ways, just as meaningful a statement as creating new work.
Spinning Platters: Out of everything that The Residents have done, why did you decide on Eskimo for this upcoming tour?
Homer Flynn: I was kind of a curious combination of events, really. It started about a year and a half ago. There is an event that happens yearly in San Francisco called “A Night of Ides,” and “A Night of Ideas” is one day and one night where they try to bring in as many speakers and entertainers as possible to have meetings about a wide range of subjects. It started in San Francisco, and it was a product of the French Consulate here and a combination of them and some other organization in Paris. They asked if The Residents would be the closing act for it, and everyone was excited about the idea, but they didn’t really have anything performance-ready at that time. But the cool thing was they only wanted 20 minutes, and 20 minutes is not necessarily that hard to do. So ultimately, another curious thing that combined with this is there’s an audio engineer in Seattle who had been remastering all of The Residents’ back catalog material for release. And when he finished, he said, “Hey, would you like me to digitize all of your multitrack master tapes?” And it’s kind of like whoa freak out city. And so he did and one of the ones that he remastered was “Eskimo” so that immediately went into Logic files, you can put a pair of headphones back on at this point and you’re back in the studio with The Residents in the 70’s and 80’s. It’s almost magic. So ultimately they decided, well, let’s just play around with this “Eskimo” stuff and see what we can do. It came together almost effortlessly, and then a few months after that they were invited to perform at an event called Exoticon Festival in L.A., and at that point they decided to expand the material. And that came together pretty well. So ultimately this is one of those things where things have just been kind of falling into place.
Spinning Platters: When it comes to arranging something like this, did the members all sit in a room with the master recordings and learn how to interpret analog performances into a digital interface? What does that look like? Is there a band member that arranges everything and guides the other members of the band on what to play?
Homer: Well, there’s one that is the primary arranger. Although with The Residents, there’s an awful lot of back and forth. So, yeah, there may be one person that it primarily starts the ball rolling on these things in terms of arrangements; you know, anybody that wants input certainly has it.
Spinning Platters: Regarding the original process of creating “Eskimo” and the lore behind it, it’s that they decided to use the Inuit scale to create the record with a limited number of notes. Just what was the original creative process behind that?
Homer Flynn: The Residents certainly went back and researched original Inuit music, but for the most part, to be honest, they found it to be so limited in general relative to what they were doing and what they were interested in, that they just very quickly kind of dropped that and started expanding the world from their point of view. Expanding the world into their imaginations. You know, they were just beginning, as consumers, as listeners of music, they were just beginning to really get into what, at that time, was called ethnic music. You know, they had been raised on Western music, you know, listening to their parents’ swing records and then, you know, early rock and roll. And then it all evolved over the years. But it came to a point where they were no longer that interested in that, but still looking for new frontiers or new ideas. So they started getting into more foreign music. They really wanted to create what they would consider more foreign, but at the same time, they didn’t want to just go and try to imitate Indonesian gambling music or whatever. They really picked Inuit culture, Eskimo culture, because nobody knew anything about it. Which meant things were wide open to do whatever they wanted. And ultimately that was kind of the approach that they took towards it.
Spinning Platters: I was curious about how apocryphal that was based on just the limited amount of information I had access to growing up. Getting to have that clarified means a lot to me. Are The Residents going to be performing additional material during the course of each night on tour, or are they just playing the Eskimo album?
Homer Flynn: They’re playing additional stuff. Now, once they decided to move ahead on this, they realized that the “Eskimo” album really wasn’t long enough and they needed, they needed additional material. So they went back and started doing more Eskimo research, they researched it a lot back in the 70s but with the internet at this point there’s a whole world of stuff that wasn’t really available at that time. They found several books of Inuit folk tales, and they started reading these folk tales. And these things were collected in, like, the late 1800s. It was just a whole wealth of information and ideas that they had no knowledge of when they did the original album. So they picked out about 5 of these authentic folktales and built new pieces around that. So there’s an additional 25 minutes of material that, uh, it’s not on the album; that’s all brand new. Um, and uh, we’ve also created, you know, I’m their primary visual person. We’ve also created new videos to go with this stuff. So there’s definitely new and unheard material there.
Spinning Platters: So there’s gonna some be some kind of “Eskimo” companion piece on the horizon as a new album coming out?
Homer Flynn: They’re actually about to, um, Cherry Red Records is actually about to release this new material as an EP… and they’re finishing a new album right now.
Spinning Platters: So they’re in a really fertile, productive period of time right now.
Homer Flynn: Uh, yeah, they have a pretty good bit going on right now. They’re also working on a new stage production based on the American Civil War. So yeah, things are going in a lot of different directions.
Spinning Platters: Is the stage production going to be limited to a specific city, or is it going to end up being a touring production?
Homer Flynn: At this point it’s really unknown. They’re thinking of it as a follow-up. They just recently did several shows based on “God in 3 Persons” (The Resident’s 14th album from 1988). Unfortunately, that did not get to tour as much as everybody wanted, primarily because of COVID. Tours would be set up, and then they were canceled because of COVID stuff. So in a way, they’re seeing this as a follow-up to that. But, you know, they’re not that far into the project from a creative point of view. So it’s probably 2 years away.
Spinning Platters: With this new release of “Eskimo” material coming up and additional stage material, will there be a new remastered bonus version of the album?
Homer Flynn: I’m almost certain that when this tour is over, there’ll be a live version and that will include all the new material.
Spinning Platters: That’s really exciting.
Homer Flynn: Honestly, I think the new material is great, and it just fits into the overall program quite nicely.
Spinning Platters: You guys are the absolute best, and in a world of artists that regularly copy other people, you guys continuing to march to the beat of your own drum is nothing short of inspiring.
Homer Flynn: Yeah, well, thank you. Once again, it’s just nice to hear.
“Eskimo Folk Tales” Mini Album 10” vinyl releases on Sept 25th (TODAY) on Cherry Red Records, and The Residents begin their “Eskimo Tour” in Chicago at the Park West on October 7th. Tickets are available now https://www.residents.com/
