Father John Misty is the nom de soft rock of one Joshua Tillman, a.k.a. J. Tillman, ex-drummer for Fleet Foxes and author of eight largely ignored and invariably joyless solo albums of pious folk rectitude. Those LPs remain a well-kept secret. And then one day in 2010, he blew up his life. Killed off J. Tillman, quit the Fleet Foxes, let his raging id off the short leash it had been kept on since his tormented childhood trapped in a fundamentalist Christian house of pain. Instead of muting his wicked sense of humor and bottomless appetite for the absurd, he turned it up to 11. He changed his stage name to Father John Misty. Threw his guitar and a family-size sack of magic mushrooms into the van, and set the controls for the heart of Babylon. Fear Fun (Sub Pop), Father John Misty’s debut, came out a year ago, and after 12 months of trippin’-balls touring, inclusion on innumerable year-end best-of lists and a lot of swooning word of mouth on social media, the album has become the sleeper hit of the year. Tillman will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our recent print cover story on him.
Tillman: In 1992, John Lurie made a satirical fishing television show co-starring his celebrity friends where nothing happens. Later in 1992, Lurie edited a satirical fishing television show where he and his celebrity friends have harrowing international adventures of fatal and even supernatural variety.
The show provides the following insights into the personalities of some of America’s stars of music and film:
• Tom Waits is a pussy and dresses like Keith Richards fell on him.
• Matt Dillon has no sense of humor and perhaps is only cast as lecherous creeps in unfunny comedies for a reason.
• Jim Jarmusch is too cool to fish for sharks, and I believe him.
• Willem Dafoe packs only crackers when on week-long ice-fishing trips and is hilarious and loveable while freezing to death.
• Dennis Hopper, at 55, was just as senile and confused as he was at 25.
Robb Webb, famed voice-over talent, narrates, providing occasional commentary over picturesque shots of the world’s most stunning and remote locales such as “That was a great sandwich.”
Video after the jump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVa8rj1mm7A
