Big dreamer — Joziah Longo

Hazel Davis meets the baffling, bonkers force behind Gandalf Murphy

Joziah Longo, or Joziah Of The Circus as he signs himself, is a hard one to pin down. Not in person – he’s surprisingly amenable – but as a performer. The bandname – Gandalf Murphy And The Slambovian Circus Of Dreams – is tricky enough to get your tongue round and this, it transpires, is no accident.

Quite apart from making them sound like an Irish gimmick band, the moniker, so the story goes, was invented to stop them being harassed by major labels. This was for good reason, says Longo. “In my early days I was approached by major labels when I had just become disillusioned with a lot of my musical heroes (after having the opportunity to meet or hang out with some them in NYC). Even though I could play and sing pretty well I felt I didn’t have much to say at that point and I didn’t think the world needed more artificial sweetener.”

This combination of self-awareness – some would say blind arrogance – is breathtaking, especially in a market as niche as hillbilly folk-psychedelia but it’s pretty much the hallmark of this eclectic and uncategorisable outfit from Hudson Valley.

“Later when I felt I had something to say and I was being approached again, the labels were in a state of not even being faithful to their own,” he adds, “Bottom lines were more important than relationships, it seemed. Not even label presidents knew when the axe might fall on them. It seemed too neurotic to me. I think it’s hard to make music or art that has any positive fortune in that kind of environment so I blew them off again. People thought I was nuts. Maybe.”

Nuts is a word that springs to mind having seen the band live. Yodelling, witch-doctoring and happy-making, the influences are evident from Pink Floyd to Hank Williams.

How to describe them is a journalist’s nightmare. Says Longo, “We are just trying to be non-linear about things and steal from every style that we love without worrying about fitting any particular category.”

The influences are clear though. Longo says, “A lot of them came from growing up playing many different styles of music with my father. He loved and played hillbilly-tinged country music and I grew up singing it with him. He was a library of songs almost any era of popular music.. His father played and sang too, so the library has been expanding through the generations. My mother was a big influence too. She used to grab me and dance me around the house singing the hits of the 20s through the 50s – Elvis, Doris Day, show tunes. You name it…”

And the music that excites him now? “The stuff that came down in the sixties mostly from over here in the UK still excites me. Bands like The ‘B’ Word of course, Stones, Kinks, The Who, Jerry and the Pacemakers’ Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying still has a big influence on stuff I write as does early Zombies and The Kinks. There was magic happening in the sixties that took the whole world to places of hope and mystery. Then later Cream, Incredible String Band, Fairport with Sandy Denny. The Bothy Band’s Maids of Mitchelstown has brought me to tears many times.”

A biopic in the making, Longo’s childhood was a textbook riot of music and activity. “Every Friday night our little row house basement was the hangout for my parents friends. All my ‘aunts and uncles’ would show up to shoot pool and darts and chill out after their week in the factories or on the docks. The best part of every Friday night was a long jam that always happened from about nine on to the wee hours where everybody got to sing lead on their favorite song or encourage my dad to play whatever obscure song popped into their heads and they’d all sing along.
It was magic.”

He’s been quoted in the past as receiving his self-penned songs fully formed from another world. “Yeah sometimes they do,” he says enigmatically, “I think the ghosts help and sometimes other more primal sources. Other times it’s just hard work and sheer stupidity.”

His inspirations, says Longo, are, “The desire to connect with the infinite creativity that generates the universe. The hope that when the bullshit and ‘isms’ all unravel (which I think is starting to happen now) we can re-calibrate and get more organically connected to that source.” He adds, “I want to start to build a world where we can begin to do really great lasting stuff that benefits everybody and everything. Zippidy do da day.” And it all sounds completely reasonable from his lips.

Forming his own record label, says Longo, was “as easy as saying Slambovian Records or whatever other names we’ve used. Our labels have just been us and our friends. We do everything ourselves.” But they’ll never sell out to the big guys: “We are courting allies these days,” he says, “There’s a lot more we’re being asked to do and a lot more I feel we could be doing with a few more components so we’re looking for the right enlightened people to work with.”

It’s the fans who’ve kept the Circus going, says Longo. “When things have been tough they’ve paid for album pressings, given us cars, helped us pay rent. I guess they think what we’re doing has some good in it and so they want to keep us doing it. They’re why we always try to do our best at shows. Live shows are a good place to collectively tap ‘the more’. You kind of dream and hope in unison and a lot of times something comes down and you all walk away with more gazoot to face the coming week.”

The Great Unravel is out now on High Noon Records