Content Clown — 1 March 2023 on Rocket Shop Radio Hour
Content Clown joined host Tom Proctor on ‘Rocket Shop,’ Big Heavy World’s weekly local Vermont music radio hour on 105.9 FM The Radiator. Catch up with them at instagram.com/contentclown
On Wednesday, March 1, host Tom Proctor was joined by Content Clown, the genre-defying music, puppet, and clownery one-person show created by Bex Love. Joined by their partner and expert reverb-knob operator Maia Gilmour, content clown guided Rocket Shop through a reality-bending set of tunes crafted with their electric mandolin, a loop pedal, and theatrical, timbrally expressive vocals.
Content Clown’s act is characterized by their tireless commitment to playfulness of all kinds, especially when it comes to wordplay. Even the name ‘Content Clown’ can be read in two ways, and both pronunciations and meanings of ‘content’ are used in different circumstances: When online, Content Clown is “content,” (noun) and in real life, Content Clown is “content.” (adjective) “So here now, I’m content content! And a clown,” they said, referring to their in-person and recorded appearance on Rocket Shop.
Content Clown came into being in 2016, in part as a reaction to the dire social and political atmosphere following the 2016 election. At that time, Bex “realized that pretending that any of this was normal was probably nonsensical, so the most sensible thing to do is to be a clown.” With this insight, they began doing public street performances hoping “to bring people joy and wonder, in a world that feels very sad sometimes,” said Bex.
Another character appearing in Content Clown’s set was ‘God,’ a llama puppet that joined them for a visual duet on “Oh Holy Woodpecker,” a song featuring expressive and exploratory vocals captured and layered inventively with the use of a dual-track loop pedal. This piece of equipment functioned both as a tool to craft intoxicating, syrupy harmonies and as a percussion instrument in its own right, as Bex vigorously stomped on-beat to pause and re-trigger their vocal parts. The performance was highly visual, including the use of the aforementioned puppet and, as in all of Content Clown’s work, an attentiveness to theatricality and presentation.
While joyous and whimsical, Bex’s compositions are also spiritual and reverent, and draw inspiration from the natural world, especially the animal kingdom. “I think it's really hard to be a human. It's so, so, so hard to be a human, and I think the creatures have something figured out,” they said. Although this appreciation of the natural world is evident in many of their songs, a particularly wistful and numinous tone is captured in the penultimate song of their set, “Somebody Closer to a Leaf Frond,” a spacious and dreamy message addressed to a mushroom: “Mushroom, I’m just like you / I have thousands of genders too / My earlobe is a man, / my toe is doing the best she can.” The repeated line of the rapturous chorus applies Content Clown’s penchant for wordplay: “I am not somebody, I am just some body.” Bex and Tom bonded over their shared admiration for mushrooms and their quiet confidence, and expressed a hope to be able to scientifically communicate with them some day.
Many of the songs played at this set are from Content Clown’s first album, ‘Brave New Worm: Part Live! Part Death!’ which was released in 2022, and is available for streaming on Bandcamp and Spotify. Coming up, Content Clown has a show at Radio Bean in Burlington, VT on Wednesday, March 15th at 9PM. They also have a show in Philadelphia on April 1st (April Fool’s day, fittingly!) for updates on future shows and releases from Content Clown, you can find them on Instagram.
Text by Gideon Parker
Monochrome photo by James Lockridge