And the kiddies will lead them
Monster Dudes and Evil Wikkid Warrior bring the fanciful chaos of a children's fantasy world to rock.

By George Chen

AT A WAREHOUSE show in Portland, Ore., the high ceilings and a three-foot stage look even huger when looming over a 5-year-old boy playing drums and then tackling his bandmates, who crawl on the floor in sleeping bags, making monster sounds. The mix of masked men and electronic noise has been old hat for a while – throwing an earmuffed moppet into the equation changes the rules of engagement.

That performance was my first exposure to Monster Dudes from Boise, Idaho. Something in the group's anarchic improvisation seemed particularly liberating, involving as it did a father-son team engaging in a sort of fantasy performance closer to playtime than pay-to-play. The father-son component of the group, Jeremy "from Boise" and Venec, respectively, have been touring since December 2003, when the latter was only 4.

Some things that seem basic for most adult bands become much larger issues in the kid context, such as how long a 5-year-old can realistically go on tour. "He will be able to go on tour, and then come back to school and pick up where he left off.... Plus, while on tour he learns an immeasurable amount of otherwise inaccessible things," Jeremy wrote to me in an e-mail. "I'd rather his social life not be exclusively with 'grown' humans."

Some might question the wisdom of bringing children to shows of a less than Raffi-ish nature, let alone a full tour, to which Jeremy responded, "Before we begin any trip, I very seriously ask Venec if he is certain that he wants to go out again. Thus far he's been down.... He has, however, put a cap on the length of time away from home, at five weeks."

It was only after that particular moment that I began noticing signs of a kiddie rock movement. There's the New Jersey-based Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players, an actual family, with Mom projecting slides found at yard sales, the preteen daughter playing drums and singing, and Dad playing piano and coming up with songs about the slide show subjects. Such a collision of novelty factors might seem a total cutesy mess, but it is intractably charming despite the odds. There's also the 12-ish Seattle duo Smoosh, which cuts the parents out of the equation and just lets preteen girls rock the drums and keys.

When I mentioned this article to friends, more band names and works in progress were thrown out for inclusion: Icky Girlfriends, from Albany, are a gaggle of tweenage cross-dressers who worship the Icky Boyfriends and recently played an Oakland house show with Monster Dudes, alongside a trio of neighborhood boys karaoke-ing to Crunk Juice. There's also the Portland Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls (www.girlsrockcamp.org) held every summer. It includes a series of music workshops geared toward girls (and some bands with boys in them as long as girls make up the majority) between 10 and 22.

Child-directed play

Closer to home are Evil Wikkid Warrior, who hosted the aforementioned Bay Area shows with Monster Dudes. After his band Hale Zukas broke up on tour, bassist John Benson and daughter Quinn, who is now 10, embarked on a project that began as a movie concept about warriors fighting dragons.

She sang me an a cappella version of their theme song from Benson's bedroom, which is decorated with antlers and animal jawbones, a giant Spanish sword, and a colorful sunburst mural. Quinn only stays part-time at this house, a legendary Oakland fixture that once sheltered Free Radio Berkeley and serves as the central kitchen for Food Not Bombs.

Stormy, a much younger child in the communal house, played with toy cars and announced he wanted Monster Dudes to come right then. He will have to be patient, Benson told him; the show is two months away. EWW percussionist Mark Small, also of Hale Zukas and Burmese, was present for the interview, which moved from the bedroom to the roof. Housemate Leif Hedendal was recruited to play keyboards in EWW, his first band, and Benson is learning drums. It's a fresh way to approach this material – all the members are beginners learning to play new roles.

EWW and Monster Dudes have a fantasy element that is treated ironically in, or completely missing from, adult bands. Both groups are ostensibly led by their youngest members, although Monster Dudes enjoy busting out the spastic art punk jams, occasionally leaving Venec to improv on the microphone. When I asked Jeremy about the approach to their performances, he assured me over e-mail, "Performance may reflect life in some miniscule degree, but it is most certainly not reality.... Our shows are playtime; we're kind of incidentally doing it for an audience."

Evil Wikkid Warrior likewise started as Quinn's video project, which was the impetus to write the songs and utilize available props, including a boat perched atop a neighbor's roof that doubles as a Viking sky vessel. The video, when completed, will feature animated dragons based on Quinn's designs and the entire band in costume running through Strawberry Creek on the UC Berkeley campus.

Taking the lead from your offspring may be a reversal of standard family values, a sort of Montessori rock ethic at work, or rather, play. In the case of EWW, Quinn is the leader, and the adults do her bidding. Her newest songs are about Dumpster diving, going to Alaska, and hula-hooping. They are awesome, primitive drum-along headbangers delivered deadpan. Favorite recurring phrases are "I don't know" and "No way!" – the latter directed toward the tyranny of homework.

Having played only a handful of shows, EWW have nonetheless left a marked impression on their audiences. "She gets recognized on the street," Benson said. At the recent Anarchist Book Fair, a fan approached Quinn and said, "I love your band!"

When children are involved, moments of awkwardness still throw the typical audience-performer relationship into question. At an Oakland Monster Dudes show in January, a drunken heckler called out for Venec to "get crazy," at which point the 5-year-old looked confused but took the outburst in stride.

Benson shares some misgivings about the collision of adult and child ideas of entertainment. Evil Wikkid Warrior played the last, chaotic eviction show of the 379 40th Street warehouse, a venue that hosted pretty much every oddball noise, punk, or cabaret act of the past decade. "When we showed up, there were just people swearing and piling on top of each other, and we're trying to set up – it was just a big dogpile at that point. So poor Quin was faced with this wall of people," Benson said. "She had all that energy focused on her, and I started to wonder, 'Am I doing the right thing?' "

Woodstock for tweens

The Icky Girlfriends, Monster Dudes, and Evil Wikkid Warrior show at Benson's house could be seen as a Woodstock for the preteen set, even if it was just another Saturday afternoon in Oakland. Hippie and punk parents grilled tofu dogs and sipped lemonade alongside children from 2 to 15.

While it's no news that children have become increasingly marketed to, the notion of a self-created children's fantasy world appeals to both precocious kids and adults who are trying to reject the corporatization of childhood. It's hard not to imagine what revisionist rock parenting could do for a generation coming up, especially in a weirdo punk scene where many people arrive with strained family relationships, and it makes sense that a new generation of parents would want to share their love of music with their offspring, though maybe it's odd that rock, the domain of the teenage outcast, has made the transition to healthy family bonding.

"It just so happens that I'm still doing what I have always been into, and my child is similarly interested," Jeremy offered. "If I were a hunter, and Venec was into it, we'd go off into the mountains together and shoot stuff bloody.... Instead we're on tour. Playing music together is just another thing that people do to share time." Local cassette label Crucial Berry will put out a split release with Evil Wikkid Warrior and Monster Dudes. Monster Dudes have a split 12-inch with Pussy Gutt on Jeremy's label, Fort Hazel (forthazel.com).