The Grand Slambovians return to Faerie Fest: An Interview with Joziah Longo

In the idyllic woods of the hamlet of Ouaquaga, the New York Faerie Festival is a chance for those of us who have ever wanted to wander through the woods of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream or fly to Neverland, to experience the mythic in real life. Or, as festival co-organizer Billy Bardo says, it’s “a mythic arts event by day, geared towards kids and families, and by night, a masquerade ball.” And in its ninth year, the organizers are doing a one-time only double festival. That’s right — you have two opportunities, six whole days, to experience the wonderment that is the Faerie Festival.

Despite the draw of Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams, the Faerie Festival is more than just music. With flow arts (fire spinning, hula hoop artistry, staff spinning, chain spinning, pole dancing, LED lights, etc.), performing artists (trolls under the toll bridge, Peter Pan, mermaids and pirates), and vendors of mythic crafts (including faerie doors, elven outfitters, and homemade alpaca wool clothing), the festival has something for everyone. There are four stages, two being filled at any given time with music and visual performances of all kinds.

Let us turn to Joziah Longo, ringleader of the Slambovian Circus of Dreams, to hear his thoughts on returning for the third time to the festival, how music is made, living a life true to your spirit, and what lies just out of sight, at the corner of your eye, and always in your heart.

TRIPLE CITIES CAROUSEL: How many years have you been doing the Faerie Festival?

JOZIAH LONGO: We did it two years in a row. Last year during the Festival, we were on a tour of the UK, so we couldn’t make it, but we were texting back and forth, and Facebooking with everyone there; we were missing them.

TCC: It’s a great event; I’m glad you’ll be returning this year.

JL: Us too. It’s been a very unique experience playing there. It was interesting how much people took to us. We’re an odd bunch of creatures ourselves, so it was amazing to see people dance to every song no matter how undanceable it was. It was very cool.

TCC: That seems to speak to the nature of the Faerie Festival. Your style of music and the show you put on fits in very well.

JL: Yeah, somehow. We were really happy to feel that kind of correlative base with them. We love the creatures, great and small. They took to us; it was quite heartening. When we played for them, some of the faces’ responses to what we were talking about caused a beautiful thing on our end.

TCC: That’s awesome; that’s a phenomenal experience as a performer.

JL: It’s funny. I don’t think these are people that are pretending; these aren’t people that are weekend fairies and witches. They must be hardcore all year. What goes on is pretty magical.

TCC: Not the weekend witches - these are the full-time fairies.

JL: Yeah, full-time fairies.

TCC: So can you tell me a little about the band? You all have been together, in different iterations, for close to thirty years? Or over thirty years? Around thirty years?

JL: Has it been that long? This particular one has had incarnations within itself since the late ‘90s. Before, we were in a band called The Ancestors. We were the first American band into China. We did a whole bunch of quirky things back in those days as well. We’re ancient, actually.

TCC: I don’t know if I’d go ancient. Or maybe… perhaps! Who knows. Can you tell me about what Slambovia - what the Slambovian Circus of Dreams is? How does Slambovia affect how you perceive music and reality?

JL: It’s an interesting thing. The Circus of Dreams is kind of the exile form that the band took on after we left New York City and all the places where “The Industry” was happening, where “Art” and “Music” were happening. We went off on our own, and took the Slambovian Circus of Dreams as the exile costume of the band. People took to it so much that we stayed on the fringes of the city. We all met in the city, our kids were born in the city; we were all “city people”, but certain things caused us to leave the city for a time. It just wound up being a longer period of time than we thought. We’ve been hiding out in the woods, and I think that’s why the witches and the fairies take to us. We were hiding out in the woods, and didn’t know they were really around.

TCC: It seems to me that Slambovia is more than just hiding out in the woods and getting away from the machine. It seems to kind have taken on an ethos to itself that the audience is involved in.

JL: Yeah, honestly it has. It was something that we became. It’s a whole mix. It’s kind of like a Slambovian Nation: the Altered States of Slambovia. Something happened. People really took to it, and made it like a country. There are people who identify as Slambovians all over the world. Our fans feel like they are Slambovians. It’s very heartening for us. We went to hide out and get away from the hype and “The Industry” that existed at that point. It’s different now, there’s a much freer and empowered artistry that can deal with getting their music and art out. It’s much easier to do it on your own now. But back in those days, we wanted to make sure we could and not get tied up in what we were offered at the time, you know? We didn’t want to get tempted by it. We came out here, and yeah, it’s really become a pretty massive fan base that loves the band and loves the place that we create when the band plays. It’s been really heartening for us. And it’s a magical realm for us, in the sense that it helps us escape reality, the reality you sometimes get trapped in during the week.

TCC: Right, the nine-to-five grind.

JL: Yeah, which we all are like dancing around all the time.

TCC: It’s very real, the place that music can transport you away from the everyday, the aspects that drag you down, the drudgery.

JL: Somehow, it’s a place, when we’re in that space that music or art takes you, it’s a world of possibilities. It lets us really not think from the pragmatic that tries to trap you in itself. When you’re in that realm of music or art, somehow you can consider possibilities that you really can’t when you’re in that lower vibration of common reality. You get into that space, and it really is a higher vibration. It’s a natural high. Sometimes you can get revelations that can make you empowered to deal with things and move forward with your life. And to give hope to other people, through your own inspiration.

TCC: Yeah, it’s a powerful atmosphere to thrive in. It sounds like you feel like an artist has a responsibility to stay true to that higher calling that music provides, rather than turning music into the nine-to-five grind.

JL: It’s a trick even for us, because we raised kids in that. This was hard. It became the nine-to-five, but we did it as a mission, and raised our kids just doing music alone. But it was a challenge. We’re not in a position to tell other artists that they have to feel that responsibility. But any artists that want to feel that responsibility, somehow, the power to do something is there. Really, man, that’s for sure. Music is my ladder out of some dark places.

TCC: I’m wondering how you balanced raising children and doing music. How did you hold on to the beauty of creation, and still hold on to that magical aspect of music while raising a family?

JL: I think, it’s just, luckily we had a tribe of people that loved us and loved what our band was. They would help take care of our kids when we were on the road. It was a tribal situation. My sister was the nanny for our kids. It was a very small group, but they helped us do that. We thought about that lifestyle, and the way we related to those people and our children as the most important part of the art. How do you build relationships of truth, where people are honest with each other? Where we challenge ourselves to be better, and be more capable of loving each other? We always try to make that happen so that we don’t feel like hypocrites on stage. We always are challenging each other to make that happen.

TCC: That’s empowering. This is the third time you’ll be playing the Faerie Festival, which is a different crowd than the normal Slambovians. It’s people who wouldn’t normally hear you, but still, maybe, inhabit that world that you try to create.

JL: That’s a cool thing about it. People don’t get to hear us, because we’re not so public, unless you catch us touring or you’re on the inside, you know about us. Oftentimes, when people come and immerse themselves in [our] music, the tribe expands quickly. There are preexisting tribes that exist out there that want to become part of what we’re doing, and vice-versa. When that happens, there’s learning and exchange of culture. We’ve learned a lot from the fairies and the witches in the woods, things we didn’t know about before. I think it’s always been a surprise for people to come and hear the band, and what we’re doing. We span a lot of styles, and a lot of genres; we’re pretty nonlinear. We’re not pulling from any particular style; we steal from everything that we love, and incorporate it into the music.

TCC: After interviewing quite a few bands for Carousel, one of the questions that I can usually rely on is, “What were your influences?” and have a pretty good idea of the answer, where the conversation is going to go, before I ask. When I was thinking about [The Slambovian Circus of Dreams], I couldn’t think of that. I couldn’t think of any bands to point to, to say “Hey, was that your influence?” or “Where did you get this idea from?” or “How did you decide on the instrumentation for this song?” Your music is very organic; it almost seems to come a very special place, it’s not the everyday music you hear…

JL: I know what you mean. It almost comes out of the ether for me. I write constantly; music is coming down to me constantly, and you know sometimes that’s an annoyance! It puts me in an interesting space constantly. But I don’t deliberately listen to much. It’s rudiments. In the ‘60s, some rudiments came down that people still steal from, even modern bands. You can hear them kind of speaking vocabulary from the ‘60s. I don’t know what was happening in the ‘60s, but there was some sort of major vortex that was going down, and a language came down that started to make music nonlinear. Even in a band like the Beatles - classical and popular, vaudevillian: it all merged and started coming through this simple band from Liverpool, from working class people - this profound stuff started coming down.

I think it was permeating a lot of the music coming out of that time, and in the States we were really hungry for it. A president had been assassinated, [and] Martin Luther King - we were losing people that were icons. We needed to create something new, and in that vortex, I think we pulled a lot of very interesting musical vocabulary down. So that stuff influences what we do, but we’re constantly on a spiritual quest to find out how to better resonate with the universe, and find out the personality of the universe, whatever that might be. We're constantly thinking like that, and hungry for it. You want to be able to love people better, and we always feel like we’re not doing enough. We’re always trying to trap that. Luckily for us, it gets born through art and music. We’re really lucky. It’s become the drug. We gave up more and more of everything else, and kind of just started “smoking the music,” if you catch my drift.

Tink is saying, the Faerie Fest Folks, they come to tune into that higher vibration. That’s the kind of people they are; they’re looking for the mystic, they’re looking for the magic, and in a pragmatic way too. They’re not weekend witches or fakes. They’re really looking for how to tap the music of the spheres, the resonance of the invisible.

When we play for them, they cause a bigger things to come down. If people come into a certain space, a certain experience, with a band that’s trying to find it themselves, that's when magic really happens. You’re tripping without acid. You go to a different realm together, and that’s what happens at the Faerie Festival. Tink is saying, that's what the name means, the Circus of Dreams. There’s a circle between the audience and the band, and that's what the Circus is.

TCC: In today’s world, where we have science, and computers, and all of these different ways to produce sound without the visceral, the real, natural feel that can happen — it seems like The Grand Slambovians offer the antidote to that. The search for the mythic, the mystic is invested within the music.

JL: I think you’re onto something there, Phil, that’s a very good way to put it. You should put that in the article. That’s a really good way to put it.

TCC: So, my last question: What’s your favorite folklore, or legend?

JL: My favorite folklore… story? I’m very much a fan of the Pan. That’s why my wife has the nickname Tink. I really came to believe that if Peter Pan had not been mentally seduced by Wendy - who wanted everyone to grow up and get old - if he had realized Tink was the one, then everything would have been a lot cooler in the world. One of my kid’s just said that recently. She books the Hammerstein room in New York, and she said something on Mother’s Day for her mom. That’s why I named Tink, Tink. It’s important for Peter to realize his girlfriend is Tink, and not Wendy.

Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams, AKA The Slambovian Circus of Dreams, AKA The Grand Slambovians, will be headlining both weekends of the Faerie Festival, during the Masquerade Ball, as well as performing during the day. To hear the music of the Slambovian Circus of Dreams, visit slambovia.com.

The “Sylvan Circus” will take place on the weekends of June 23rd and June 30th, from Friday to Sunday, 11am-7pm. Limited camping is available. After the main festival is closed down, the campers who remain are invited to dinner, with Fire Circles on both nights, and the grand Masquerade Ball on Saturday night.

Don your sylvan finest - come out and play! For more information about the NY Faerie Festival, and to reserve tickets, visit nyfaeriefest.com. Tickets are also available at Imagicka in Downtown Binghamton. Imagicka has been an ardent supporter of the Festival since its inception, and if you are in need of fanciful wares for the Fest, consider stopping by.