Like balm on a raw wound, Tiffany Ochiltree’s vocals lend soothing cultivation to the artful hysteria of Jay Shirtz’s guitar, the heart-attack pulse of Hardy Boydston’s bass, and the headhunter jungle nightmare of Les Smithey’s percussion. The overall effect is a unified sound that shakes the teeth in the back of your mouth and raises the hair on the back of your neck.

Tiffany Ochiltree - Born and abandoned on the shores of the African Gambia River, Tiffany was forced to subsist solely on the sparse flesh of the native birds that she was able to catch in the chimney of her Build-by-Numbers mud hut. She survived into young adulthood, becoming more animal than woman, but the Great Gambian Drought of 2002 left her weakened and close to death. In what she knew was her final hour, a mournful howling roused her from unconsciousness. The hyenas, she thought, had come at last to finish her off. Dazed, she settled in for death, but was shocked to see, not hyenas, but a beagle approaching from the hills. The tag said “Maverick” and the eager pleading look on his drooping face said “hold on to my ears.” She did, and Maverick pulled her shriveled body through the desert land, west across the Atlantic, and finally to a house in Richardson, Texas, where she and a small group of other lost souls formed a band.

Jay Shirtz - Jay was born with a tail. Not a small, vestigial nub that could be easily hidden in a pair of baggy pants, but a long, prehensile monkey’s tail. His horrified parents took the abomination as a sign of the coming Apocalypse, so they packed up and headed for their compound in the mountains of Utah, selling Jay to a passing carnival on the way. That’s where he met Don Miguel de los Juevos, a 128 year-old Spanish guitar master. Don Miguel immediately took a liking to Jay, calling him El Monocito, the Little Monkey Boy, and taught him everything he knew. Years later, on the day that Don Miguel died, Jay borrowed a saber from the sword swallower, and cut off his tail, placing it the coffin beside his old maestro. “My tail is gone, oh Father of My Art,” Jay said. “I am no longer the Little Monkey Boy, but a great, guitar-playing ape man.” Thus saying, Jay left the carnival, never to return.


Hardy Boydston - Hardy has no idea why this biography is being written about him. When asked for a comment he said, “What the hell is a Kingfisher?” Easily attributed to years of recreational toad-licking, Hardy finds it impossible to maintain lucid thought for more than three or four minutes at a time. Relying totally on the 24-hour nursing services provided by a small, leprous Cherokee child named Running Sore, Hardy manages to go to work, pay bills, maintain adult relationships, and play in a band. If during a show, Hardy becomes angry and confused, audiences are asked to keep their distance until Running Sore can calm him.