Cochlear Implant

WHITE COWBELL OKLAHOMAw/ Smashula and Kabuki Guns Burlesque. The Pawn Shop (10551-82 Ave). Thu, Sept 10 (8pm). Tickets: $10, available at The Pawn Shop and Blackbyrd.

It’s difficult to pin down Clem C. Clemson from White Cowbell Oklahoma. The extraordinarily eccentric frontman for the prog-meets-country-meets-southern-rock-meets-just-plain-weird-rock extravaganza is a riddle wrapped in an enigma. Those two layers are wrapped in something else altogether — but what that is, I couldn’t truly say. Pure peculiarity? Colossal ego? Outspoken oddity?

Clem calls me from a roadside payphone in northern Ontario en route to sunny British Columbia, all destinations on their 10th anniversary tour. Having done the touring thing for a while, they seem to know the rules of the road. “We just made it through the bottleneck of Dryden, Ontario where the shakedowns always occur, but they seem to be eating lunch today, so we just missed them,” Clemson exclaims. “So we made it through Dryden! Now if we can only make it through Saskatchewan where the RCMP shakedown happens!”

Having admitted to me that many members of WCO have been arrested for one thing or another over the years, Clemson feels it best to avoid the “shakedowns” (speed traps to you and me) and rookie RCMP officers from Saskatchewan. After all, all they really want to do is rock every city along the way. This Clemson character is none too modest about his current six-person line-up (his “sextet,” as he habitually calls them just so he work his favourite word into the conversation more often) and their ability to leave their mark on and off the stage.

“We’ve reached year number 10 as a band — and that’s a milestone,” he says. “So we’re going to be shooting testosterone death rays out of our eyes and groins and that the powers are going to be magnified just that much more because our power grows with every year.” Clemson’s tone of voice is very matter-of-fact, as if testosterone death rays were all the rage these days.

And don’t worry — even if you’re not a fan of these mysterious six, Clemson has no doubt you’ll be converted soon enough (and that you really don’t have a choice in the matter). “It doesn’t matter much to us where we play or who you are,” he says. “You will know us because you’ll see the spotlight in the sky of the Cowbell, kind of like the bat symbol. You’ll see the populace of Edmonton walking like zombies towards the light. People don’t even know that they’re soldiers in the White Cowbell army, but they are and we get to take our pick — which will be all of you.”

Clemson and his testosterone-slingin’ cowboys don’t intend to bypass Edmonton with their onslaught of rock magic, either, while celebrating their fourth release, Bombardero. “We’re here to add musical dazzlement to our enormous stagecraft, so that we leave a huge crater where Edmonton once stood in all its glory and then we’re gonna take all the oil and split,” Clemson laughs, perhaps a little maniacally. “We’ll turn around and sell it — black gold on the black market, that’s what we do.”

After a certain point in our conversation, his spiel starts to sound less like a put-on and more like a profession of honest, quasi-religious faith. “We do work our rock and roll magic,” he says. “It’s kind of like hypnosis. Even the biggest skeptic will come and we’ll shoot these huge death rays of testosterone and they will fall to their knees in worship ’cause that’s really what we’re after: money and worship. People will be amazed and astounded on their knees, saved and emancipated from their shackles. Unfortunately, there will be a crater of fire around them as well.”