Puddles Pity Party at the Alberta Rose, Sept. 28

Interviewing a 6-foot-8 singing clown named Puddles poses some interesting problems. 

For starters, the man behind the makeup, performance artist Mike Geier, prefers to keep himself distant from his creation, as if we're not supposed to notice that he and Puddles are never in the same place at the same time. Who, then, does one direct questions to: Geier or Puddles? On top of that, Puddles is "shy," according to his agent, and only does interviews via email, forcing me to type up questions for "Puddles" while trying not to acknowledge that Puddles is really Geier, and at the same time trying to find out why Geier decided to start crooning songs while dressed like Pagliacci on stilts.

Turns out, it doesn't really matter. No matter how well I tiptoe around his "fourth wall," Puddles is not forthcoming with the details of his origin story. 

"Your folks or guidance counselor should have clued you in on that birds-and-bees stuff,” he replies. “I am clown from the get-go.” 

There's clearly a certain amount of silliness in all this. Regardless, Puddles is a serious artist. He sings in a booming, melancholic tenor, and the magnitude of his voice is amplified by the magnitude of his appearance: full clown regalia and makeup, complete with a red nose and a painted-on frown, adorning a frame the size of an NBA power forward's. Puddles' performances are somewhere between a plotless one-man play and a concert. In 2010, he gained recognition as part of a live stage show for the Adult Swim cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force and with his part in the New York production of the interactive play Sleep No More. Last year, he toured with Eels, which ended when Puddles ran onstage and "punched" frontman Mark Everett in the mouth—a gag that included Everett spitting fake blood. Clearly, Puddles sees little difference between a theater and a concert hall. 

"No distinction for me," he says. "Recently at the Ghent Fest in Belgium, I sang in several venues: an opera house, a deconsecrated church, and dangling above a medieval canal from a fallen willow tree.” 

Later in 2013, Puddles went viral when he teamed up with the interpretive pop group Postmodern Jukebox and shot YouTube covers of Lorde's "Royals" and Sia's "Chandelier." In both videos, he stares straight into the camera, towering above the two female backing vocalists, and belts out the lyrics with impressive smoothness. His version of "Chandelier," in particular, is beautiful to the point of being moving, so much so that it's easy to forget you're watching a giant clown doing the singing. 

“Society encourages us to suppress our emotions,” Puddles says. “I tend to release mine.” 

That's about as close as I get to figuring Puddles out, but it hints at why Geier is unwilling to merge his offstage persona with his onstage personality: It's insincere to play the game halfway. 

In a last attempt to find out concretely why Geier does what he does, I asked him why he refers to his shows as "Pity Parties." His response, as with the rest, was vague, but strangely evocative: "I think Abraham Lincoln said it best: 'Everybody's got a sack of rocks.'"

SEE IT: The Puddles Pity Party is at the Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., on Sunday, Sept. 28. 8 pm. $20 advance, $25 day of show. 21+.

WWeek 2015