The rain is coming down hard in Manhattan as I look for the restaurant where I’m to meet artist Joseph Keckler. Instead, I find him first. I recognise the tall, black-clad figure sheltering under a black umbrella as he walks past me. Black clothes, black hair, dark night, pelting rain – it seems somehow appropriate for a first meeting with a man who has made a wicked marriage of dark, absurdist humour, visual art and theatre – and has one of the most astonishing voices you’ll ever hear.
What Keckler does defies categorisation. An opera singer with a four-octave range, yes. But also a writer, actor, recovering goth, deadpan comedian – all of these things and more. Looking more Bad Seed than baritone, Keckler sings contemporary, often autobiographical stories as operatic arias in French, Italian, German and Russian; anecdotes such as mushroom benders, shopping for goth clothes, even sex with a ghost. Come on, really? “That’s a question for the ghost,” he replies with a grin.
Australia’s own “man in black”, singer Tex Perkins, describes Keckler as “a total one-off”. “[He] is one of the most unique performers you will ever see,” says Perkins in a testimonial. “I was absolutely enthralled with his incredible voice, magnificent piano playing, experimental performance style and dry sense of humour.”
People who saw Keckler’s debut Australian performances last year are similarly effusive in their praise – and excited to hear of his upcoming tour, which includes dates with Opera Australia, the Perth Festival, Adelaide Fringe and venues in Sydney and Melbourne.
“People had always said, ‘Oh they’ll love you in Australia’, and I didn’t know what the reasoning was behind that,” says Keckler, chuckling. “And I still am not sure. But it was true – people really responded to what I was doing.”
Keckler has come a long way from his beginnings from small-town Michigan – near Kalamazoo, no less – since moving to New York more than 15 years ago. In 2013, The Village Voice crowned him “Best Downtown Performer”. He’s done a coveted NPR Tiny Desk Concert, a residency at Florida’s Ringling Museum, and in 2023 performed at New York’s prestigious Lincoln Center.
He’s currently working on a performance piece commissioned by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Part site-specific concert, part impressionistic essay, A Good Night in the Trauma Garden will premiere at The Met in May. He champions other artists through a live performance series he curates, “The Golden Hour with Joseph Keckler”, at New York venue Art Yard. And he has published a book, Dragon at the Edge of a Flat World, which includes stories that inspired some of his songs.
“People had always said, ‘Oh they’ll love you in Australia’, Keckler says.
He not only creates work, but inspires it. He features in a soon-to-be released short film by composer John Moran, Für Joseph. Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein of American band Sleater-Kinney were so taken by seeing him perform in an LA club that he inspired a song, The Future Is Here. And booked him to support them on a national US tour.
Loading
“Probably some of their audience didn’t get me, and some of them probably didn’t like me,” Keckler says of the tour. “But I think by and large that was the minority. Aside from when the tech didn’t work in Minneapolis” – the subtitles for the arias failed to appear – “and people had no idea what I was doing because they couldn’t see the words, so that seemed like a highly abstract performance.”
As with his previous tour with Lydia Lunch, Keckler will perform solo on this tour – just a man, a piano and his four-octave voice.
“Striking” is a word that fits every aspect of Keckler’s aesthetic. But ultimately, it’s the jaw-dropping vocal aerobics that he brings to his playful, irreverent monologues, spoken or sung in English, German, Italian, French or Russian, that wow his audiences. The subtitles to his non-English works are an often startling – and hilarious – juxtaposition to the aural splendour.
Keckler began absorbing music from a young age. “When I was about five, my parents were watching The Blues Brothers one night and I could hear the music coming through the floor, so it was Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway, John Lee Hooker, people I saw in that movie, so I was really interested in blues and soul singers,” he says. “Later I became interested in Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Nina Simone and Bessie Smith. And then David Bowie and more theatrical rock singers, stuff like that.
Keckler on stage: “My tastes have tilted towards things from the past.”
“My tastes have tilted towards things from the past, it’s just kind of my orientation, and I was interested in some goth bands. I would drive around the cemetery and listen to Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sex Gang Children and other things.”
From a young age, his own voice was there. “I had a voice which seemed sort of operatic, even though I wasn’t trying to sing anything operatic, I was trying to sing dirges,” he says. “But it came out in a more oratorical direction. So, I did take some voice lessons as a teenager, but then I went off to school. I studied visual art and trained as an opera singer at the same time, but then was doing a lot of performance art and monologue work.”
He was also an active visual artist as a teenager, exhibiting in group shows, but he now only uses visual art as inspiration for his live performances and song videos. “I might draw a cat or a person I’m in love with at this point, but I don’t exhibit anything.”
Keckler began his operatic training as a teenager and spent four years with American tenor George Shirley, who was the first African-American tenor at the Met Opera, and in New York studied under Sheila Plummer.
He has used that training as a launching pad to experiment with his voice, including a high signature sound that evokes a theremin or bow saw.
“I developed that sound separately; that’s not a trained sound, it’s not a classical sound,” he says. “And I don’t really know physiologically what’s going on [when I sing it], but it’s comfortable for me to do it.”
Audiences might not know what’s going on when they see and hear Joseph Keckler either. But they won’t forget this man in black.
Joseph Keckler is touring Australia in February and March, including shows at Opera Queensland, Brisbane, Feb 14-15; Brunswick Ballroom, Melbourne, Feb 20; and The Vanguard, Sydney, Feb 23. See josephkeckler.com
