ST. LOUIS – As a fire hose full of fecal matter was being prepared to fire on his audience, Sound Lounge manager Brian Sorely realized he booked an entirely different kind of scat man for his jazz club Saturday night.
“This doesn’t seem right,” Sorely said to himself as the artist, 22-year-old self-proclaimed “Shit King of St. Louis,” Tanner Graveton, set up an easel on stage to begin his act. But, having seen many great jazz artists perform in various ways throughout the years, Sorely was willing to see where it went.
“The guy called and said he needed a scat man for his club,” Graveton said. “I told him, ‘You know I’m a shit artist right?’ but he said something about believing in my talent and he’ll pay me double, so I filled up five oil drums to really give everyone a show.”
Sorely recalls the conversation, saying, “My usual trio canceled on me at the last minute. I probably should have looked into this a little more.”
As Graveton stripped down to his underwear, dipped paint brushes into one of the oil drums full of mixed animal/human excrement, and began splashing it all over the easel – and the audience – it dawned on Sorely that he may have made a booking error.
It didn’t take long for the crowd to be repulsed by what it saw on stage, and most left before Graveton could begin his finale, which required audience participation and a willingness to “eat shit the same way our politicians have been asking us to do for generations.”
Sorely is trying to put the event behind him, and has already booked new talent for next week. “The talent is spread around town pretty thin right now, so I went on Craigslist and found a guy who said he’d jazz on anyone I wanted for 50 bucks. Weird turn of phrase and it was hard to hear him. I think he said jazz. Yeah, he definitely did.”
