Mojo Perry is a multi-genre singer / songwriter whose main concentrations are psychedelic and blues music. An accomplished guitar player, Perry has been playing since he was five years old, and he has his own line of custom-made cigarbox guitars, which are made in Neenah, Wis.
Perry's latest album is entitled "Absinthe Journeys." It was released in July and recorded in St. Paul, Minn. Touring behind the album has taken Perry to such diverse places as Thailand, Madison, Sturgeon Bay and, in October, to several locations across Europe.
Perry, a transplant from the upper peninsula of Michigan by way of Appleton, has been working in Milwaukee for the past year, playing local gigs everywhere from the Up and Under, Shank Hall (with Chris Duarte) and at the 2011 Summerfest, where he played the Harley-Davidson stage twice.
And for the past year, Perry has been living in a mansion on Lake Drive.
"There's something to be said about being in a big house by yourself at night: it can get creepy," Perry says.
Perry has benefactors, the owners of the mansion he's living in are patrons-of-the-arts on a scale reminiscent of those who funded artists during the Renaissance. Because of them, Perry has a rent-free, East Side mansion to live in and a support network that rivals a close-knit church congregation or, at least, the defensive line of the Green Bay Packers.
Perry calls his benefactors an underground organization that pushes underground artists. The group is fronted by a married couple who fund artists and help make them self-sufficient. One day they approached Perry while he was preparing for a gig in Milwaukee, offering to help him get organized and to pick up the cost of his next two albums. They helped Perry set himself up as a limited liability corporation (LLC), professionalizing the business end of his music career, helping him look out for himself and they put him in touch with a wider community of musicians.
"They find one person, help put them through, then move on to the next 'find.' I'm still out there, my feet are muddy pounding the pavement, setting up gigs, doing it myself. What they do is help speed things along. I'm incredibly grateful," says Perry of his benefactors.
As a bit of a bonus that can't be offered to every artist they work with, the couple lets Perry stay in their mansion while it's on the market. They reside elsewhere.
Perry asked that the names of his benefactors be withheld.
"I can't tell you what these people did for my self-esteem," says Perry.
Perry grew up in Houghton, Mich., where because of the lake effect, the snow can pile up as high as the tops of telephone poles. Like many folks who grew up in that old, working class mining area, Perry had it tough in Houghton.
Perry says when his mom brought home his first guitar he "took to it real fast" and soon was playing along with the beer commercials he heard on TV. When Perry was six, his dad promised he'd buy an electric guitar for Perry when he hit 13 -- if he kept up his playing -- which he clearly did.
Perry's father came though on his promise, although Perry had to remind him, and by age 14 Perry was cutting his own albums, distributing his own cassettes that he put together with money earned shoveling snow and doing yard work.
"Everyday, I shoveled more snow ..." Perry says, his voice trailing off, most likely into a remembrance of sore backs and blistered fingers.
By 16, Perry was playing every sorority and frat house at Michigan Tech in Houghton. In a town of only 7,000 people, with only a couple thousand more across the canal, the university takes over many facets of everyday life.
"I initially got the sorority gigs because I'd come by with my dad's snowplow and plow out their driveways for free," Perry says.
Over the years, Perry has been involved in many bands, doing both covers and original music.
"I learned very early that bands break up, over all kinds of reasons that no one can really control, and every time my band would dismantle all that work went down the toilet. That's why I started pushing myself, building up my stage name," he says.
"Mojo" is not his given name, and was coined by friends because of Perry's run of extremely bad luck.
Perry was a mill worker in Appleton for many years, and still was working in this capacity two years ago. Because he was producing his own records, Perry took all the overtime and extra shifts he could get.
"I lifted 25 to 35 tons a day, 20-minute lunch, two 10-minute breaks. It was also torture, being such a musical person, working the 10-to-12-hour days amid all the loud machinery, wearing earplugs, not being able to listen to music. Finally, my body couldn't support it anymore, but I had a dream and I never stopped creating my art," Perry says.
Perry invited blues guitarist Chris Duarte and former Violent Femmes' drummer Victor DeLorenzo to play on and record two new albums at the mansion in January. The first, entitled "Winter Psychedelics" comes out this winter, appropriately, and the second comes out next year. That one is called "Mojo Milwaukee" and was recorded in different rooms of the house on Lake Drive over just seven days, with Perry traveling to a studio in Minneapolis to do a few touch-ups afterward.
During the week-long recording process in the livingroom, Perry says they burned about 90 Duralogs in the massive fireplace.
Perry also recently shot a video at the mansion for a single off his current album, "Naughty Boy." The song's premise is that a guy who gets caught with multiple women and is chased throughout all the rooms in the mansion.
For the third year in a row, Perry will be at Dark Songs, an invitation-only week of intense "darkly humorous, scary and / or macabre" music writing that culminates in live performances at Halloween parties in Sturgeon Bay. The event is related to the larger Steel Bridge Songfest, which also takes place annually in Door County, and which Perry has also taken part.
Perry describes these experiences as akin to "song-writing bootcamp" and attributes being involved in both Dark Songs and Steel Bridge to giving Perry a fresh outlook on life and art.
"It's a great resource to instill family into you. You look out for these people, and they look out for you. Through a bizarre, something-I-don't-know-what-to-call-it, a person like me who had such terrible luck could just have it all switched," Perry says.
Perry's several cigarbox guitars all have names and personalities. A page on his website explains how Perry named them all. He says Milwaukeeans will have more than enough opportunity to meet the guitars soon, if we haven't yet. Although he begins his European tour soon, Perry plans to see more snow from the windows of the mansion here.
"Whatever happens to me, I'll always know that I got to that level. What's happened to me is a true testament to what happens when people give you unconditional love and support," Perry says.
Royal has taught courses in critical pedagogy, writing, rhetoric and cultural studies at several schools in Wisconsin and Minnesota. He is currently Adjunct Associate Professor of Humanities at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.
Royal lives in Walker’s Point with his family and uses the light of the Polish Moon to illuminate his way home.
