One night I got a phone call from Tremaine seeing if I wanted to go with him to check out this musician friend of his that was playing in Downtown LA. It was somebody he’d recently worked with, Dr. Sick. At first I was on the fence about the idea and I really didn’t want to go, but Jeff said, “You’re going to like it.” I didn’t want to be rude and say no, so I went. When we arrived at an underground club that’s in the Art’s District, there was this dude getting ready to perform outside in back of the venue. Once he started playing, it took me by surprise to see this guy playing a bunch of different instruments, looping each one of them, and making a song as a one-man band. I was blown away watching it all come together, and my first reaction was that I needed to interview this guy for the website because he was fucking dope. So here’s my interview with the one and only Dr. Sick. Maybe you’ll see the light and become a fan, too. —Rick Kosick
Kosick: First off, how did you come up with a name like this?
Dr. Sick: That’s actually one of the oldest questions I get and attribute it to the music I play—but it’s completely unrelated. Let’s just say that in the 1990s there were underground parties with illicit narcotics and a lot of people had a lot of names.
Okay, I get it. Are you originally from New Orleans?
No, I was actually raised outside of Niagara Falls, New York. I moved down to New Orleans in 1999 after dropping out of music college, because I realized college doesn’t necessarily give you a gig in a band. I’m not opposed to music college; it just wasn’t for me. So I moved down to New Orleans, playing music in the street. There’s a really great busking scene down on Royal street. Internationally known people have traveled from far and wide to see street music there in the French Quarter. Then I ended up joining a band in 2004, a blue grass/punk rock band that put me on the road, and I got back with them in 2011.
So you are totally involved in the New Orleans music scene?
Yeah, I record and produce, write songs, sing, and play traditional jazz.
So you pretty much do it all? From what I saw that night when you played in LA, you were picking up every other instrument, looping it, and creating a song out of it. I thought it was amazing.
That’s a brand new project I developed just for that show you saw in Los Angeles at Club Paradise. That project is now called “Doctor Doctor,” because it’s me looping myself over and over again. The point of it is to sound organic as I can and not make it sound like electronic music—make it sound like a one-man band. I don’t know what the point of it is. I think all music is to make people interested and have fun, drink more and make bad discussions.
You were recently cast in a TV commercial, how did that come about?
There’s a great music venue called The Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans. I’m lucky enough to play with some of the best musicians in the world there. We all just kind of take turns running the stage. I guess it was about a year and a half ago, I was running the stage, and they saw us playing the violin, guitar, piano, and a musical saw, climbing all over the bar. Just making a spectacle out of it. Apparently there were a couple guys in the audience—it was their end-of-shoot wrap party for some other project they’d been working on—I guess it was Jeff [Tremaine] who made a mental note to use this guy for something. Sure enough, I got a phone call early this year and he said, “I saw you play at the Spotted Cat, we have this health company that needs to put together a bunch of instruments and do crowd work, like talk to strangers and get them to try and play the instruments.” I was like, “Yeah, tell me more, what’s the money like, what time, and where do I have to audition?” I was in Florida at the time and had to send in a tape, but it all worked out great and actually developed between me and couple of the people on that crew for future work. The product itself ended up being a candy bar that’s healthy, and I’m like, “You know, my name is Dr. Sick, I don’t know if this is going to be a problem?” They didn’t care. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to be putting your name anywhere on this thing.” Great!
So Tremaine found you at the Spotted Cat that evening?
Jeff Tremaine was the director of that commercial and Justin Moore-Lewy was the producer. Tremaine was brought into the project because they initially thought they wanted to shoot this candid with the cameras hidden, and with his resume that’s perfect for him. They ended up not shooting it that way, because they realized pretty quickly that you’re not going to show anyone’s reactions in this commercial that long because it happens all so fast.
Had you ever been in a commercial before?
Yeah, I’ve done some theatre and a little bit of extra work, but mostly, like anything theatrical, I’m a burlesque announcer. So I have a pretty thick, horrible, 80-year-old sense of humor. You know, just like terrible parties. But as far as being on camera, that was probably the longest I was ever featured, like two solid days having the cameras pointed at me.
You must be a really good showman and stood out for Jeff to recognize you. It just goes to show that you never know who’s watching when you’re out there performing. You’ve got to give it a 100-percent because you never know what could happen.
Every day. There’s no reason to play like shit, there’s no reason to play lame and hold back—it doesn’t make any sense. I know this band—I’m not going to mention their name because a lot people think they’re lame—who won a Grammy for a project, and I saw them back in 2002 in El Paso with eight people in the audience and they were playing like there were 30,000 people in front of them. And it wasn’t very long before they had 30,000 people in their audience. If you put in the work, believe in your product, do it every day and remain dedicated, it will turn into something. For me, burlesque turned into a TV commercial about playing musical interments. Just putting yourself out there and working constantly turned into more work. Everything changes into more things and more connections and you’re right—you have no idea who’s watching you.
How was it working with Jeff?
Jeff’s hilarious. He was onset, but he wasn’t walking around telling me what to do or anything. He was watching cameras in the back and had a microphone that went directly to my ear. Basically he would keep me mentally engaged enough so I could improvise with people. He would feed me lines to say to some people. He didn’t do any blocking or tell me how to move, he talent scouted me because he knew I was going to do it naturally anyway. So that’s a good director. He also had a good grasp on when someone is getting tired. Those were long days: two 12-hour days in a row, and who knows, how much more they did before I showed up. He would say, “Hey, you see that guy with the time code clacker? Go over there and touch his butt.” So I would walk over, touch his butt, and the guy would say, “What are you doing?” “Hey man, I’m just acting here. The director told me to be here.” He would keep people on their toes. Constantly messing around so we could stay awake and get through the shoot.
So what are you doing now?
Because of another gig I was doing, I got asked to join Squirrel Nut Zippers—that band from the ‘90s that did that song “Hell” and several others—who are now touring international. I’m their lead violin player, backup singer, and jumping around onstage doing backflips. We’re talking South America in December and we just got back from Canada playing at the Montreal Jazz Festival headlining spot. We’re number nine on the Billboard jazz charts for the release of the record Hot. We’re number nine on pre-sale—that’s crazy!
So if someone wants to hear your music how can they find it?
It’s really hard to find me if you type in “Dr. Sick” on Google. I’ve been Sick longer than Google’s been Google, but if you type in the word Dr. Sick the search engine usually takes you to Web MD. So you can type in the words “fiddle killer.”
Fan out Facebook-style on Dr. Sick here: facebook.com/fiddlekiller
Turn out Twitter-style for Dr. Sick here: twitter.com/fiddlekiller
(Photos by Rick Kosick; 2016)
, Jeff was a natural fit and traditional mayhem ensued with blooper-like breaks of the "fourth wall". Here's a sample spot featuring Travis and Parks, but the whole video shebang can be found at: 
