Yard Dogs Road Show

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The Yard Dogs Road Show

Eddy Joe Cotton is the best selling author of Hobo: A Young Man’s Thoughts on Trains and Tramping in America. He is also a founding member of The Yard Dogs Road Show. The Yard Dogs have been traveling and performing through out the United States for the last seven years.

Born from the saloon vaudeville that toured the Wild West in the late 1800’s. Our platform combines the elements of saloon vaudeville and noir burlesque—creating a timeless space for the union of ancient theatrical alchemy and modern pop culture. Sword swallowers, fire eaters, electrified jug band music, burlesque, rambling poetry and sideshow oddities are just a taste of the thrills and cultural obscurities that you will experience behind the canvas flap of the fabulous Yard Dogs Road Show.

The Yard Dogs Road Show will be featured alongside the Jim Rose Circus and the Bindlestiff Family Circus in the upcoming book on underground circus—Freaks and Fire: The Underground Reinvention of the Circus Arts by Dee Hill. To be published in February of 2005 by Soft Skull Press.

The Yard Dogs have performed in many obscure and not so obscure places—from Shoreline Amphitheater with Jane’s Addiction to a parking lot behind the Denver County jail to old Oregon dance halls for all night acid tests with Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters to shindigs with Baby Gramps to the desert of Arizona as part of annual cultural exchange festivals with the Quechan and the Mohave Tribes to Nevada brothel towns with names like Pahrump and Needles to The Knitting Factory in LA with members of No Doubt to full blown outdoor music festivals like Reggae on the River with the likes of Spearhead, Les Claypool and Ween to more corporate events for Red Bull, Lucas Films, Cirque Du Soleil and Teatro Zinzanni. And, of course, a variety of children’s shows and family events including a festival in Williams, Arizona on the “Mother Road” to celebrate Route 66 days and a show at a Nevada retirement community where we shared a stage with the famous circus performers of yesteryear. The Yard Dogs have performed at many prominant music venues including The Bluebird Theater in Denver, Colorado and are sheduled to perform at The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in May of 2005.

SEE THE PRESS HERE

Eddy Joe Cotton and Tobias the Mystic Man (the Yard Dog’s sword swallower and human blockhead) spent three enlightening and rather treacherous weeks working for The Hall and Christ World of Wonders , “The last of the old time circus sideshows.” Where they traveled the midwest performing on America’s carnival midways.

Eddy Joe Cotton has read and performed with They Might Be Giants ,Dave Eggers (author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players and Speed Levitch(star of The Cruise and Waking Life). He has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle. His book Hobo was translated into German and published by Piper Verlag in the fall of 2003. Hobo was a Denver Post Best Seller and also selected by the Independent Book Sellers of America in both hardcover and paperback for Book Sense 76—”unique and provocative selections from a great diversity of voices…all personally recommended by the independent booksellers of America”. Hobo has been endorsed by many good folks including: Howard Zinn, Hubert Selby Jr., Dave Eggers and Robert Hunter (song writer and lyricist for the Grateful Dead). Eddy Joe Cotton has also appeared on NPR’s The Savvy Traveler, West Coast Live and To The Best Of Our Knowledge.

The Yard Dogs participate in annual Native American Indian cultural exchange festivals with the Quechan and Mohave tribes. This includes a Yard Dogs performance, Yard Dogs participation in workshop schedule, and our over-all interaction with various tribe members and international college students.

Manifesto

We are a traveling vaudeville show that is artistically and socially accessible to diverse and multicultural groups. We are modern vaudevillians and we communicate through the language of song and dance. As modern story tellers we communicate through the language of memoir and facilitate the manifestation of mythical character through complete theatrical insanity. As painters and sculptors we use the language of visual art to create a cohesive carnival environment. We incorporate the circus and sideshow arts by making use of the fakir and the pitchman. We engage the audience with a collage of live sound effects and musical accompaniment, generated from a variety of hand made instruments.

(Please click on above links to read articles, listen to interviews or find more information about these specific events.)

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