If there’s one item that separates David Liebe Hart from his outsider music brethren (such as Jandek, Wesley Willis and Arthur Doyle) and pushes the 60-year-old into the depths of the left-of-field, it’s the subject matter in his songs, based on what he says are real-life experiences.
“In 1980, I had a close encounter of the first kind of meeting two extraterrestrials,” says Hart about his experience outside the La Brea Tar Pits next to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where Hart used to sketch and sell portraits. “I met Jesedel Ordius after my grandmother Louise Schroder Wright passed on. I met Marcama there. These were real experiences of meeting extraterrestrial people face to face.”
Hart, best known for his jittery singing and puppetry appearances on Adult Swim’s Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, says that the meeting inspired him to write the songs “Salame,” “La Rent Doesn’t Want Me To Look At Porn,” “Go Into the Light” and “Korendian Honk.”
“‘Korendian Honk’ is about this woman that’s an extraterrestrial that came down on a spaceship. She looked like Bettie Page and Lynda Carter from Wonder Woman, and she told me that she was from outer space,” says Hart by phone from his Los Angeles home. “At first, I didn’t believe her. Then she pulled off her high-heeled shoes and she had one toe in the middle instead of on the sides like we humans have. She had three tits where human women only have two. They had more fingers than we did.”
If it’s not alien-specific tunes sung in a timbre reminiscent of a soft-spoken church preacher, Hart tackles subjects such as his religious dedication, his obsessions with trains, and his ex-girlfriends. For his spring tour, Hart – who will sing over pre-recorded guitar, keyboards and drums (rather than bringing along a multi-piece band as he’s done in the past) – will perform numbers such as “Pickle Man and Mr. Moose.” Hart says the song discusses the ghosts that lived in the Hart family apartment on the south side of Chicago in the 1960s.
“Before we moved in, the previous owner had three dead German Shepherd dogs…the dogs came back as orange ghosts and would do devious stuff around the house, like throw stuff around and tickle people and lick people in the face like they were a lollipop,” says Hart. “They looked like a moose instead of a dog, and they were orange.”
Hart’s hardcore devotion to the cosmos carries over to his belief in Christian Science. The street performer, visual artist, actor and television personality, who abstains from all alcohol and drugs, is known in southern California as the puppeteer on the local Los Angeles public-access broadcast The Junior Christian Teaching Bible Lesson Program.
“Christian Science is not Scientology. Put that in the ad. Christian Science is a Bible-based religion that was founded by Mary Baker Eddy and teaches people that they can heal through prayer and positive thinking and spiritual thinking and relying on God,” says Hart, who says that he’s related to Orville and Wilbur Wright on his “Caucasian side.” (Hart adds that his heritage includes African-American, American Indian, Scotch, Irish, German, French and Scandinavian blood.)
“Scientology is a mind-control cult that doesn’t even believe in God. They’re two different religions, just as different as a donkey and a horse.”
David Liebe Hart is scheduled to perform on Thursday, April 14, at Warehouse Live, 813 Saint Emanuel. We Were Wolves share the bill. The doors open at 7 p.m. and the show is slated to begin at 8 p.m. Tickets cost $12 to $15. Check out warehouselive.com.
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2016.
