The Buf’lo and Pig Lizzard
About a decade ago, Pig Lizzard landed in a battle of the bands in Baton Rouge. It was already kind of a surprise the psychedelic grunge band had made it into the competition at The Varsity Theatre. Pig Lizzard wasn’t known at all outside of the circles who kept an eye on the indie rock and punk bands playing around small bars in the Capital City — and even then, you probably had to stumble upon the strange, chaotic group.
A vote on social media put Pig Lizzard as the battle of the bands’ dark horse — but the band blew apart the Varsity during the first round. It was an explosive set of experimental rock, punk and grunge that blissfully ran on the edge of falling apart at any second. Pig Lizzard led the pack and sailed into round two.
A few nights later, though, things actually did fall apart. The group had been so shocked at how well they’d done the first night that they got nervous and started drinking ahead of the second round. The show imploded on stage — and not even spectacularly.
“I called my mom the next day,” says Will Glass, the band’s guitarist and vocalist. “I was like, ‘Mom, I think Ashley (Glass’ then-girlfriend) is gonna break up with me.’ The show was so bad.”
The two didn’t break up. They in fact got married and are now living in New Orleans, Glass’ hometown.
New Orleans band Pig Lizzard
Pig Lizzard also has continued, and last year released a new album, “Buf’lo.” And the band — now a five-piece with Glass; drummer Tom Periou; bassist Andrew Silvera; guitarist Cody Young; and Patrick Madore on a custom-built guitar-like instrument — next performs live at 9 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 8, at Saturn Bar with Donny’s Demeanor and Shidded.
Pig Lizzard is full of contradictions. The band can unexpectedly play its best show but then fall apart on stage a few nights later. There’s a constant air of detached irony but a deep sincerity in wanting to make meaningful art. What starts as a silly, plucked riff morphs into a raging barnburner. It makes for a band that can be unpredictable but always interesting.
“It’s easy to poke fun at basically everything we do, but like — there’s meaning in play,” Glass says. “There’s a pigheadedness in all of us, an ego. There’s a lizard instinct. The tension between them is life, and it can pull really negative emotions out of us if you don’t put it to use.”
While the current Pig Lizzard lineup came together in 2010, “Buf’lo,” is their first album fully recorded together.
Glass, Periou and their friend and classmate Joey Lacour started the band while at Jesuit High School. The trio wrote a few songs and practiced a lot the summer after senior year and dove into playing shows once they started college at LSU in 2008. A debut album soon followed.
Lacour left the band while Pig Lizzard was recording another record, and after a break, Young and Madore joined the band to finish the album. Madore built a two-string guitar to play in the band, which Glass calls the mortar holding together Pig Lizzard’s alt-rock brick wall.
“Patrick’s chaos instrument just kind of creates this layer of static that just binds everything together,” Glass says.
After college, Periou left home for work and Pig Lizzard went on a long break, during which Glass released his own acoustic music. But in 2019, Periou returned to New Orleans, and Pig Lizzard reformed.
For Glass, “Buf’lo” was written amid a formative time period. Glass and his wife were beginning plans to start a family when in 2020 they traumatically lost their beloved mini-pig named Hank — who had found a loyal social media following during his short time.
Many of the songs on “Buf’lo” are written as small scenes and dialogue and probe a range of ideas, from anxiety to the concept of Brahman consciousness.
“It was this transition from a character rebuilding [after] trauma into becoming a parent,” Glass says. “What is the world looking like that my child is about to enter? And what’s my responsibility? Because I decided more than this kid did that he was going to enter the world, so maybe we need to prep it and make it smoother for them.”
Tickets for the Saturn Bar show are $12.47 via dice.fm. Find Pig Lizzard at piglizzard.com.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source bestofneworleans.com ’
