Viking of Sixth Avenue: A Conversation with Ghost Train Orchestra’s Brian Carpenter on Moondog

For several decades starting in the late 1940s, one could frequently find a blind, long-bearded, mysterious figure – cloaked with a horned helmet and spear – surveilling the looming highrise towers of his urban midtown Manhattan kingdom. Dubbed the “Viking of Sixth Avenue”, many passers-by wrote the man off as an eccentric madman best ignored. Others watched on in bewilderment. Very few observers realized they were in the presence of one of the most brilliant musical minds of the era. With Songs & Symphoniques: The Music of Moondog (Cantaloupe Music, 2023), Brian Carpenter’s Ghost Train Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, and a slew of vocalists attempt to reclaim the honor and recognition properly due to that man, Louis Hardin. Or, as many know him, Moondog. 

It is difficult to understate Moondog’s influence on future generations of musicians. His ideas stretched into many far-reaching artistic corners. Phillip Glass and Steve Reich both credit him with influencing their work in minimalism. Glass even went as far as to say that he “appreciated [Moondog’s work] much more than what [he was] exposed to at Juilliard.” The grounds for minimalism – shifting rhythmic patterns with repeated motifs – are evident in many of Moondog’s pieces. However, merely labeling Moondog’s oeuvre as contemporary classical music is misleading. How does one explain the legions of fans across the musical spectrum? Other admirers of Moondog’s work include trailblazers Charlie Parker, Frank Zappa, and Igor Stravinsky. Not to mention Moondog’s large following among indie rockers, even as his music superficially sounds very little like theirs. 

Yet, years after Hardin’s passing, he is still significantly marginalized in discussions of important contemporary composers. Part of this treatment derives from the difficulty one has in labeling his art. Living in an era before genre cross-pollination was the norm, Moondog’s music pulled from all different styles and cultural influences. Ideas from Native American pow-wow songs, bebop, swing, music from the Renaissance era, Contemporary Classical, and many other sources were given equal weight to produce a wholly unique music. The moods of Moondog’s pieces were similarly far-ranging, from deeply serious and moody to childlike humorousness. As to the latter, he even recorded a children’s album with Julie Andrews [Songs of Sense and Nonsense – Tell it Again (Angel/Capitol, 1957)].

Songs & Symphoniques prevails in its refusal to box an uncategorizable artist into preset definitions. The project’s inclusion of the Kronos Quartet, arguably the most consequential string quartet of the modern era, is particularly inspired. Over the last fifty years, Kronos has continually dusted off the impositions of Western classical music to explore a wider range of music. But, at heart, each of its four members are classically trained string players. Like Moondog, they too are connected to the Western classical tradition but not inescapably welded to it. The album also features several guest vocalists, primarily from the rock realm, who add additional texture. 

And then, of course, there is the Ghost Train Orchestra itself. As its name suggests, the group inhabits an ethereal space of track that runs between jazz and chamber music. It is particularly skilled, as shown on prior releases tackling music from the 1920s and 1930s, at breathing new life into pieces by composers largely forgotten through the ages. This background guides the group well in addressing a somewhat elusive figure like Moondog. In taking Hardin’s compositions and rearranging them for different instrumentation and, in some cases, adding improvisational input, the Orchestra effectively modernizes works that seemingly exist outside of time. 

Ultimately, Songs & Symphoniques is an album that does not push Moondog’s proto-minimalist core, jazz influences, or rock following to the forefront at the expense of the others. Instead, it finds ways to incorporate all of these elements, and more, into a cohesive whole. In that sense, although the album is a “re-imagination”, it arguably better represents Moondog’s experimental and open-minded artistic spirit than a more faithful rendering. Karen Mantler’s vocals on “Enough about Human Rights” provide Laurie Anderson-like art-pop vocals over a bouncy and funky repetitive rhythmic structure that sounds wildly different from the original folk-infused chant yet retains the same balance of seriousness and humor. “Why Spend a Dark Night With You” uses Joan Wasser’s haunting vocals to create a dark piece that contrasts significantly with the original’s use of simplified vocal rounds without sacrificing the contemplative nature of the underlying piece. 

We sat down with Brian Carpenter to discuss Moondog and how the Ghost Train Orchestra’s new album came to be, and the legacy of Hal Willner.

PostGenre: The Ghost Train Orchestra previously explored music from the late 1920s on Hothouse Stomp (Accurate, 2011) and Hot Town (Accurate, 2015) and  the 1930s with the two Book of Rhapsodies records (Accurate, 2013 and 2017). Now, you have a tribute to Moondog, who began his professional career in the 1940s. Did you intentionally go decade by decade with each project? 

Brian Carpenter: I didn’t even think about that. That’s fascinating. 

We did start with a very niche period from 1926 to 1931 for Hothouse Stomp and Hot Town. The Book of Rhapsodies records ended up being material from ten years later, which was a whole different musical world. It’s hard to call Moondog’s music jazz, as the music is on those two other projects, because his work is such a weird hybrid of jazz and classical music. I think most of the music we played on this record spanned from the 1940s and 1950s – “All is Loneliness” and “Be a Hobo” – up to the 1960s and 1970s with “Theme” and “Enough About Human Rights.” 

PG: What draws you into Moondog’s works? Is it that they don’t neatly fit into one category of music?

BC: Moondog wasn’t bound by any particular musical trend or genre, which is fascinating. But I think I am drawn primarily to the cinematic nature of his music. You can easily visualize things when you hear his music. Of course, there’s a lot of complexity in his music, but there is also a lot of simplicity in his melodic ideas. His melodies can be very catchy too. 

He also had a wide range. He wrote both elaborate instrumental pieces and songs with lyrics. That is something that resonates with me because I too write both songs with lyrics and instrumental music. I felt that with Songs & Symphoniques we could show the breadth of his music.

PG: The album seemingly emphasizes how Moondog’s influence is still felt in many different kinds of music. 

BC: Definitely. It’s interesting how Moondog’s kind of a cult figure and so well known in rock circles. For one, Elvis Costello was a big Moondog fan. He even brought Moondog to the Meltdown Festival in the 90s. But Moondog isn’t as recognized among jazz musicians. It’s interesting because jazz musicians always like to fashion themselves as being incredibly open-minded, but most jazz musicians you talk to have no idea about Moondog. But it seems like almost everyone in indie rock knows about Moondog. It’s fascinating because Moondog didn’t write indie rock pieces. I think it’s the fact that he’s kind of an outsider that pulls rock musicians into his work. 

PG: Because Moondog was an incredibly prolific composer, how did you go about songs for the album?

BC: He was very prolific. I’m sure there’s a lot of his music I’ve never heard. Many of his pieces have never been released, including some he wrote in Braille that were never transcribed. I probably haven’t even scratched the surface of his compositions. 

I selected the pieces we used because I felt they would be great ones to reimagine and translate. As you may know, many of his pieces were originally written for piano. The piano is kind of an orchestra in and of itself, and it was almost natural to take them and apply them to a larger orchestra. For example, Matt Bauder took “Enough About Human Rights”, a solo piano piece, and orchestrated it for a jazz orchestra. So, on our recording, all the lines you hear on strings and horns were plucked from the solo piano. That approach felt like such a great way to give new color and new life to his music.

PG: Going back, how did you first find out about Moondog?

BC: [Sound] engineer, Bryce Goggin first emailed me about Moondog. Bryce was familiar with my music because he had recorded my band, Beat Circus, and had seen Ghost Train Orchestra several times. Bryce thought I might be the right person to tackle Moondog’s music effectively. 

Years after Bryce emailed me, I went and dug into Moondog’s music. The first record I heard was Moondog (Columbia Masterworks, 1969). It was an eye-opener. The album started with “Theme” and then went into “Stamping Ground.” His compositions created such a unique world. It didn’t sound like anything else I had ever heard. The album did have hints of minimalism to come. 

PG: Is it safe to call Moondog the forefather of minimalism as some have done?

BC: Yes, absolutely. No question about it. He led into the minimalists. He even lived with Philip Glass for a year. 

PG: Though Moondog avoided using the term minimalism to describe his music. 

BC: You’re right, he didn’t like the label. But that was more because he didn’t like being boxed into any category. It is much the same reason why he dressed up in elaborate Viking garb. He was trying to create this whole mythology around himself and didn’t want to be associated with any particular scene. He was constantly trying to duck preconceived notions about his music. 

PG: Do you think his Viking garb is part of why Moondog’s not more widely known now? 

BC: No. If anything, I think the unusual outfit cemented his notoriety. Many people knew who Moondog was in the 60s. I just saw Laurie Anderson last weekend at a show, and she told me she saw Moondog many times on the street. If you were walking around 6th Avenue, he was there, and people recognized him. They might not have known he was a musician, but they knew who he was. He was similar to Sun Ra in the sense that he created a whole mythology around Afrofuturism and created a whole persona, and I think both helped cement his image. The imagery provides a gateway into the music. 

PG: Adding further to his eccentric image, Moondog also created several of his own instruments and used them regularly in his music. In terms of converting his compositions as written to orchestral instrumentation, was it difficult translating his handmade instruments to a setting where you do not have them?

BC: We were very interested in including some solo percussion pieces on the album. David Cossin was instrumental on that front. David created several arrangements of the solo percussion pieces and even used some instruments he built himself. There are probably dozens of percussion instruments that he used on this record, and he created many, many solo percussion pieces. Two of them ended up on this record, and we plan to release a second volume sometime in the next two years that will include the rest of his arrangements. 

But I think it was more interesting for us to reimagine Moondog’s music than try to slavishly copy whatever he did. There’s a guy in Burlington, Vermont named Julian Calv, who was a protege of Moondog’s. I ran into him on the street because my son goes to college there. When I saw Julian, he was playing a trimba [ed. a Moondog created set of triangular drums and a cymbal] that he modeled after Moondog’s, and he showed me how it worked. It was an amazing instrument. But if you want to hear the trimba, you can stick to Moondog’s recordings. We didn’t need to mimic what he had already done.

PG: Moondog also often incorporated different Native American tribal rhythms into his music. Was it difficult getting musicians who are probably unfamiliar with those rhythms to work with them?

BC: No. Again, we have David Cossin, one of the greatest percussionists in the world, in the band. He doesn’t have an issue with any rhythm. Among other things, he has been in Bang on a Can All-Stars for decades, a group which has touched on many different areas of world music in their work. I gave David a lot of freedom for this project. And if you listen to the record, while it might not be obvious on first listen, David’s sound is at the core of almost every single piece on the record. I can’t emphasize enough how big of an impact he had on this project. 

PG: Where does improvisation fit into the project? Moondog was admired by many jazz musicians, including Charlie Parker, but he purposely avoided having improvisation as part of his pieces. 

BC: We definitely tried to expand his pieces to include improvised portions. It’s funny because I had reached out to Stefan Lakatos, one of Moondog’s friends and students who had since passed away, when I started this project. Stefan was interested in talking about the project but was also very against the idea of improvisation being a part of it. He was a Moondog purist and felt that as soon as you introduced improvisation to the project it would make the music impure in the sense that all of the intricate cannons architected by Moondog would end up lost in the muddy waters of improvisation. 

But we felt there was a lot of merit to expanding Moondog’s music and that things could be more open and freed up in certain sections. We didn’t dumb down the music or try to remove some of its complexity. We kept all the complexity while expanding some of the sections for improvisation. Many of the pieces were still through-composed. There’s not that much improvisation on the record. But there are some sections and pieces like “Bumbo” or “Theme” where we use improvisation as well. 

In the case of “Theme”, the solo came from my wondering why the clarinet solo on the piece stops after only sixteen bars. We thought it would be interesting to see how things turned out if we had a longer space there with an opportunity for improvisation. 

PG: Have there been many reimaginations of Moondog’s music like this one before? It seems like a fairly underexplored area.

BC: Many recordings from Europe reimagine Moondog’s work. Joanna MacGregor, from the UK, made a great record [Sidewalk Dances (Sound Circus, 2006)] with Britten Sinfonia and Andy Sheppard. It doesn’t quite hit the depth and breadth that we did on our record, and it’s not as varied as ours, but it’s still a record worth checking out. Another is Cabaret Contemporain Plays Moondog (Sub Rosa, 2013), which remodes Moondog compositions into art rock/ electronic music/ art pop. Stefan strongly disliked that record because it was so far removed musically from the originals. But I love it. 

I don’t believe there are any reimaginations of his works on American recordings, and that was another thing that interested me in this project; to have a band in the United States that really tackles Moondog’s music and can play it live. 

PG: Especially with the record release party at Roulette coming up, how do you think the project is approached differently in a live setting than on the recording?

BC: That’s a good question. We are thinking a lot about how to make the music as exciting as we can and how we build up the performance.In live settings, we tend to have more freedom. We might open up sections some more. There are certain pieces on the album we probably won’t play live because they are primarily written for a recording and don’t work as well live. 

Another big difference between the live show and the album is the order of pieces. It is a little more of a presentation live than on the record. Live, we use changing instrumentation to show off the breadth of the music. We start with only the quartet and gradually add other instruments. It is not until about halfway through the concert that the whole orchestra is on stage. But we start with only the Kronos Quartet.

PG: How did the Kronos Quartet get involved with this project? 

BC: I reached out to them and they got right back to us. [Kronos founder/leader/violinist] David [Harrington] had even met Moondog once. And Kronos also previously recorded Moondog’s composition “Synchrony No. 2” for their album, Early Music (Lachrymæ Antiquæ) (Nonesuch, 1997). When I brought David our arrangements, he was very excited because he knew there was this whole other world the quartet could tackle as part of the project. He felt like it would be a great adventure that we could embark upon, and it was. 

I met David In 2018, and we recorded in 2019. The pandemic hit, and we had to learn to mix and record remotely, which was a challenge. But it was still a dream come true. I’ve been a huge fan of Kronos since I was in high school. Amazingly, they were so excited to work on this project with us. 

PG: What do you think you learned the most from putting together this project?

BC: Well, one thing I learned was how many great composers we have in the Ghost Train Orchestra. The other band members are great. Getting them involved in the compositional pool, or in this case, the arrangement pool, makes the rest of the band feel more invested in the project. It brings the whole project up to a higher level. Now we are working on a new record of all original music, but Songs & Symphoniques is the first record I opened up to ideas from other people in the band. It was something I should have done years ago. 

I also learned how to put together a record of this scale with special guests and vocalists. I’d never done a project of this scale before. I learned a lot in the process about how to write for singers and to get out of the way. As a singer myself, I have to learn to get out of the way and to try not to micromanage. The worst thing you can do is micromanage, especially when you have such great singers. 

PG: The guest vocalists – Petra Haden, Aoife O’Donovan, Rufus Wainwright, Karen Mantler, Sam Amidon, Jarvis Cocker, Marissa. Nadler, and Jon Wasser- are impressive. The credits for the album thank Hal Willner, who made many great cross-genre concept albums dedicated to a single artist with many guest appearances on them. Do you see this project as a continuation of Willner’s work?

BC: Absolutely. I’m so glad you mentioned that. I met Hal a few weeks before he passed away in 2020 and mentioned this record to him. He mentioned he had been trying to make a Moondog album for the past twenty years, and it never worked out. 

This project is heavily inspired by Hal because it required me to put my Hal Willner cap on to figure out who would sing which song. It was like serving as a casting director. You hear a song and must determine who’s best to sing it. I just picked my favorite singers, and they all said yes. I think the singers were drawn in by Kronos’ involvement and how it was similar to a Hal record. 

PG: However, one thing that distinguishes this project and a Hal Willner one is that, generally, all musicians changed from track to track on his albums. You have some consistency on the album with the underlying Ghost Train Orchestra.

BC: You’re right. Hal would have used a different lineup on each piece – wild combinations like Sonny Rollins playing with Nick Cave or Elvis Costello working with a group of people playing Harry Partch’s instruments. We didn’t do that; we have the same band for the whole recording. But I feel that keeping one underlying band throughout adds a little more cohesiveness to the record than you would find on one of Hal’s albums. 

I grew up on Hal’s records and love them all. They are great concept albums. I thought this project would be as well because Moondog wrote so many fun, interesting, and joyous songs we could use with singers. Joan Wasser [AKA Joan As Police Woman] was the first vocalist we brought in years ago. I didn’t even think of bringing in singers until Joan sat in with us back in 2019. She also sat in with us live at our first show at Winter Jazzfest. And she knocked it out of the park. When we heard what Joan could do with the music, we decided to bring in several other singers and make it more like one of Hal’s projects. I’m really happy you noticed that. Hal was such a big inspiration. He had such a great musical mind.

Ghost Train Orchestra’s ‘Songs & Symphoniques: The Music of Moondog’ is now available on Cantaloupe Music. It can be purchased on Bandcamp. You can learn more about the Ghost Train Orchestra on the group’s website. The Orchestra will be joined by the Kronos Quartet, Joan Wasser, Karen Mantler, and another special guest at their album release at Roulette Intermedium on November 18, 2023.