Tav Falco will be at his old stomping ground, Lafayette’s Music Room, but he won’t be stomping. He’ll be dancing. And singing.
Indeed, Falco and his band Panther Burns, who appeared in 2018 at Lafayette’s Music Room, will return September 8th to promote their EP, Club Car Zodiac.
“I am going to sing and dance and celebrate like an Aztec sun worshiper,” Falco says.
On previous tours, Falco dealt with “incendiary political issues.” He performed songs, including “Doomsday Baby,” and “lynching ballads,” including “Strange Fruit.”
But now Falco wants to “sing and dance together and join arm in arm in what rock-and-roll is and what ballroom is and what tango is all about. And this is what we’re going to do on stage at Lafayette’s.”
You name it, Falco, who now lives just south of Bangkok on Wong Amat Beach, has done it. He’s also a photographer, filmmaker, actor, and author.
Panther Burns, which he began with the late Alex Chilton, was “named after the legendary plantation off Highway 61 just north of Greenville, Mississippi.” Falco describes Panther Burns music as “flowery, avant/retro, psychedelic ballroom, romance. It crosses genres of blues, rock-and-roll, rhythm and blues, tango, samba, and balladry.”
“While mansions are burning in the background, all of the Southern themes that we extol — brother against brother, unrequited love — we take up where Scarlett O’Hara says as her mansion, Tara, was up in flames. She said, ‘Well, tomorrow is another day.’”
Mario Monterroso, a guitarist/singer/songwriter whom Falco has worked with since 2014, will be the opener at Lafayette’s.
“Mario was so excited about Memphis after the Command Performance tour that had ‘Memphis Ramble’ on it — a song we worked on for quite a while — that he said, ‘Tav, I want to live in Memphis.’”
Monterroso now has “become a real presence on the Memphis music scene.”
Those who follow Falco on social media have seen videos of him dancing the tango. “I’ve been dancing for a while and I’m still learning.” Tango is “a relationship with a partner. It’s something you cultivate.” It’s “about passion. It’s about daggers.”
Falco performed his tango song, “Drop Your Mask,” in Memphis at his first Panther Burns show at a cotton loft at 96 South Front Street. “I was always fascinated with the music that I’d heard. And I sang a tango in 1979 to a recording of a Xavier Cugat tango on my first Panther Burns show.”
But, he says, “I didn’t start dancing tango until I came over to Europe in ’92. That’s when I met tango dancers in Vienna. I started learning with Argentine masters and I’m still learning.”
Tango is also featured on Club Car Zodiac. “I wrote ‘Tango Primavera’ about my experiences performing with pianist Mirkaccio Dettori in the cabaret in Rome. I’ve adopted a dancing cane and a matelot.”
A matelot is the “flat straw hat” popularized by gondoliers and Maurice Chevalier. “I developed this character, ‘L’Ultimo Gigolo.’ I’m doing songs and dancing with that in a cabaret in Rome. After this tour, I’m going back to Rome for another short run of appearances.”
Falco isn’t waiting until tomorrow to think about his next move. “I want to come back to Memphis and collaborate with Mario Monterroso on a theater cabaret performance that, actually, we want to premiere at Theatre Memphis. That is our goal, and the objective is a creation of our album, Cabaret of Daggers. It’s going to be a musical theater production.
This will be something he’s never done before. “I’m going to sing and dance. I’m going to have a shadow dancing partner with me, a female partner. I have some pretty good ideas for this and we have the content and the material.”
Anything else Falco hasn’t done? “I think I’m onto what I want to be doing, other than the diversion of windsurfing that I see windsurfers doing from my balcony. I would like to learn how to windsurf over ocean waves.”
Tav Falco’s Panther Burns at 7 p.m. September 8th at Lafayette’s Music Room at 2119 Madison Avenue. Tickets: $15-$25. (901) 207-5097