New Orleans’ Quintron and Miss Pussycat at Promises

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A huge thunderstorm in Milwaukee that halted last fall’s Bay View Bash couldn’t stop Quintron and Miss Pussycat from performing in Milwaukee that night. The party was just moved to Promises, where the New Orleans group is returning Saturday night.

Quintron says there is a good connection between Promises, co-owned by Joey “Turbo” Peterson and Casey Hughes, and a number of New Orleans people, including himself.

“We know Joey really well,” he says, “and the Platinum Boys made one of my favorite rock‘n’roll records of all time. I love that place and I love Milwaukee. Promises, everything about it feels like home for us.”

The summer tour that brings Quintron and Miss Pussycat, and their live puppet and organ-led party jam, to Milwaukee is the group’s longest post-pandemic, taking them through 18 dates in the South, Southwest, Northwest and Midwest. Quintron says they frequently had even lengthier tours before COVID hit, but he admits the break from the road it caused was a good thing—at least for the first year.

Fixing and Inventing

“It allowed us to step off the hamster wheel of touring,” he says. “I stopped playing and writing music. I just couldn’t fathom it without an audience. I just wasn’t motivated to do it, so I dove really hard into repairing other people’s gear. 

“I opened up an electronics shop out of my house. I did repairs, because everyone else was in kind of the same boat. They had a little bit more money. They weren’t going to bars and restaurants. Maybe I should fix that old weird synthesizer that’s been sitting around forever or get my tape decks working again. People dug into their record collections and had record players that needed repair.”

Quintron, who has had a long fascination with making, fixing and even creating instruments like Drum Buddy and the Weather Warlock, also focused on problem-solving and researching old gear. “I got to see some really cool stuff like old Indian tabla analog drum machines and bizarre tape recorder speak-and-spell for the blind gear from the ‘70s,” he says.

He also created a non-musical instrument during this time: the Bath Buddy (now sold out), which helps to conserve water, by letting you know when your bath is ready. He even created a fun commercial for his invention.

Back to the Organ

But now Quintron says he has left that part of his brain behind and is back obsessing over music.

“Now all I want to do is play music; all is want to do is stand in front of the organ and write and record and do weird sound collage stuff, and writing songs for Q & P. It comes in waves, in different waves.”

Most recently, Quintron released As Goes Our Moon (total eclipse 2024), a 14-minute sound collage created from recordings from the Weather Warlock, which detects weather elements such as moisture, sunlight, temperature and barometric pressure to modulate an F major chordal drone, offering “weather for the blind.”

Focusing on Singles

Quintron and Miss Pussycat’s last album, Goblin Alert, their first in nine years, came out on Goner Records in 2020. They have no solid plans for their next one, he says. He’s more likely to just release singles for the time being, as he and other artists try to figure out again the best way to release music, Quintron says, even though he still loves albums.

“I love an artist to tell me I want you to listen to these pieces of music in this order and then flip it on to that side and listen to it,” he says. “Whatever it is, if it’s visuals, this is your journey. I still think people appreciate and love that way of presenting music.”

Quintron and Miss Pussycat will be joined by drummer Sam Yoger, who plays on a homemade kit made from an old beer cooler featuring a “tiny little snare.” “He fits in real good,” Quintron says.

After their tour ends, Quintron and Miss Pussycat will adopt their show to perform at the Puppet Paradise Convention in Asheville, N.C, featuring renowned puppeteers from around the U.S. 

Quintron & Miss Pussycat play Saturday, June 22 at Promises, 538 W. National Ave.