Sold-Out Silence: How Clown Town Honors Eaten By Clowns by Doing Absolutely Nothing

Clown Town has been taking the Phoenix area by storm and it’s all because of the dedication that they have had toward honoring their tribute.

When you are the premier tribute band in the United States, dedicated to the greatest rock band to have never played live, you really have to have your act together. When Clown Town decided to learn the music of Eaten By Clowns, they knew it would come with a price, never playing live.

“My girlfriend left me because she didn’t even believe that I was in a band,” commented bassist Mortimer Needlemeir. “She’d constantly say, ‘How come I’ve never seen you play?'”

“Same with me, except that I had to break up with her,” says singer Waldo Smoot. “She’d always act like I was just trying to con her into sleeping with me or trying to get her to buy me stuff. She didn’t understand that it was about the music. Then when she claimed that singing in the shower didn’t count as a gig, I knew it was over.”

The band explained that they frequently put up fliers advertising places that they aren’t playing, but that it has mostly led to a lot of confusion. Bar owners have reached out angrily demanding that the band stop using their name, so they’ve been left with very few places in town to not play. They talked about the challenges of getting your name out there in a town where it’s too hot to actually go outside, so the feeling is that most of their fliers never get seen anyway. And the disappointing thing seems to be that when the flier does get seen, it’s usually just that angry bar owner banning them from not playing another place. It’s quite a dilemma for a band struggling to get their name out there.

“We really rely a lot on social media and word of mouth,” guitar player Bong Waters explained. “We’re constantly telling people about how great we are.”

“There really is no better Eaten By Clowns tribute band out there,” explained drummer 1,2,3,6. “We’re out here not playing seven days a week. Putting in that time.”

The band got very defensive when I asked about what time they could possibly be putting in, if they’re a tribute band that doesn’t play live. They claimed that I was just like every other reporter that had given them a bad review for not playing live. They claimed that I didn’t understand their level of dedication to their tribute, and I’ll admit that I didn’t. I explained that anyone could claim to be a tribute band that never plays, because your only proof was to do nothing. That the only example of their work would be…nothing. They stared at me for an uncomfortably long time while they puzzled out what I was trying to say. It was Bong Waters who gave up first and said, “Well, you just don’t get it, man. We’re like ahead of our time and you’re just too stupid to see it.”

Explaining how that didn’t make any sense only left me facing more blank stares. I eventually snuck away when they were distracted by a dog that wandered up, but I left wondering, could they actually play? Did they have band practices at least? These questions burned within me and kept me awake for several nights before I worked up the nerve to call singer Waldo Smoot and ask him. And the response I got was typical of what I had experienced from Clown Town. Waldo Smoot claimed that Eaten By Clowns didn’t have band practice, so neither did they. That was the level of their dedication. When I pointed out that not having band practice just fed into their detractors’ claims that they couldn’t actually play the songs or even possibly their instruments, the response was typical. Waldo claimed that the band had nothing to prove and that the mere existence of their Facebook and Instagram pages proved that I was wrong about them. My pointing out that both accounts consisted of a hand-drawn logo and a photoshopped image of each band member’s face over an anonymous band had no effect on his defense.

If you believe their claim, Clown Town may be the greatest tribute band to have never played, but the world will never know. But whenever you hear silence, think of Clown Town, and imagine what could be. Is the world missing out, or has it been thankfully spared the agony of another tribute band? I like to think the latter.