L’Orchestre d’Hommes-Orchestres (LODHO) is a band of one-man bands: six of them, to be precise. And the half-band, half-theatre troupe (made up of Québec City natives) are taking a shot at Tom Waits on their current tour.
“We’re six people working together around the notion of being a one-man band, which to us means being able to do a lot of things a little bit,” says LODHO member Danya Ortmann. “We try to avoid the standard notions of virtuosity and do it our own way, with offbeat solutions.”
LODHO performs la musique qui se voit, which translates to “music that has to be seen.” For their live shows, they pile on the instruments: guitars, tambourines, bells, jugs, tea cups, suitcases, balloons, wooden spoons…
Ortmann says for an object to make the cut, it has to sound good, look good, or both. She says it also has to have a visual resonance so the audience can see what’s going on.
“We often call each song a picture,” she says. “For example, Tom Waits opens up our imaginary books of American folklore, so we use a lot of old household or garage items. The two girls will be drinking tea and making music with the tea cups, using old fans and old dusters, and it looks like an antique shop.”
Ortmann insists that this show isn’t a Tom Waits tribute show, instead saying it “tries to take the essence of his propositions or his world and then make it our own.” According to Ortmann, fans often come ready to dislike the show because Tom Waits is “too great” to cover.
But, by the end of the show, fans “are usually very, very happy, and people who do not know Tom Waits go and buy his CDs afterwards,” she says. “It makes them curious to find out who he is.”
The stage is so packed, with six performers and nearly 100 objects and instruments, that it’s impossible to take everything in. Ortmann explains that everyone experiences the show differently.
“There are many, many, many things going on at once. We try to leave everything open so that everyone who comes and sees the show has to read it with his own experience,” she says. “A lot of the time, people come and see us after the show and have 10 different stories of what the show meant for them, and we still hear new ones we’ve never thought of.”
L’Orchestre d’Hommes-Orchestres performs Tom Waits
Sunday, March 25, 8 pm
Metro Studio, $27-$35
intrepidtheatre.com