Tulsa weird

Local show booker makes space for the strange

Avant-garde music is alive and well in Tulsa, where a vibrant cohort of restless local artists thrive on experimenting and pushing boundaries. The amount of left-of-center musical acts defies the relatively small size of the city, according to booking agent Byron John Barcus. 

“It’s not a big town, but people are creating very original music that’s hard to classify,” he said. “There’s something about this town that creates unique, good, challenging art. I think it’s important to put that in front of people.”

Barcus started Weird Animal Booking and Recording to give these unique artists an opportunity to share their music with an audience that will appreciate it. He discovered this can be a difficult task when he played in his own ‘weird animal’ band, Ring Down. 

“I was trying to book other acts that were similar for shows … the first question from the venue owners was always, ‘What genre do they fall into?’ and I was like ‘Boy, they don’t.’ And I thought, well they’re kind of weird animals—and there was a meme going around of weird animals, like a rooster combined with a rhinoceros or some such and I thought, well that’s about right.”

Weird Animal Booking presents another show Saturday, Sept. 21 at Whitty Books with Pluto Rouge, Apt-get, Nathan Alexander Pape, Infinite Crustacean and Without Adjectives. 

“I’ve worked with Without Adjectives … the expression, the intensity of their work. That’s who I’m looking for: that expression, that intensity, that artistry,” Barcus said.

That expression is central to Without Adjectives’ members Emma Giles and Samantha O’Hara. They don’t tune their instruments. They bang on kegs or metal pots. They scream with “queer rage.” It’s always a surprise. 

“Our performances are very cathartic,” Giles said. “We get to put our souls out there, be seen and heard. This isn’t music and this isn’t art. This is just us, expressing ourselves in the moment.” 

Barcus arranging shows and giving artists a space to express themselves and perform means the world to the artists who would have a hard time doing so on 
their own.

“Byron has been our number one patron, books most of our shows, and encouraged us to perform live in the first place,” Giles said. “We think that Byron is doing some really important work in Tulsa. There is a growing and vibrant avant-garde scene here and Byron is doing so much to help that scene grow.”

Barcus doesn’t make much money from these shows. He does it out of love for the artists and their art.

“I get the enjoyment of seeing exactly the kind of show that I would like to go to, and I just don’t think I would see it otherwise,” he said. “I get to see people enjoy themselves. I get to try to help create something in my community that I think enriches people’s lives, that adds something to the culture and presents them with something hopefully that’s inspiring.” 

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Avant Garde: Jazz, Noise Art, Guitar 
Saturday, Sept. 21, 6–11 p.m.
Whitty Books, 2407 E. Admiral Blvd. 
$5 suggested donation