Interview: Kiki & Herb

A chat with Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman.

This Saturday, I’ll be attending the final performance of Kiki & Herb: SLEIGH! at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Kiki & Herb, respectively played by Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman, are a gloriously difficult-to-categorize act that takes the form of two aging lounge performers doing innovative covers of popular songs in between bold and uproarious stage banter. They’ve been performing on and off since 1989, at times headlining Carnegie Hall and their own Broadway show, and I’ve been a diehard fan for the past 15 years. I had a chat with Viv and Kenny over Zoom a few days ago. Below is an edited transcript. Enjoy.

So, the first time I heard Kiki and Herb … I'm sure you get tired of stories like this, but I've booked your time, so you have to deal with mine.

Kenny Mellman:

Fair.

When I was in college, y’all had just broken up. It was 2005.

Justin Vivian Bond:

Thanks for bringing back the good times. Thanks.

KM:

Yeah. Let's get some tissues and start crying. Go on.

No, not like that. I had a dear childhood friend at another college who had just been sent an mp3 of “People Die,” from your first album. I was visiting and my friend played the file. We had no idea what the hell it was. It blew our minds. At the time, we both thought of ourselves as grubby little straight boys, but now, I’m queer and she’s trans.

JVB:

It's probably because of listening to that record.

KM:

It has subliminal messages. We're just indoctrinating people into the creed.

But that's the funny thing. You hit the nail on the head. Kiki and Herb predates me having any queer self awareness. I really stuffed all that stuff down right before puberty because of a lot of bullying. Never really learned how to engage with it. But Kiki and Herb was the one piece of — if you'll forgive the broad term — queer art that, from the first time I heard it, it completely captured my imagination and burrowed itself into my heart. Is that a common story that you hear, of queer people who didn’t find themselves in the “queer community” gravitating toward your music?

KM:

I don't know how many times I've heard somebody who heard us and became queer, like a Disney movie. We walked this really fine line, and ended up in a very particular position, which was that we were playing the queer anarchist stuff in Dumbo but also having an Off-Broadway show. And being subversive on either end, because when we were playing the punk rock shows, we would bring the glitz and glamor. People would be like, "Oh, this is crazy, because they're playing these showbiz characters." We started that way. Then, when we were on the off-Broadway show or playing to more general audiences, it was the other way: it all seems cute and everything, but there's this incredibly subversive underground. And I think that people who don't fit into the queer white community often gravitated towards us because of various reasons.

JVB:

I don't know about people realizing they were queer, although that has—

KM:

It has happened before.

JVB:

It has happened.

KM:

Yeah.

JVB:

But, more often, I would hear people say that they would either bring dates or potential lovers to this show as a litmus test. And if they would bring somebody to the show, and they didn't get it, or didn't like it, or were dismissive, they would know that that person was not going to be part of their coterie, if you will.

I got married last year, and my partner is genderqueer. I tried to introduce her to Kiki and Herb and she didn't quite get it the first couple of times. And then I made her really sit down and listen to “People Die.” 

JVB:

"You listen to this, young lady. Don't get up until you get it."

That was basically it.

KM:

"You're not leaving the room."

I am so not that kind of person, but I was like, "This music means a lot to me. I would love it if you'd just listen to the song all the way through. That's it. If you hate it, that's totally fine. Just listen to the song all the way through." And at the end she had this very powerful reaction to it, and goes, "That was amazing. I don't know that I can ever listen to it again. Really, completely, it's so intense." And she had this line about it that I wanted to run by you … But now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t, because it’s about camp. Is that something you don't like talking about?

JVB:

It depends on the intent. You can tell what people's intentions are behind it. In our career, early—

KM:

It was a slur.

JVB:

Straight cis, or even cis queer critics would talk about the show being camp. That became their way of dismissing everything that we did, and never addressing what it was. Personally, I love the word camp because I think camp is very dangerous. People are threatened by the things that are camp. People are killed because they're camp, because they're so threatening. So I understand the power of camp, but I also know how it's used as this pejorative thing. And when I see that, I get annoyed by it, but I don't have an allergic reaction to the word “camp.” It just depends on the context.

Well, what she said was, "At the heart of camp like this is an absolutely nihilistic grief that the world isn't the way it should be, and the good people will suffer because of it, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, so you might as well address your Chihuahua up as Elvis."

KM:

See, that's brilliant. 

JVB:

I saw the most amazing dog yesterday dressed up in pink sneakers and sweatpants, and jogging. Not sweatpants. Athleisure. Pink. It was incredible. Walking with sneakers on all four feet. It was beautiful.

There's a literal immortality to Kiki and Herb, obviously, that's baked into the whole concept of the characters. I feel like Kiki and Herb are this idea that I can project into the future. Whenever humanity blinks out — and let’s hope that’s a long time from now — Kiki and Herb will be playing the last show.

JVB:

The only things that'll be walking the Earth are us and Joey Arias.

KM:

Yeah. Exactly.

JVB:

We're the only ones. In different corners of the world, obviously.

KM:

Nowhere near each other. I'm scared of Joey to this day.

How has your own aging changed the way you think about these inherently aged characters?

JVB:

Well, I created Kiki when I was 25 so I could speak with authority on certain subjects that I felt would just ring as overly earnest or something when coming from a young person. She gave me the ability to say a lot of stuff that I wanted to say in a way that was amusing and interesting and entertaining. I feel like, personally in my own life, I've come to the point where I can speak with authority without having to hide behind the character. But I was saying to Kenny, when we were getting ready for our photo shoot, it was an interesting experience to think about all those years where all of our photos from the past of Kiki and Herb were supposed to be [fictional] old publicity photos. So we didn't put the wrinkles on for those. We all looked like we just used old photos. “Well, why do we have to have new photos? These are perfectly fine!”

KM:

“No one's going to pay for a new photo shoot!”

JVB:

And now we're doing new photos as old people to look like younger versions of ourselves that we draw lines on to look older on stage. And it's just a bit of a head fuck. 

That's what's great about it. I mean, maybe that's not camp, but it's something. Kiki & Herb has this element of the recursive, of the endless remix, the endless cover, and the endless riff on something.

JVB:

When we first started performing Kiki and Herb in the early '90s, Kiki was in her 60s. I thought that was very old. And so she was born in 1930. So she was 66 in 1996, and 76 in 2006. Now she's 91, but I take-

KM:

Which is perfect, I said, because there are those cabaret women who just keep going into their nineties.

JVB:

Yeah.

KM:

So it's not inconceivable.

JVB:

So in another 10 years, when she's 105 or whatever, we'll see who's still around then.

KM:

Exactly.

I was ripping the out-of-print DVD of your concert film and listening to mp3s of your out-of-print first album and wondering, why is it so hard to get recordings of Kiki and Herb? Or is that a sore subject that we don't want to talk about?

KM:

No, it's not a sore subject. Nobody wanted to pay for another record from us.

JVB:

Nobody wanted it. If someone wanted it and gave us a couple of bucks, we'd have done it.

KM:

Yeah.

JVB:

We made our own CD, in the '99 one [Do You Hear What We Hear?]

KM:

Yeah.

JVB:

And that was in the top...

KM:

It was still on the Other Music... 49 on the top 100 records sold at Other Music.

JVB:

Yeah. Of all time.

KM:

When they closed, it was on their list.

JVB:

Then, we recorded the Carnegie Hall thing [Kiki & Herb Will Die for You], which cost a fortune. So we didn't make any money on that. I mean, we didn't make any money on that stuff. And then afterward, we broke up.

KM:

So why would there be any recordings?

JVB:

So, there could have been more, but...

But why hasn't there been a reissue of Do You Hear What We Hear? 

KM:

I was working on a vinyl reissue of Do You Hear What We Hear? and then COVID happened.

JVB:

You were going to do it last year. But then for some reason, it didn't happen.

KM:

It was the same thing. It was the beginning of the... The vinyl problem started before COVID. I was trying to get everything together, and around March or April, the guy was like, "Well, there's no way it can come out this year." And then COVID really put a nail in it because now production is into 2023 and '24.

Oh, yikes.

JVB:

But we could have done a record. We could have re-released it in time for this, but-

KM:

What's the point?

I’ve long felt honored, on some level, that Kenny will occasionally retweet me when I post my janky SoundCloud uploads of your best out-of-print songs.

KM:

I love it.

But I'm like, "I wish I could be monetizing this for them.”

JVB:

There's no way to monetize it.

KM:

There's no way to monetize it. I'm super happy.

JVB:

If we were touring and we had stuff to put out. But we're not touring. We're just doing these shows.

How are you both doing on your social media addictions these days? 

JVB:

I don't do Twitter at all.

But you do Facebook. I see you do the occasional Facebook post.

JVB:

I do Facebook and Instagram just about every morning because that's how we sold this show, because we sold most of the tickets before BAM got off their butts to even promote it. 

No kidding!

JVB:

“You're sold out. How'd that happen?" Well, because we sent out things to our mailing list.

KM:

And we still have rabid fans.

JVB:

We rode our apps, bitch.

KM:

Exactly.

How did the show come to be in the first place?

JVB:

Jesus looked down from the Heavens.

Sounds plausible to me. You've certainly sung enough about Jesus. I would imagine he'd take an interest in you at this point.

JVB:

When David Binder, the new artistic director at BAM, got his position, I had a meeting with him. I had a couple things that I was interested in doing, including the show I did with Anthony Roth Costanzo, Only an Octave Apart, and another show. And I wanted to recreate Kiki and Herb's 1999 show, Kiki and Herb Live at Flamingo East. I thought that would be fun. And I hadn't even mentioned it to Kenny. But I just was like, "Well, I'll see what David thinks." And in that meeting, I proposed that, and he's like, "I think you should do a Christmas show." And I was like, "Not interested. Don't want to do that." This was for last year. And I was like, "That's not what I proposed, David. I proposed this other thing," which I still think ...

KM:

It was a good idea.

JVB:

... would be a great thing to do and which I would enjoy doing very much. But he said that thing. I was like, "Oh, God, I hate people." And then COVID happened. And I was thinking, "Well, what's going to happen afterward?" And Kiki and Herb have always been a disaster act.

KM:

Fair.

JVB:

And so I thought, "Well, when we come out of this in the fall, it would actually be a great idea, in the context of what had happened in the world, for us to do a Christmas concert after we are all liberated from our homes." And so I thought then that it would be a great idea.

It's all about context.

JVB:

Then Kenny and I talked.

KM:

And then I agreed too, because I don't know if it was my favorite, but a very important show was the Christmas show after 9/11, that December.

Yeah.

KM:

I feel like there's similar vibes going on in the world that Kiki and Herb can help to, if not heal, make worse or something. I feel like there were some healing at that Christmas show, particularly in our community, who were traumatized in a couple ways for 9/11, because I feel like there was a trauma of 9/11 happening. And then also the way that the government and everything was then reacting to it, that Kiki and Herb had a good play in letting people heal a bit without it being ...

JVB:

Cloying.

KM:

Cloying, or “Let's sing 9/11 anthems!” I feel like we're in a similar place now with COVID, having had Trump just work on it for the first part. So I think, I felt good about it being a good year for us to trot these two people out.

JVB:

Even though we don't talk about COVID.

KM:

Which I think is great. What's there to talk about?

JVB:

Is there anything about COVID you think you still need to learn?

KM:

The only line that you needed to say was, "I've been a super spreader for years, ladies and gentlemen." 

The 2001 one, that was the one where Stephin Merritt wrote “Have You Seen It in the Snow,” right? I saw the Magnetic Fields do a concert in late 2019 where he sang it and mentioned that he wrote it for you.

KM:

Yeah. And as a matter of fact, he wrote it for us.

Right, that's what he said, yeah.

KM:

Yeah, no, no. I know.

JVB:

But we still like to repeat that.

KM:

We still like to repeat that because I'm proud of it. He wrote that for us. And when he recorded it, he cut my favorite line.

JVB:

We're cutting it too.

KM:

Which we're cutting also, just because we're not doing the whole song. We are doing that in this show, but there's a turnaround. So he sings the chorus, right? Or we sang the chorus, and then there's this little turnaround, where he goes, "Some want to flatten all of Manhattan / But oh, have you seen it in the snow?"

Yeah.

KM:

And I always thought that was the greatest line in the song. And then of course, Stephin cut it out of his own version.

JVB:

Because it doesn't quite fit.

KM:

Well, it doesn't quite fit. But at the time, it was very moving.

And then, of course, there's the missing verse of “The Heroin Medley.”

KM:

One second. [KM and JVB converse with someone off-camera.] We just threw the artistic director out of the rehearsal.

Oh! I mean, I can let you go, if you need!

KM:

No, no, no.

JVB:

We'd much rather talk about ourselves than to someone.

KM:

Exactly. What else do you want to know about us?

How did you meet Stephin Merritt?

KM:

Fangirl. I was a total fangirl. I would go to every... I saw [the Magnetic Fields] when Claudia [Gonson] was still a drummer.

Oh, wow.

KM:

I was a huge fan. And Claudia came up to me in Meow Mix one day and was like, "I don't know if you know who I am." And I'm like, "I know exactly who you are, I love you," whatever. And I ended up recording some piano for the 6ths album, and then we all just became friends. Stephin would go to Jackie 60. I don't know if you ... This is probably before your time in New York, but it was the big—

JVB:

Yeah, before your time.

KM:

Before your time. It was an amazing club in the meatpacking district. So, Stephin, he and I got along because I was, at the time, always sad about some fucking evil ex-boyfriend, and he was just generally sad anyway. And then he's always been in our orbit.

JVB:

But I never talked to him because he was too much of a sad sack.

KM:

Yeah. Sardonic.

JVB:

Yeah. I talk to him now though sometimes.

KM:

There you go. 

Do you feel like Kiki and Herb has reached a stable status of, "We'll bring Kiki and her back when we feel like it?" Or is there going to be another time when you go, "You know what, we're signing off forever”?

JVB:

As long as I'm a homeowner, there's a chance there's going to be a Kiki and Herb reunion.

KM:

Gotta get new windows put in.

JVB:

The house, she needs to get fixed.

KM:

Look, when we were able to mostly sell out four shows just by people who follow the two of us on social media. It's not like we're ever going to go back on the road and turn this into our career again. But it felt very good to know that if we wanted to do another show at some point, we would have an audience that would come.

Yes you do.

KM:

And that we don't have to do any work to make that really happen.

JVB:

We're working very hard.

KM:

On the show, but not having to go, and trot out whatever.

JVB:

Well, it's good every few years to get a couple of new fans to back up the ones that are dying of old age.

KM:

Yep.

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