Bio: from Summersville Music Zine interview, August 2006
Tazz Toni: I was born in Beckley, WV. I grew up in a showbiz family you could say. My momma was a haberdasher of coonskin products and a bass player in what they call a "jug band" down south, and my old man was the best rodeo clown on the southern circuit, so we were on the road a lot. My little brother and I would dance and just sort of join right in there. We kept a pet monkey named "Jock" on the tour van up until an incident in Mississippi that I would rather forget, then we got a '71 Impala, gold finish, plenty of room for hijinx. Overall it was a happy childhood. Once in Canada I accidentally swallowed a Canadian dollar bill, and when we crossed the border into the US, we stopped at a rest area for a diaper changing and my mom found three quarters, a dime and three pennies in US currency in there. Later in life something similar, but less impressive happened in Mexico as well.
Since growing up I have been a professional athlete in two different sports, a bartender and a barfly, a disoriented delivery driver, an aspiring writer, a stunt man, a frustrated tech support agent, a homeless coffee shop troubadour and leader of a gang of nomadic winos. Once during hard times I took a job as a female impersonator and brought all the boys to the yard. I've been a vegetarian mystic health freak on the verge of being a full-fledged psychic and I have enjoyed a nice warm ass-pocket-full of whiskey for breakfast. I've brawled with a world champion female boxer in an old man's driveway and early one morning helped Vanilla Ice try to recollect how many strippers bitch-slapped him the night before, a few days before he became famous, and minutes before overdosing on what appeared to be damp Ajax.
In the early nineties I won several demolition derbies. Then I had my drivers license revoked in 3 different states but kept on truckin. It's like when you get really baked and ride the bumper cars at the fair, and when you get in your own real car, say like when your leaving and still a little tweaked, you might drive a little more aggressively and you have to constantly remind yourself that the rules are different on the state highway. I've performed under many aliases such as Eastside Slim, Westside Slim, East Detroit Slim, West Detroit Slim, Blind Lemon Slim, Slim Blind Lemon, Blind Slim Lemon, Slim Lemon Goldstein, Slim Pickens, and pookiebear. Children love me.
The music that I play is far more interesting though. The band I play in, its funk, on the one, tribal, deep rhythm that will make everyone in the room move, even if they dont want to. Those grooves are so deep the most uptight lawyers and cowboy truckers nod their head and wiggle in their seat. And the young ladies wag their tails and play and sway in time to our catchy little tunes. As far as a "solo artist" goes, I just record music for my own enjoyment and/or amusement and throw bits and pieces out here and there. I may do a CD someday soon though.
