Front man of the Murderdolls, columnist for Metal Hammer, artist, father, husband and inventor of "ghoulade", Wednesday 13 is certainly a man with plenty of ambition and long career ahead of him. Finding fame with the Murderdolls in 2002, Wednesday's face became familiar to music fans across the country; love it or hate it, any band featuring Joey Jordison with Marilyn Manson in the first single is going to be huge. The Murderdolls provided each band member with a stepping stone to greater thing, with each member now taking part in other bands or music related careers, but having mingled amongst the fans waiting outside in the bitter cold for Wednesday's solo project, the majority want to know if we can expect a second album from the dynamic, tongue in cheek quintet.
"There's no structured time, nobody knows when we're doing it" Wednesday says, "but yes, we've just got to find a time when everybody can do it".
At least that's sorted then. The first thing I've noticed about this front man though, even while he speaks, is how completely and utterly different he is in a backstage area, to how is he portrayed by the media. He's a small guy, wearing tight blue jeans, regulatory black t-shirt slashed with a band logo and a black cow boy hat. This hat, it turns out, is the wonder of many a fan state side and was originally red and from a breakfast diner/antiques shop somewhere in the states. Strangely enough, minus the makeup Wednesday is a normal looking guy, who fits into the crowd you usually see wandering around these parts, but once the white face paint and black eyeliner are slapped on, Wednesday turns from well spoken interviewee to a snarling, guitar playing singer that can work a crowd into a frenzy over the simplest KFC bucket.
After swapping makeup tales we move back onto the topic of Murderdolls and musical influences of Wednesday's. As Wednesday himself says, his main influence visually and musically came from the likes of Alice Cooper and Rob Zombie, who he first started listening to in his early teens; but the glam scene of the late 80s and early 90s are what inspires the stage set up for the recent shows. At a Wednesday 13 show you'll either be enthralled by the sight that greets you on stage, or it'll all seem like some horrible nightmare. Plastic heads piled one on top of the other line the singers microphone stand, while futuristic tubes (vacuum tubes we expect) coil around the stands of the rest of the band as a grotesquely grinning clown sits infront of the bass drum, reminding each and every member of the audience just why they hated the circus so much as a child. Clearly, with a bigger stage, Wednesday 13 could run riot with all manner of gothic gismos and toys from childrens nightmares, but even on the smaller stage being used this evening Wednesday has gone all out.
A conversation with Wednesday is never dull, you can talk about his favourite cakes (chocolate cake with yellow inside or the rainbow flake cakes that his mother makes) or you can move the topic onto his drawing hobbies and how Family Guy is a really great cartoon, how he identifies with Beetlejuice for being "stupid" and would like to meet movie directors such as Tim Burton and Sylvester Stylone, but one topic that's particually interesting to myself, and to some of the hardcore kids outside is about Wednesday's book "Thirteen Dead Kids" which in short, is little poems and drawings all about death.
"I basically finished it and then went back and looked at it and I wasn't completely happy with it so I'm not saying I'm done with it yet" Wednesday says, continuing then to elaborate on what a perfectionist he is, and how he won't ever release something to the public that he's not completely happy with. This must be the explanation behind why Wednesday is so good at everything he does, musically and otherwise. The book is "like Dr Seuss in a really morbid kind of way" and apparently will be released eventually, but not until it is something Wednesday feels is worth while fans buying and will further his career in someway; this guy isn't into half arsed creations made purely to get a bit more cash from fans, thank god.
Rumours on the street might tell you that Wednesday 13 isn't a drinker, or a drug taker, but ask Wednesday about the parties he attends and throws at his house and it's clear you're far wrong. Take Halloween this year for example, Wednesday threw a house party on October 30th for friends and family, and by the middle of the evening the battle was on to see who could get the highest score on a policeman's breatiliser, a knife yielding lunatic had slashed said police officer's tyres and resultantly been beaten up with a flash light and anyone drinking Wednesday's own green cocktail concoction "Ghoulade" was on the straight and narrow path to alcohol poisoning. This may seem like a dull evening to some, but as the festivities continued back yard wrestling began to take place on a trampoline and Wednesday changed from Sister Wednesday to Monkey Wednesday at some point in the wee hours. Admittedly, this isn't the kind of thing Wednesday gets up to all the time, and he will say he doesn't drink a lot primarily because it will mess up his voice and secondly he wishes he could be a man and drink a beer, but can't, and funding a daily binge on spirits isn't cheap as many of us know.
And so, as Wednesday takes to the stage this evening infront of a crazy crowd of enthusiastic fans, he puts on a show to be remember. With his album coming out in the next few weeks only greater things can be expected from this man, and not all of them will involve Joey Jordison or music. Wednesday 13's got all his bases covered and he's slowly but surely making a name for himself, deservedly receiving an overwhelming reception from his fans and followers. Definitely a man -and a band- to look out for in the future.