David Byrne Tells Us about His Stay in Louisville

Former Talking Head, Powerpoint god, and all around artsy fartsy awesome guy, David Byrne played the Louisville Palace on the 21st and, evidently, got to spend some time around town.  So, if you saw a guy who looks vaguely like a more more eccentric stylish Malcom McDowell that was probably David Byrne.  On his recent tour, Byrne has been posting a pretty damn rivetting journal on his website here’s what he had to say about our fair city:

10.20.2008: Louisville

We’re staying at 21c, a combo museum and hotel here in downtown Louisville. The ground and lower floors are given over to curated shows of contemporary art, much of it from the collection of the owner, Steve Wilson and his wife.

I was given Wilson’s contact by Stefan Sagmeister, who designed the package for the various physical manifestations of my current album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, as well as many of my past CDs. My palatial room (for which I was generously comped) features a whole wall of photos of Thai Ladyboys (sex changes), a series of photos of a woman undressing in front of a variety of men, and a muscular Chinese man in his underpants holding up the top of the picture frame. I guess some of these pieces were deemed not quite appropriate for the lobby.

(That’s not Kurt, by the way)

Well, I wasn’t going to make much use of this luxurious apartment all by myself, so I invited all the band and crew to stop by for mint juleps after they had their dinners. Jenni volunteered Steven to bartend, and with the huge patio there was plenty of room for all of us plus local musician/actor Will Oldham and some of his pals. It’s not really his kind of scene, I imagine, this hotel, but it was nice to meet.

During the day a few of us biked to the massive Cave Hill cemetery, which is so big it has a lake with a fountain, ducks and swans. Colonel Sanders is buried there, but we missed his gravesite. We moved on, through a neighborhood of large houses, to nearby Cherokee Park, “built” by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed Central Park and quite a few other urban parks, and we stopped for some homemade applesauce at a picnic table.

Apparently, Elizabeth found happiness at our picnic table.

Others biked in the opposite direction and came across blocks of burnt out buildings.

Person David Byrne

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