Discussed: touring, homelessness, simulated seizures, being on alert, fighting on stage, California, New Mexico, Michigan, Albuquerque, shock and confusion, rumor, rap, African-American music, videography, public access TV, family, heartache, pain, loss, prayer, etc.
What began as a casual interview with a member of a now-defunct noise-rap group took an obsessive turn. The project grew and grew. I found myself with a rhetorical FBI wall covered in post-it notes that said things like “Bubblegum Shitface.”
Occasional Detroit was haunting me day and night.
I pitched the OD story unsuccessfully to several experimental music magazines and websites. The pitch went like this:
“I’m working on a piece that I hope you’ll consider for [PUBLICATION NAME]. It’s focused on enigmatic early noise-rappers OCCASIONAL DETROIT.
Founding member Towondo Clayborn died of cancer in 2021. The article began as an interview with surviving member Demetrisa (“Demeat”) Anderson, intended for my own publication BAITED AREA. It has since evolved into an oral history of the nomadic, shapeshifting band. OD was a visionary outsider rap project that blurred life and performance. They emerged alongside fellow Michigan natives Wolf Eyes and hustled their way through a predominately white experimental scene. The OD saga, told through the anecdotes and reflections of fellow musicians and peers, involves periods of homelessness, puzzling performances, conflict both real and staged, poverty, alienation, live television, rumors of the paranormal, etc. It’s a kaleidoscopic snapshot of the American underground of the 2000s.
OD preceded acts like Death Grips and Babyfather by at least a decade. Unfortunately, their fascinating history has been all but buried.
I’ve done a lot of interviewing, and I’d love to continue with this project in a way that could reach a bigger audience than my own.”
I received no responses. Still, I pressed on, combing near- dead Myspace pages for artifacts and calling strangers in different time zones, only half-aware that I was leaning into the trope of an obsessive detective.
Before I continue, a confession: Though they were on my radar, I never saw Occasional Detroit perform. They would play in neighboring cities and I’d hear about the shows. Then one day I didn’t hear anything. For this reason, I am either uniquely qualified, or particularly unqualified, to compile an oral history on the group.
I forget what caused the OD name to resurface initially; it had been at least a decade since I’d heard or thought much about them. This past year, Bernie Bleak wrote a lengthy blog piece about the group and their role as early precursors to contemporary noise rap. I don’t think his piece was the catalyst for this one, but it certainly fueled the flames. Once I started looking around, I couldn’t stop. Each door led to another door.
OD was an evolving entity. For roughly 25 years, Towondo, aka Beyababa, was its only consistent member. Nearly half of that time also included his romantic and artistic partner Demetrisa Anderson (known also as “Demeat,” and often pronounced “Demetrius.”) I spoke with Demeat, and with Spence Bryant, the group’s co-founder. As far as I can tell, other members and associates included: Ethan, Frenchie, Dawaun, Mike “Imito” (who may be Duwaun), Cionte Eu- banks, Elyse Perez, J-Dub, “Uncle Crap,” Dirty Tony. Either I couldn’t find contacts for these collaborators, or my messages sat unread in their inboxes. For the most part, not even their own former bandmates knew where they were.
There are other characters who are conspicuously absent from this narrative, though not for my lack of trying. Several members of Wolf Eyes, who may have brought OD on their first tour, said their memories of the era were foggy. Other past co-conspirators remembered traveling with the group but didn’t wish to go on the record; they were concerned with Towondo’s conduct and didn’t wish to find themselves digging up old dirt or speaking ill of the dead. I heard several vague allegations of abuse, manipulation, and cult-like behavior. The OD narrative is complicated, to say the least.
Many friends and friends-of-friends offered to dig up old photographs of the band, but most couldn’t find them. The images had disappeared in burnt up storage containers and onto scuffed CD-Rs covered in cat hair. Much of what does remain has a vague, blurry quality, like a photo of a ghost.
My curiosity about Occasional Detroit will likely continue as compulsions tend to. It’s possible that more research will follow. For now, I’m putting this here, knowing full-well that it’s likely to fall through the cracks like the rest of OD’s long and storied existence. Consider it part of my own ongoing battle against finality and posterity. I hope that Towondo, and the others, would approve.
[Above photo: Demeat and Towondo. San Francisco, 2008. Photo by James Decker.]
“The Best in Abstrakt Entertainment”
James Decker — Resipiscent Records: The whole world should still be apologizing for OD being criminally obscure.
Raven Chacon: You’d see them one night and it’d be fucking amazing. You’d see them another night, it’d be the worst set you’d ever seen, man!
John Chiaverina — formerly Juiceboxxx: This was a group that was truly improvising, and theatrical. To this day, I’m not necessarily sure how to classify it. They were a singular art project.
Autumn Chacon — Channel 27, Albuquerque: It was sort of this wind that blew through. One day there was this band here: Occasional Detroit. And then one day they were gone.
Rat Bastard: They made sure you paid attention to them.
Todd Lynne — Cephia’s Treat Records: Um, yeah... I got a few OD stories from when they “accidentally” stayed with me and my girlfriend for 3 weeks in our little apartment...
Sam Consiglio — Stallone the Reducer: I have memories of them, but a lot of them are memories of memories: Dawaun doing a backflip off the stage while wearing a Jason mask at the Green Room, Frenchie singing R&B over insane non-sequitur beats. They fit into the Ypsilanti/Detroit noise/punk world in a totally natural way in those days. Everything undefined. All for the fun and weirdness of it.
Origins
Spence Bryant, co-founder: From what I can remember, it was like 94 or 95. It was after we graduated high school and Towondo had just gotten back from the Marines. We started to get together and work out some stuff musically. It just took off from there. My late father had a large enough garage where we could store whatever instrumentation we came across, and we could practice there. It was a duo – me on bass guitar and him on lead guitar. We shared the same amp for the first couple of months, and the same effects pedal.
It took a few months, but by that winter I managed to procure an old Roland 909 or 626. That drum machine was eventually borrowed for a few years by Nate Young from Wolf Eyes. He modified it a little bit. I ended up losing it years later, but that was the first rhythm we got. It was still me and Towondo, but it would be me and him on guitar, bass, and drum machine – the Steve Albini, Big Black setup.
Towondo was always out there, thinking out of the box, but referencing classic stuff, like a cool movie, or, “Let’s do some Sun Ra with a little bit of 2 Live Crew. Let’s mash stuff up.” I remember being into Black Sabbath after high school, and he was ripping heavy off of Tommy Iommi, and obviously Hendrix.
I started hanging out with Nate Young, and he eventually moved into the same house as me. It was Nate, Aaron Dilloway, Brad Hills, and my other friend Wade. Nowa- days all of those people own record shops, so there were these record dudes talking music and listening to various types of music all day. OD was inspired by that scene, as well as the music that those guys made.
[At the time] OD was mostly instrumental, but there were some vocals. Not many. I wasn’t really a vocalist at the time. Towondo was getting the feel for vocals, but it was more spontaneous, almost like spoken word, free-form.
Aaron Dilloway: I think the first time I saw them was at the Green Room in Ypsilanti. That was Towondo solo, and it was drum machine and keyboards and guitar. It was probably 97. What did they call it? Abstract entertainment, or it was, the best in abstract entertainment. And they were pretty fucking abstract! I know he loved Frank Zappa. We were introduced to them through Spence, my roommate at the time.
They were a trio most of the times I saw them [after that]. It was Towondo, his cousin Dawaun, and Frenchie. I don’t know where Frenchie went, but they were a couple, Towondo and Frenchie. They split up, and I’m not sure where she ended up. She was amazing; she was a really good rapper. They were so weird. [Laughs]
Jason Willett — True Vine Records: They had some kind of magic going on. Towondo had gear on the floor–he didn’t have a table or a stand. He was setting off beats and then playing some lines on a keyboard at times. The equipment didn’t sound slick, it sounded like cheaper equipment, and maybe factory settings, some cheesy factory effects, which normally could’ve been less of an appeal. But for some reason OD made it more of an appeal. I wouldn’t want to hear it any other way. What they did with those kinds of sounds was real special. It was a very, very different kind of musical psychology going on.
The whole gig felt kind of haunted for me. It was very ghostly. There were two people playing besides Towondo. One was another guy – I didn’t see him at the second show. And there was a woman I also didn’t see at the second show. I’m pretty sure that her name was Cherry. [Note–It was probably Frenchie.] She was quite a presence. She at one point got behind a mic, and her body was just moving very fast in time. It wasn’t like a dance, it was more like this pulsating, this fast shaking. Her whole body just sort of jerking, and she was staring intensely forward into the audience. I couldn’t understand anything she was saying, but she was kind of whispering. It sounded incredible. The beat, her body movement, her mysterious whispered vocals – that was definitely a happening point of the set.
We had these big curtains behind the stage, and back there was an area where certain bands would rehearse. More than one musician claimed that it was haunted back there. The other guy in OD disappeared back into that area for probably ten minutes with a wireless mic. I could hear his voice in the beginning a little bit, but couldn't see him. Then I didn’t hear his voice at all and I kind of forgot about him. Later he emerged from the curtains, and Cherry and Towondo looked at him intensely. He fell to the floor, on his back. Towondo grabbed a clamp light, turned it on, and started putting it in his face like an interrogation. Towondo and Cherry were both interrogating with this light in his face and he, while still on his back, went into complete hysterics. He started screaming this high pitched scream over and over, having a full on freak-out. They were calmly standing over him, pushing this light into his face while he was flipping out. That was incredible, and I don’t think it was an act.
I can’t prove that there are ghosts, but there were reports. I think that OD were very in tune with invisible energies, and that was definitely a big part of what made that set incredible.
Dave Public: The first time I saw them absolutely blew my mind. It was a deranged mix of DHR style digital hardcore and lo-fi Outkast. The next time I saw them was much more disjointed and off, but they just...kept...playing. People eventually started filtering out, and at some point it became clear that they were not going to stop until everyone had left. It just kept going and going and going, and then the members were getting exhausted and maybe second guessing what they were doing. One of them laid down on a bench but kept doing vocals. They didn’t stop and eventually the room cleared out and I imagine they ended their set. [Laughs]
Carly Ptak — Tarantula Hill, Nautical Almanac: I remember OD from around 2001. That was when we [Nautical Almanac] were moving from Chicago to Baltimore, and I remember this New Year’s party at Olson’s house – John Olson from Wolf Eyes. I’ve only done cocaine twice in my life, and this New Year’s party was one of the times. [Laughs] OD played this set with this guy Michael [Note – probably Dawaun, or Imito, who may be the same person]. The thing I remember the most was the guy Michael dangling the microphone down the drain hole in the basement and then – I don’t know if you’d call it singing, but – making vocal sounds down the hole with the mic dangling. It made this whole wild thing happen.
Aaron Dilloway: They played a show in John Olson’s basement, and that was the first time I remember seeing Dawaun. He was fucking incredible. He didn’t have a mic, so he just started yelling everything, and there was one point where he started yell- ing into the drain on the floor. That was exciting. [Laughs] They were very theatrical – seemed like real improv.
James Decker: That’s how they were offstage, too. It was constantly like that. With Dirty Tony, too. You just weren’t sure if you were being fucked with. Dirty Tony gave me recordings, then he wanted them back and was threatening to sue me. I was like, I’ll give you your shit back. Here, it’s in the mail. He’s like, no, no, no, you’re gonna put it out! Then he’d say, I’m gonna sue you!
Aaron Dilloway: Before Wolf Eyes, Nate and Tony had a band called The Mini Systems that was all circuit-bent stuff. That was when Nate really got into circuit bending, but we didn’t know there was a term for it at that point; they just started breaking shit. They were a pretty incredible band, but I think they did way too many drugs at the time and became a pretty unhealthy band.
After that show at Olson’s house, we [Wolf Eyes] asked OD to come and tour out to New York with us. It might have just been one show, but I feel like we must’ve done shows on the way... The one I remember was Wolf Eyes, Black Dice, Vicky, and OD. That was probably 2001 or 2002.
Ren Schofield — Container: Pretty insane band. The first time I saw them was in Providence in ‘02. I had no clue who they were and was pretty baffled by it. One guy came in on a wheelchair smoking a blunt, and they knocked him out of the chair and were yelling “get up cripple!” Then he crawled on top of the PA and started rapping. There was a girl playing bass. They said it was her first time ever playing the bass, and it sounded like it.
But yeah, they’d do tours and just move to whatever city the last show was in and start applying for jobs the next day, and really wear out their welcome at whoever’s place they were crashing at. When Towondo died I was texting with John Elliot about it. He was like, “They were one of those bands you needed to watch out for, which is increasingly rare these days.” I was like, wow, yeah.
Demetrisa Anderson: I knew of Towondo from a friend that lived in my neighborhood. I knew his name and knew of his work, and we just linked up. People kept saying we would be a great fit. We met up and became good friends, started doing music, just hanging out and having fun. He showed me all this equipment, and told me about the history of Occasional Detroit and other band members from the past. Some of them didn’t follow through to his liking...
We were originally from Ypsilanti, Michigan, a small township about 10 or 15 minutes away from Detroit. And then 10 minutes from Ann Arbor, where the college is. He stayed in a different area called West Willow, which is pretty much known for gang activity.
Before that, I wasn’t really fully into music as far as playing in groups. I always had it in my heart, but it was just a dream of mine; I wasn’t pursuing it. I was pretty much a homebody. I was 22 years old when I got with Towondo.
We toured all through the West Coast, all through the East Coast. I toured this United States of America at least two or three times, all cities. It was all a blur. You’re hitting a new city every day.
Invisible Energies
Nick George – Noise Brunch, Far Off Sounds: The first time I saw OD was at the Detroit Art Space in 2003 or 2004. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It started with Towondo dressed in a lab coat “performing an operation” (playing electronics) on Demetrisa. I know it was cacophonous, but I can’t remember what it sounded like. At some point she “gave birth” to a giant baby who then started rapping.
Tyler Harwood — Anti-Ear: Towondo and Demetrisa stayed at somebody’s house, and in the morning we went and picked them up to get ready to drive to the next city. When Towondo got in the van he had a severe shiner – he had a juicy black eye. We were like, “Oh shit, what happened? Are you OK!?” And he says, “Yeah man, we took acid last night and had a black eye contest.” That’s how the tour started.
Joe Hammers — Pistol Social Club, Kansas City: Demetrisa went to sleep after the show. Me and Towondo were like, let’s get some beers and go fuck around. Demeat is asleep. We need to get the fuck out of here, because we can’t stop talking to each other. This stupid part of my city where the Pistol was located used to be all about haunted houses. These guys would take these gigantic buildings and build haunted houses inside, and outside would be these giant foam gargoyle faces. So somewhere, I fucking hope, there are CD-Rs of Towondo climbing around on these gargoyle faces, and me taking pictures. We had a great fucking time. Towondo could jump like three to four feet in the fucking air, and climb on the ear of some plastic /plaster gargoyle. My legs don’t work, but this motherfucker was athletic. He was climbing all over these foam heads! I was taking photos, like oh yeah, stop there, jump on that horn, and he was kicking ass, just like at the show. The guy wouldn’t quit!
James Decker: I put out their full length, The BEST in Abstrakt Entertainment, and brought them out to play a release party at the Hemlock, in San Francisco. They stuck around a while. Great times – unnerving and confusing, but amazing. Did you know Towondo was in the Marine Corps during his teens? I saw him go from singing standing on a chair to disappearing off the back of a 12” riser stage at 21 Grand. Two seconds later he shot out the front side and was back on the chair. I asked him later how the hell he did that, and he told me about basic training.
Tyler Harwood: It was like a spring that had been wound up too tight. Towondo exploded – he went straight up in the air and off the stage onto his belly, and shimmied under the stage, which was only six inches off the ground! It was not a high stage; it was just a little platform. But he was a skinny guy. This all took place in less than a second – it was so fast. They were doing their thing and he just shot off the stage, on his belly. It was insect-like. His body just moved so quick. He was under the stage, and gone. Everybody was like, “What the fuck just happened?!” And, why would you go down there? It’s filthy. If I recall correctly, he reappeared on the back side of the stage, where his equipment was. And of course, he had dirt and stuff all over him. It’s something I’ll never forget. It was just like, boing!
Demetrisa Anderson: I’d always had an imaginative mind. They say that you manifest what you want. I always looked at the rocker lifestyle, and that’s what I was living, in my own way.
Beginning to tour all the time was like a body shock. It was so exciting every day. Some nights I didn’t even sleep. I was in New Orleans when Katrina came in. It was unbelievable and scary. Everything was scattered, police were on a roll everywhere. There were funky vibes in the air, and it brought us a little funk. I’d done a lot of drinking. The confusion of illusions was at an all time high in that city. It had me so messed up.
Sometimes we would want to continue a tour, so we’d use our rest days to develop our next moves. Everything was improv, as far as where we went next. When we got to California we got stuck. How do we choreograph another tour? For about two weeks we stayed with some people we’d just met, and we told them we were trying to come up with a plan. They already had a house full of people, so they didn’t want us to stay too long.
I think we left the vehicle at home that time. We were touring on the bus.
Andrew Barranca — Gay Bomb: They were musical soldiers, always down to play through any hard- ship or electronic malfunction. They stayed an extra night with me so we could put some improvised material together. It was all recorded on a Tascam tape 4-track. We worked quickly to get as much as we could; we didn’t edit or second guess anything. Most of those tracks were recorded with all three of us playing live and a few overdubs. Towondo was always ready to go when I pressed record, and Demetrisa, too.
Joe Hammers: Occasional Detroit have one fucking song on Spotify, and it fucking slaps. The beat changes every bar. I hope my CD-Rs did not get destroyed in the fire, because I listened to that track today and I was... the beat changes every one or two bars! I’ve listened to it three times today. God damn.
James Decker: There are skits and phone calls on the recordings. Like when Dawaun wasn’t touring with them, Towondo would call him up and get him on the phone, and he’d get him [to appear] on tracks like that.
Jason Willett: I had been talking to Towondo about wanting to record and mix an Occasional Detroit record. At the time all they had were a couple very lo-fi things from some live recordings, and I think a little bit on YouTube and maybe a Myspace page. I was like, how amazing would it be if I could get a higher fidelity recording of them and really work on a mix? Towondo loved the idea. We had various phone calls, and it was gonna happen but it just never worked out. There was always some reason why he couldn’t do it. I think there were financial reasons, the car broke down. It seemed like they were always struggling to survive. Everything was slipping through the cracks.
John Chiaverina: They were working for some kind of repo company, and they’d repossessed somebody’s house who had all this fireman gear. So they brought all this gear on tour, and Towondo would wear it onstage. I think that’s the perfect example of this group, where the boundary between their lives and what they did onstage was thin. It was definitely a group who was living in a very intuitive way, and then whatever they were feeling in that moment would spill over onto the stage. And that’s not to say that they didn't perform, because they performed the hell out of their sets. But they weren’t doing the same show every night. It was true improvisational music. Before the tour started they needed to make merch, and they went to the dollar store and bought socks and wrote on them with Sharpies.
Jill Flanagan — Forced Into Femininity, Coughs: Towondo was talking a lot in the car about getting new fancy costumes and we stopped at a Salvation Army. That night, instead of glamour, they both performed in garbage bags, which I loved and definitely copied in Forced into Femininity. I also remember them playing a great song called “Broken Glass in Asheville.”
Raven Chacon: They did an amazing set at this venue called the Curio, a kind of warehouse space. The lighting in the whole place was these rows of light bulbs that were plugged into sockets all over the building. They were coming out, doing a song, running around. One of them would disappear and come back wearing a completely different outfit . Did a costume change in 10 seconds, like magic. They’d take the light bulbs out, and when they put the light bulbs back in they’re wearing different clothes! It seemed like the most rehearsed set in the world, but it was total improv. It was amazing.
Seth Sher — Hide, Coughs: I remember they played at Mr. City, this DIY space where I lived with Carrie from Coughs and Alex Barnett and a bunch of other people. The bigger dude who wasn’t Towondo was wearing full army fatigues, and he went around the room the whole show with a ladder unscrewing all the light bulbs.
Andrew Chadwick — Ironing: They always seemed earnest and committed to what they were doing, even if that was putting on a spectacle.
Bernie Bleak: OD got in on the ground floor of American noise. They weren’t screeching feedback or circuit bending toys, but a big part of noise is attitude, performance, even lifestyle. They did that better than any of us. Using an Alka-Seltzer tablet to fake a seizure onstage? That was like Butoh-Kan level artistry. Not everybody’s gonna get it.
Demetrisa Anderson: Every time Townodo did the seizure thing an unknown person from the crowd would come and try to help. Somebody by the stage that knew what we were doing would tell them, “Don’t worry, it’s part of the act.” Or maybe they wouldn’t tell them and would just let them do it. Towondo had Alka-Seltzer tablets. He’d put one in his mouth and freak out on the floor, and he would be bubblin’ and jerking and stuff. That was all a part of how we choreographed the information. And then the improv came in, as far as continuing the set from there.
Jason Willett: I’d say the closest energy that I’ve ever felt to Occasional Detroit was in Austra- lia in the mid 90s. I played some shows there with Jad Fair and Bemba (of The Jaunties, etc.), and there was this band that opened for us one night was called Mu Mesons. Everyone in that band was schizophrenic except for the singer, who was a psychiatric nurse who used to go around in the van and take care of homeless people. In that job he met certain super creative individuals who all turned out to be schizophrenic, and then he started a band with them in the 80s. They opened up for us in the mid 90s, and that was, I think, the strangest thing I’ve ever heard and seen on a stage in my life. But it had a very similar energy to OD.
My plan was to bring recording equipment to Australia, record them, mix them, and put them out on my label. Finally, after a lot of talk, the band leader Jamie said, “I changed my mind. I don’t think that Mu Mesons should ever have any recorded releases.” He willfully decided to keep the band in obscurity, and I respected that. But it's interesting how similar those two things are. I think it’s one of the only things out there that’s comparable to Occasional Detroit.
Carly Ptak: Living a lifestyle where you can touch that magic regularly, and know that you're a part of it, and continuously change your life and your viewpoints to keep up with it, is what Towondo did, and that was part of what made OD kindred spirits. It isn’t describable, it isn’t communicable. It’s something that’s experienced as a co-creation, and that’s it.
YouTube video - May 7, 2006: OD perform in the parking lot of The Pit in Jacksonville, Florida, to what looks like 30 or 40 white twenty-somethings. The fidelity of the video itself resembles security camera footage. Demetrisa is on the ground playing breakbeats on a sampler. The scene is dramatically lit, as if by a spotlight.
Towondo raps first, and then the two trade places. At 4:10, a pause. Some equip- ment keeps breaking on them, Towondo explains. He and Demetrisa tug back and forth at the mic, perhaps arguing. She begins to croon absently; her melody triggers the sudden introduction of the next song. Maybe no equipment was ever broken? A digital steel drum appears, the white punks are dancing.
8:00, a bassline that evokes a cop movie. Driving, windows-down music. 9:12, “I’m in the toilet and I can’t get out. Ugh.” 9:27, this is our last one. 11:11, a drum machine speeds up. Once-grounded rhythm breaks apart, then consolidates into a frenzied cluster. Rapping gives way to shrieking. Towondo pulls something from his pocket, falls to the ground, shakes. “I don’t wanna die!” An audience member runs a single finger across Towondo’s limp body. Next, Towondo is cowering behind the keyboard, behind Demetrisa, speaking in tongues. The object from his pocket reappears. A cable? Whatever it is becomes a strand connecting Towondo and Demetrisa’s mouths. Towondo becomes a puppet, Demeat falls to the ground. A Latin beat plays. “I farted on her!” an audience member proclaims.
13:40: The music stops. Towondo and Demetrisa embrace. They may be whispering.
14:00, “Who says they farted?” Towondo asks the audience. “I did,” a young blonde guy says without hesitation. Towondo: “Bend down, then; open your mouth so I can piss in it.” The guy does, enthusiastically. But Towondo will not. He doesn’t want his dick shown in public, he explains. Instead, he plugs, OD: The best in abstract entertainment!
14:57: Check out our MySpace, says Demetrisa. But as she makes her pitch the advertisement gives way to growling metal vocals. Music begins again. At 17:04, the video ends, with OD still playing.
to be continued…