Most musicians would probably spend any downtime chasing groupies or engaged in some kind of recreational mischief.
That doesn’t seem to be the case with Kevin Thornton.
In his spare time from performing and recording with underground new-wave rock band Waves on Waves, the 36-year-old openly gay singer, guitarist and actor has pulled together an ambitious one-man show.
Fusing music, spoken word and comedy, “Sex, Dreams & Self Control” represents the convergence of all of Thornton’s creative exploits into one performance piece.
“It’s kind of a dream come true for me,” he said. “I’ve played in a rock band for so long and I love that. That’ll always be something that I do. The theater world and the music world have always been totally separate for me, so to be able to get on stage each night and feel completely creatively fulfilled is pretty awesome.”
Sonically, Thornton said his solo show will be a departure from the experimental electro-rock of Waves on Waves.
“It’s different in the fact that with my band there’s other people to create layers of sound,” he said. “In Waves on Waves, we use lots of vintage synthesizers and drum machines. All of those other elements lend themselves to creating a different sonic palette. In the show, it’s just me and a guitar. I would say the songs come off a lot more singer-songwriter just because of the bare facts that it’s me standing on stage with a guitar.”
Thornton said the semi-autobiographical show features his original songs performed alongside humorous stories, mostly about sex.
“My show has all these dream sequences in it,” he said, explaining the title. “There are lots of sex stories and dream sequences. There’s also a music element. When it started to roll out of my mouth, it sounded like sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. The final part of it, the self-control part, is the conflict of the story: me growing up in a really religious climate trying to come to terms with my sexuality. That’s where it comes from.”
Thornton said his desire to make people laugh started out not in a comedy club, but rather a more unlikely venue.
“In college I majored in theater performance,” he said. “After college, to pay the bills, I took some jobs at dinner theaters. Interestingly enough, it was in those settings where I learned how to make people laugh and got comedic chops. When you’re doing dinner theater, people just want to be happy. It’s not about dark art performance when people are finishing up roast beef and iced tea. I fell in love with that so much that I started going to stand-up comedy open mics and trying little bits of material. That’s how the show developed. I would just, in my spare time, take short stories and read them David Sedaris-style. I had lots of little bits from open-mic nights. I didn’t set out to write a show. At one point, I realized that all of my little bits kind of had the same theme and I started to see how they could be arranged in dramatic structure.”
Besides Sedaris, Thornton also cites the multi-talented Sandra Bernhard as a creative influence for “Sex, Dreams & Self Control.”
“She rolls in and out of standup and storytelling into music with a band,” he said. “How does that work? But it does. It works because she believes it. It totally works. That element is what I took from her.”
While there is definitely the possibility for new music with his band, Thornton said that for the foreseeable future, “Sex, Dreams & Self Control” is going to be his main artistic project.
“It’s full-time for me right now,” he said. “I’m feeling really inspired. I have some ideas for what I would do with a new show in the future. For the time being, this show is my full-time job and there is no end in sight. So I’m going to ride the train while it’s rolling.”
Thornton performs “Sex, Dreams & Self Control” Sept. 4-5 and 18-19 at the William Way LGBT Community Center, 1315 Spruce St., (215) 732-2220; and Sept. 11-17 at Walking Fish Theatre, 2509 Frankford Ave.;,(215) 427-9255. For more information, visit www.sexdreamsandselfcontrol.com.
Larry Nichols can be reached at [email protected]