CINDY STAGOFF
“20 Beautiful Pig Men,” by Ted Lyons, can be seen at 503 Social Club.
“Pigmen or Mulemen, You Decide” — a collection of drawings by Ted Lyons that is now on display at 503 Social Club in Hoboken — is imaginative and enchanting, and a good antidote to President Trump’s attacks on free expression. It can be seen through March 7 at concerts, as well as via appointment and possibly at weekend viewings TBA.
Lyons, 73, has been part of the vibrant Winston-Salem, North Carolina pop-rock music scene since the 1980s, and expresses his sense of humor — as well as his sense of wonder — via his animal caricatures.
CINDY STAGOFF
“Lemon and Small Boy,” by Ted Lyons.
“20 Beautiful Pig Men” caught my eye as I wandered around the gallery. The pigmen are all wearing skimpy bathing trunks, with cacti behind them. “Lemon and Small Boy” is an amusing juxtaposition — why is the lemon towering over this child?
“So Much Depends Upon the Yellow Cup” looks like a scene from “Law and Order” in magnetic reds and greens, with details that remind me of the book “Goodnight Moon” (don’t overlook the pigman cowering in the corner).
“High Moods,” with a similar color scheme, is odd, and my focus wanders to the little rooster man with the leaf covering his private parts. “A Pigman Questions His Son Concerning a Pile of Rocks” reminds me of many absurd parental concerns and conflicts.
“Ted Lyons has been a part of my life since I was a young teenager marveling at his drum skills with Sacred Irony, his band with Mitch Easter in the late 1960s,” says Peter Holsapple of The dB’s, who have roots in both Winston-Salem and the New York/New Jersey area. “He swung harder than any other drummer in town, leaning toward jazz but retaining his rock sensibilities.
JAY JOHNSON
Clockwise from top left: Sally Spring, Peter Holsapple, Ted Lyons and Syd Straw.
“We got to be friends as the years passed, and I began seeing Ted’s artwork on records by Mitch, Chris Stamey and Don Dixon. Today we might call it ‘outsider’ art, but it was ultimately fascinating stuff of no known Earthly origin. Sort of like Ted himself.”
Lyons’ drawings offer a kaleidoscope of delightful colored creatures that make me wonder about the curious mind behind the drawings. The medium he has used has changed over time; currently he works with colored pencils on paper.
“Over the last five decades, Ted Lyons’ art has explored a variety of techniques and materials, but the vibrancy of his distinctive world view has remained consistent,” says Stamey, who is also a dB’s member. “Beneath the surface witticisms and bolts of humor lies a masterful use of color and line that is always unmistakably ‘Ted.’
“His works have been cherished by a coterie of influential musicians for decades, seen in their homes and on their albums. It’s about time the larger world was pulled into the picture.”
Lyons has been fighting Parkinson’s disease in recent years and has been hospitalized over the last several months. It has been decades since his last exhibition in Hoboken, says James Mastro, who owns The 503 Social Club.
“Ted Lyons’ artwork speaks to a part of me I didn’t know existed,” Mastro says. “Mixing the sad with the humorous, the irreverent with the hidden meaning, his work helps one realize that this crazy world we live in is made of the same elements. And that helps makes it all seem more normal to me.”
“Cat With a Ridiculous Hat,” by Ted Lyons.
Mastro, a member of The Bongos as well as a solo artist and a band member for Ian Hunter and others, said Lyons’ drumming for Stamey made a big impression on him. They were a “total ying and yang: Chris very straight and proper, Ted a wild man,” Mastro said. “It worked wonderfully.”
Lyons has been drawing and painting since he was a youngster, with one of his first shows at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh at age 14.
Later on, he designed and painted livery on race cars at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem and decorated boards, walls, musical instruments and posters — “displaying these clandestinely throughout town, turning his surroundings into garish living art,” according to press material. Over the past 30 years, he worked on three-dimensional acrylic art on canvas, as well as animated sculptures from gourds.
Steve Fallon, the original owner of the beloved nightclub Maxwell’s in Hoboken, had an art gallery that sold Lyons’ work, including his colorful gourds pictured below. “I don’t love Ted,” Fallon says. “I LOVE TED.”
STEVE FALLON
Some of Ted Lyons’ gourds.
Lyons, who plays keyboards and guitar in addition to drums, has performed with luminaries such as Percy Sledge, Donnie Elbert, John Lee Hooker, Mark Knopfler and Syd Straw. He has appeared at small house concerts and in larger venues for audiences of more than 10,000.
Over the years, I have heard great music at 503 Social Club in Hoboken by artists including Freedy Johnston, James Maddock, Tommy Stinson of The Replacements, Jon Langford and Sally Timms of the Mekons, and Hoboken’s powerful rockers Karyn Kuhl and Mastro. Upcoming shows include Holsapple on Jan. 30; storyteller Adam Wade & Friends on Feb. 13; and Ladies of Psycho (Psych-O-Positive members Kuhl, Judy Ann Nock and Debby Schwartz) on Feb. 15.
For more about 503 Social Club, visit facebook.com/503socialclub.
To arrange a viewing of “Pigmen or Mulemen, You Decide” call (201) 222-0915.
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