Wall Of Voodoo front man is compared to Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, Raymond Chandler, David Lynch & Quentin Tarantino

tan Ridgway Trio joined by Pietra Wexstun & Rick King: It's been a long and influential road for the songwriter/guitarist and original Wall Of Voodoo vocalist. His darkly humorous, and richly cinematic musical tales of the ironies inside the American Dream have been compared to other classic songwriting iconoclasts like Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Johnny Cash and even hard boiled mystery writers like Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson, as well as twisted film makers like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino. The San Francisco Chronicle said, "He conjures "Burroughs, Bukowski and Brecht," while LA Weekly has called him "the Nathaniel West of rock." Pulling numbers from his own revolutionary past and moving into his own honed, sardonic style of present, Ridgway will be accompanied at the shows by Pietra Wexstun on keyboards, electronics and vocals; Rick King on guitar, bass and vocals. Wexstun and Ridgway have lived and worked in tandem for more than 30 years; her keyboard and vocal sounds are perfectly in tune with his not-so-typical stories of proverbial American tragedy and triumph. "I've always thought of songs like films in the mind really, except I'm the actor and the director, the lighting and prop person and DP too. When it's working, you should be able to see the song as well as hear it." A mad scientist of sound and vision, Ridgway possesses a style unparalleled, at least in our known universe. Making his musical pictures for 30 years now, the singer-songwriter and guitarist has emerged as a singular voice in contemporary song. "It's a hybrid of all the music I've loved and admired," he says. "There are no boundaries on art and no rules to follow in music. A song is really just a strong point of view."