Puddles Pity Party is the Sad Clown with the Golden Voice, a singer of rock songs with a difference. 

The past 25 years he’s been building an international following. On stage in whiteface, toy golden crown perched askance on his shaved head, standing 6-foot-8 in his sneakers, he lacks the power of speech, but when he opens his mouth and sings, that’s when the story unfolds.

You might have seen him on Season 12 of America’s Got Talent in 2017. He’s done a Las Vegas act and performed in comedy festivals on three continents. His 2020 holiday variety show, social-distanced and broadcast online, featured cameos from a cavalcade of comedy stars.

Puddles’ stage demeanor evokes cabarets, burlesque revues in dingy smoke-filled clubs, where he honed his act. But his show at The Clyde Theatre on Sunday, Jan. 21, is all Puddles, performing solo.

Nostalgia

Go to his YouTube channel and listen to his quite frankly beautiful interpretations in a clean, acoustic style, sung in his signature resonant baritone-tenor. He’s a latter-day Sinatra with a touch of Josh Groban, but for the emo generation. Puddles sings each syllable so distinctly that you gain a new understanding of a song you’ve heard a thousand times. 

From their studio in Avondale Estates, a suburb of Atlanta, Puddles, musical director-producer Tim Delaney, and session musicians release tracks and videos that have gotten more than 300 million views.

Puddles’, er … “spokesman” is Mike Geier, who spoke with us by phone. 

“It’s funny how songs will resonate with Puddles,” Geier said. “Sometimes he’ll hear a song that sounds like it’s a happy song, but there’s something in it that just sort of brings out, there’s a melancholy as opposed to being depressed or sad. There’s this idea of nostalgia. I’m not a linguist, but ‘nostalgia’ means sadness and home. That comes from longing. He doesn’t look for it, he just hears it. And that’s what steers the whole thing.”

A star is born

So where did this all start? 

Around 1998 Geier, who is suspiciously also 6-foot-8 and bald, had a band called Kingsized, a cabaret Elvis tribute, in Atlanta. Then, to hear Geier tell it, one night at the Star Bar in Little Five Points, he noticed a sad, mute clown who wandered in and sat alone. 

“And, I’ve been following Puddles around ever since,” Geier said.

It started with a touring rock band called Greasepaint “with a bunch of other clowns and dancing monkey girls. It was quite a freaky scene,” Geier said. “Then (Puddles) kind of disappeared.”

Geier asserts that he, and Puddles, never had any musical training. 

“No, no! School of hard knocks,” he says. “I wasn’t an opera singer. A lot of conjecture flying around; it’s fun to be part of that thing, that being part of this is an exaggeration, but being part of the myth is exciting. So, I’m just happy that I’m in the same conversation with Puddles.”

Puddles reappeared around 2009. 

“He did this strange thing with Adult Swim,” the Cartoon Network late-night segment. “They asked Puddles to be part of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Live touring show. The audiences seemed to respond to it.” 

The response led promoters to sending Puddles out to festivals.

“He went back to New York a lot,” including a few guest appearances in the bizarre horror-tinged immersive theater experience Sleep No More. “He performed in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland a couple times, went to the Adelaide Fringe and Melbourne Comedy Festival in Australia, went out to Sydney and Perth.”

Attracting celebrity

After his run on America’s Got Talent, Puddles connected with a lot of stars that mentored him.

“At the Moontower Comedy Festival in Austin, Texas, the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal, Puddles met a lot of the interesting comics: Patton Oswalt, Jack Black. We became pretty friendly with ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic.”

Geier speaks of befriending magician and entertainer Penn Jillett of Penn & Teller, who juggled in Puddles’ residence in 2019 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. Geier also credits career advice from actor Paul Reubens, who died at 70 last year. Reubens, after all, had a similar working relationship with a character named Pee-wee Herman. 

“He was a good friend, but he was like a counsel,” Geier said of Reubens. “And the business, he took it really seriously. I was always dumbfounded. I’m like, this is awesome, because I was such a big fan as well.”

Get there early

In addition to globe-trotting appearances, Geier and his production team have adapted to the modern recording business. They profitably stream dozens of singles on Spotify and Pandora. 

However, those 300 million YouTube views have not generated much money. The value is promotional.

“Everything that we record with Puddles, all licenses are purchased,” Geier said. “We buy mechanical rights to do an interpretation of these songs.” They work through the companies DistroKid and TuneCore, who distribute Puddles’ singles and videos to streaming platforms, which generates income.

Regardless, “YouTube works a little bit differently.” Most of what Puddles puts on YouTube gets demonetized: the publishing companies that administer rights to songs file infringement claims with YouTube, and the money due from Puddles’ millions of streams goes to the rights holders and not to Puddles. 

“It’s a mystery to a lot of people about why something gets demonetized and why other things don’t.” 

Still, Geier doesn’t complain; he stresses that it’s all about “adapting and improvising as you go along through life.”

If you plan to check out this unique show, Geier suggests getting to The Clyde early. 

“The way the show works is people come into the room and there’s already something on the screen that is playing,” he said. “Sometimes it’s a video, a trivia reel that Puddles has dreamed up. That’s combined with music. Shortly before the show, Puddles often walks the room and high-fives people and greets everyone (nonverbally).” 

However, Geier does not have much else to describe. 

“All of those questions are revealed, because to explain it, it’s impossible,” he said. “This is the thing that Puddles has intimated to me: Just let the people show up and see what it is.”