April Foolstravaganza Fore! (Or Five?) — 4/4/26 — The Tramontane Cafe (Utica)

Isn’t that the greatest April Fool’s joke, to get outside the restrictions of a single date and to instead ply the foolishness anytime, anywhere?

Hence, the April Foolstravaganza Fore! (Or Five?) at the hub of sophomoric weirdness here in weirdo Utica, the one and only Tramontane Cafe. And hosted by a staple of that hub, the one and only Home Visitor, who first lamented to us, one and only (does that make three?) what he’d do if he didn’t have a brain. But thank dogs he does, cuz the foolishness was strong with this line-up.

Backed at all times by the volume of Mike Cecconi and the improvised electronic twists and smacks and distortions of the masked man, Tree With a Gun, Mordecai Rosenblatt brought forth not only antler games and contests to name the spoon, with glamorous prizes of face bags and Progresso soup drops and VHS copies of The Story of Easter for those intrepid audience members who joined in, but a litany of other zaniacs to make sure the clowns in the audience (and there were quite a few) could keep the foolishness alive. Between the commercial breaks, spokespersoned by the other two members of the Home Visitor trio, for ‘Snot Meat spam and Faceman Brand face bags (to elicit that righteous question, “Just who the fuck are you?!?”) as well as a reminder that Home Visitor’s debut album is available for pre-order (wanna read about how amazing it is?) and such, Rae Bleu put on her best diva, coupling her performance with manager browbeating, and chef/comedian Eaton B. Fine not only revealed the recipe for a nothing sandwich but serenaded all about cod liver oil and the orange juice. Adora Yonks deigned to come down from his cloud of 80s movie soundtrack fame for some keyboard slapping, DJ Vinny the Avant Gardist presented The Song, and Ted: An Impressionist proved that every vegetable walks the exact same way. Doug Keyes gave us an improvisation warmup of having us recite, twelve-days-of-Xmas-wise, about one hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four limerick oysters and…well, something about corpulent porpoises and/or things in full battle array, but as he’d posed some audience members as an approving dad and complimentary mom, all was well.

Highlights for me were getting to see again the magnificent Milly Szmurlo, whose magnificence I’ve touted before, strumming that ukulele to warn us about the average American man but also scare the bejeezers out of us over crows, accentuated by a huge fucking crow waddling about to peck on the audience. And, at long last, Tree With a Gun was convinced to remove his ski mask to let him breathe…through his second one.

Do you pity us fools, fool? Then just get over your Mr. T-lite ass and make sure you keep up with the happenings at the Tram so you can get your weird on.

flier designs by Garrett Ingraham