Stanard 'Stan' Ridgway (born April 5, 1954) is an American multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter, film and television composer known for his distinctive voice, dramatic lyrical narratives, and eclectic solo albums and was the original lead singer of the band Wall of Voodoo.

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 Austin Chronicle said of him: "Ridgway's post-Wall of Voodoo output has, if anything, cemented his neo-noir rep as one of American music's greatest storytellers, the wild and wily Steinbeck of sad whiskey railroads and rusted, ramshackle American dreams." NME said, "Stan Ridgway is equal parts Raymond Chandler and John Huston, Johnny Cash and Rod Serling." The San Francisco Chronicle said, "He conjures "Burroughs, Bukowski and Brecht," while LA Weekly has called him "the Nathaniel West of rock."

Raised in L.A., Ridgway began his love affair with Southwestern gothic 30 years ago as front man and co-founder of vanguard electro-art punks Wall of Voodoo, who he originally formed with the intention of scoring low-budget horror films. The band was named Wall of Voodoo by Ridgway before their first gig, in reference to a comment made by a friend of Ridgway's while recording and overdubbing a Kalamazoo Rhythm Ace drum machine. While listening to some of the music that created in the studio, Ridgway jokingly compared the multiple-drum-machine- and Farfisa-organ-laden recordings to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, whereupon the friend commented it sounded more like a "wall of voodoo" and the name stuck. Ridgway sang on the band's debut EP and first two albums, Dark Continent and Call of the West (which included the accidental MTV hit "Mexican Radio").

Ridgway's WoV music could fairly be described as a cross between early synthesizer pop and Ennio Morricone's soundtracks for Italian director Sergio Leone's epic western films of the 1960s. Adding to the music's distinctiveness was percussive and textural experimentation, i.e. mixing drum machines with unconventional instruments such as pots, pans and various kitchen utensils, raw electronics with interlocking melodic figures as well as twangy spaghetti-western guitar. On top of the mix was Ridgway's unusual vocal style and highly stylized, cinematic narratives heavily influenced by science fiction and film noir, sung from the perspective of ordinary folks and characters wrestling with ironies inside the American Dream.

Ridgway embarked on a solo career in 1983, shortly after Wall of Voodoo's appearance and break up at the US Festival that same year. After collaborating on the song, "Don't Box Me In" with Stewart Copeland from The Police for the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish starring Mickey Rourke, Matt Dillon and Dennis Hopper, he released his first proper solo album, The Big Heat (1986), which included the top 5 European (and UK) hit "Camouflage". Greil Marcus called The Big Heat "probably the most compelling portrait of American social life to appear on a rock 'n' roll record since Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska." Author Mikal Gilmore said it was "the best L.A.-founded record of that year." Ridgway followed with numerous other solo recordings: Mosquitos (1989), Partyball (1991), Black Diamond (1995), and Anatomy (1999), The Way I Feel Today (1998), a collection of big band standards, and Holiday in Dirt (2001), a compilation of outtakes and previously unreleased songs. Ridgway's album Snakebite: Blacktop Ballads and Fugitive Songs (2005), features the narrative song, "Talkin' Wall Of Voodoo Blues Pt. 1", a history of his former band in song.

Since the early days of Wall of Voodoo, Ridgway has been interested in making music for the cinema. Ridgway's album Holiday in Dirt was a quasi-cinematic project, with the release of the album accompanied by a showing of 14 short films by various independent filmmakers, each film a visual interpretation of one of the songs on the album. A compilation DVD of the films was released in February 2005. "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."

Filmography

Trailer

Cast / Crew

Soundtrack

Domestic

Foreign

Awards

B.T.S.


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