It looks as though one half of the musical duo SCENTient Beings may not be what he seems.
In a live interview on the Yannis Tavros show yesterday, Faramund Stinktier, the Reekabilly singer and the duo’s composer, dropped a bombshell when he suddenly confessed to “knowing” that he was a Zebra.
The declaration took Tavros completely by surprise, he said in a post-show interview outside Toro Talk Radio, which broadcasts the Tavros show live every afternoon.
“We were talking about the Beats of Burden [musical festival] and about the success the duo has had since they débuted Reekabilly a year ago at the festival and, out of nowhere, he said that he’d always known in his heart that he was a Zebra.
At first, I thought he was joking around and I said, ‘Faramund, let’s get serious now.’ I mean, I thought we were talking about music. Then he looked at me with such earnestness and pleading, so I had to let him continue. I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t rehearsed…at least, I don’t think so. It was more like some cork just popped and there was no containing it anymore,” Tavros said.
Stinktier didn’t backtrack, even though Tavros gave him the opportunity to do so.
“He could have turned it into a joke and everything would have been fine, but he really wanted to tell his story, so I let him,” Tavros said.
That story, it seems, began years ago but reached a peak last year, when Damien Skyles of The Cynics encouraged the duo to explore different kinds of music.
“I created Reekabilly out of country [music] and what I called ‘parts of our essential selves,’ ” Stinktier said. “But what I didn’t tell anyone at the time was that during the course of that musical fusion, I came to understand something even more essential about myself.”
Although Stinktier said nothing about what path he would choose in the future, Tavros said he seemed relieved to have made his realization public.
Afterwards, though, Stinktier did his best to duck the crowd that had gathered outside. But when he ran into a vacant burrow just north of the radio station, his action was met with jeers.
“Let’s see a Zebra do that!” one member of the crowd yelled at him.
Although Stinktier has not been heard from since, Alfredo Ox of the Beasts of Burden says the duo hasn’t cancelled their participation in next weekend’s music festival.
“They’re professionals and big supporters of the cause,” Ox says. “I can’t imagine they’d cancel at this late date.”
Calls to the group’s manager and to their publicist Hartwig Stinktier have so far gone unanswered.
