The Slow Poisoner (alias Andrew Goldfarb) is a one-man-surrealistic-rock-and-roll-band who hails from San Francisco and has been playing to audiences all over since 1996. His songs are psychedelic flowers sprouting forth from a soil rich in traditional American music but grown twisted beneath morbid rays of black sunshine. Like a cross between Johnny Cash and Alice Cooper, the Slow Poisoner is rootsy but weird. Other influences include the Cramps, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Roy Orbison, Edgar Allen Poe, Wall of Voodoo, Bela Lugosi and The Doors. In concert the Slow Poisoner comes across like a late-night horror movie host or a creepy camp counselor as he bangs a bass drum festooned with sleigh bells and strums his home-made guitar while employing a variety of bizarre props, ranging from painted signs and dancing spiders to a giant monster head which devours him onstage. The Slow Poisoner started out as the leader of a five piece band, "The Slow Poisoners," named after a chapter in Charles Mackay's 1854 book "Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" which detailed a murderous fad among 17th century European wives. Over the course of ten years the group slowly became thinner and thinner as the other members disappeared; eventually an apparition of an eight-fisted cephalopod (the Rocktopus) instructed Andrew to go it alone, and since 2005 that is what he has done, touring frequently and playing venues that range from libraries to science fiction conventions, beauty parlors and laundromats. The Slow Poisoner's latest album is titled "Ever Been Chewed Upon By Teeth As Sharp As Knives?" and its lead track, "Hot Rod Worm," tells the story of delinquent invertebrate who the Slow Poisoner duels with on the highway - an accompanying video dramatizes the events utilizing stop-motion animation, a go-go dancer and a toothless bongo player. Other songs on the record concern evil foliage, purple panthers, strange hungers, the 13th moon of the planet Neptune and devils that dwell in swamps.