Robert Dayton
| Robert Dayton | |
|---|---|
 Robert Dayton in 2020.jpg | |
| Born | |
| 🏳️ Citizenship | Canadian |
| 💼 Occupation | multi-disciplinary artist, writer, performer |
| 📆 Years active | 1995-present |
| Known for | July Fourth Toilet, Canned Hamm, The Canadian Romantic |
| 🌐 Website | http://www.robertdayton.com/ |
Robert Dayton is a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist, writer, and performer existing in the realms of comedy, art, music, and more. He performs and records with musical acts Canned Hamm and July Fourth Toilet. He also regularly performs solo as himself and in character as The Canadian Romantic. His visual art has appeared in numerous exhibits and publications, including his books the Empty Bed (2018).[citation needed] He is part of "The Canadian Psychedooolia scene[1]." He starred in the feature film comedy Male Fantasy (2004).[2]
Life and career[edit]
Born and raised in Fort St. John, British Columbia, Dayton relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia in the early 1990s to enroll in the Langara Fine Arts Program then subsequently studied at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design from which he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1997. During that time, he started self-publishing his "zine Bunyon and became immersed in The Canadian Psychedooolia scene and continues to make art booklets either alone or in collaboration with artist Jason McLean who he met at Langara. With cartoonist Julian Lawrence -and later Lester Smolenski- he co-founded The Drippy Gazette, a monthly newspaper featuring "Comics, Music, and Entainment"[3] with an emphasis on humour and its own made-up cast of characters. Dayton also contributed many columns, articles and illustrations for various international publications, including Snipehunt, Bananafish and Roctober, as well as a regular column in the local weekly Terminal City.
With Julian Lawrence he formed July Fourth Toilet, a musical act involving both a regular and rotating cast of players that never performed the same show twice. Named by Gregg Turkington and John Singer of San Francisco act Zip Code Rapists, the name came from Turkington's band name list. Many of Robert's costumes were designed by artist Jason Mclean with some of their props and ephemera on display as part of the "Records" art show, along with Nihilist Spasm Band and All Star Schnauzer Band, at The Western Front in 2003. July Fourth Toilet's tenth anniversary show was a live presentation of the K-Tel album Rock Fantasy with numerous guest singers. The second July Fourth Toilet album was favourably reviewed by Julian Cope and performed live at The Vancouver Art Gallery and Pub 340. Their twentieth anniversary show was part of The WrongWave series of art and music. They only toured once with the nerd rock band Three Day Stubble, culminating in a show with The Sun City Girls in Seattle. They still sporadically perform, with talks of a new album "Shoque La Rock".
In 1997 he formed Points Grey, an acid downer folk trio, with Dan Bejar of Destroyer and Julian Lawrence of July Fourth Toilet. They only performed once but recorded an album at Method Studios released in 2013 by Pro-Am Entainment International, a label named by Robert.
In 2000 Robert formed Canned Hamm, a comedic song and dance duo, with Stephen Hamm (Hamm, Tankhog, the Evaporators, Slow). As Big Hamm (Stephen) and Lil' Hamm (Robert) they wore matching outfits and toured across the US and Australia opening for America's Funnyman Neil Hamburger who also appeared on two of their albums. Their video for "Father And Son" went to number two on the Dollaraclip TV show, the most popular show on Quebec's music video channel Musique Plus. Their label Pro-Am released a tribute to their first album Karasma called Karasma Reimagined which featured covers of their songs by such artists as The New Pornographers with Rodney Graham, Nardwuar the Human Serviette, and Bobby Conn. Their next album "Erotic Thriller" was a dance album with a complete new look for Canned Hamm which lasted just for that album. Their Christmas album "Sincerely Christmas" was released in 2008. They still occasionally perform with talks of subsequent albums "Balloon Fantasy" and "Adultery".
In 2004, Dayton starred as Andrew, "a man divorced from his wife and from reality" in Blaine Thurier's film, Male Fantasy (VIFF, TIFF, and SXSW).
In 2008 Robert relocated to Toronto. There he started doing DJ nights with music historian Kevin Howes and performed completely improvised midnight candlelight recitations. His character The Canadian Romantic grew out of that – and as a nod to the Destroyer song "Canadian Lover (Lord Falcon's Escape)", written about both him and artist Shayne Ehman. Performing at comedy, music, and art venues The Canadian Romantic is a melodramatic figure of faded glamour who tries to bridge and explore the gap between Canada and romance with somewhat dubious results). He had an art book released by Pitt Projects/Publication Studios, has numerous videos, and even a doll and a lenticular winking photo to make others feel more attractive. His book was launched in Toronto with a three-hour performance featuring a chocolate fountain and an audio-visual show on actor-as-singer and romantic poetry albums. His late night comedy album was a collaboration with musician Chris Cummings (Marker Starling) produced by Nyles Miszczyk and J.M.Ladd. Robert's deep interest in karaoke led to him often hosting at the legendary bar The Beaver for many years. He also wrote a short-lived karaoke column for the short-lived Toronto AV Club which led to him writing for The Onion from 2011–2013. For Hazlitt (Random House) he did author interviews for a video series he named Pagelicker, which won a National Magazine Award in 2013.
Through this Robert has continued to make art, including a 2009 show at Paul Petro Special Projects with Jean-Paul Langlois, group shows at Weird Things, Pizza Party group show at Cinders in New York, and a window art show curated by Carousel Magazine who has printed his art and writing. His musical acts in Toronto included Wet Dirt with Tobey Black (MAOW, The Gay, Rough Spells) who released one album on Inyrdisk and New Horizzzons with Craig Daniels (Leather Uppers, The Exploders).
From 2013-2015 Dayton relocated to Kitchener-Waterloo to attend University of Waterloo where he holds a Master Of Fine Arts. As part of their Shantz intern program he went to Los Angeles where he interned for performance artist Ann Magnuson and performed as The Canadian Romantic in a portable kissing booth as part of her Afternoon Bacchanal for Mike Kelley at the MOCA. He had a box in Archive Fever, at The Canadian Clay And Glass Gallery which also included numerous physicists, musicians such as Martin Rev, and countless other artists. His Grad show "Outta This World" included numerous large-scale drawings, mystical objects, videos, and performances as the character Support designed to eliminate repression from Canada. For the 2018 CAFKA biennial in Kitchener, he designed the logos along with other art. Robert's work was shown in Mexico City in 2020 at The Material Art Fair as part of Ed Video.s booth (Guelph) with Amy Lockhart and Beth Frey.
In 2018, Dayton's book "The Empty Bed" was released by Impulse.
He is currently writing Canadian Glam, a book that will document Glam in Canada, primarily in the 1970s.
References[edit]
- ↑ Bell, Marc (September 2006). Nog A Dod: Prehistoric Canadian Psychedooolia. Conundrum Press. p. 288. ISBN 978-1-894994-16-3. Retrieved 26 Aug 2020. Search this book on
- ↑ "Male Fantasy" – via www.imdb.com.
- ↑ "Julian Lawrence – Canadian Comics Archive".
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