Mr. Wood Is Dead: A 10 year anniversary of questionable life choices
- Alex Gold
- Sep 9
- 8 min read
Updated: Sep 11
Most nights at the Ikeda Theater, attendees dress somewhere between tastefully casual and full black-tie affair. After all, this venue books a completely different tier of acts than somewhere like The Nile Theater just a few minutes down the road. But on August 31st, walking into that 1600-seat theater felt like accidentally stumbling into the collision of a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening and the biggest Renaissance faire you've ever seen.
From full-blown jester outfits to people decked out in flowing medieval robes, enough corpse paint to supply a small Norwegian black metal festival, and homemade merch that blended musical references with rats, I knew we were in for an interesting evening. The hair color situation was equally eccentric, with couples sporting such a wild array of dyed locks that if you could somehow combine all those shades, Anish Kapoor would probably try to trademark the result and charge artists a licensing fee.
Before Comedian & Singer/Songwriter Will Wood could captivate his rainbow-headed barrage of fans, though, Fish in a Birdcage opened up the show. I hadn't heard of the project prior to this tour myself, and despite having fairly diverse musical preferences, I don't think I would have stumbled upon him otherwise. “Birdcage” is the solo project of Dustan "Dusty" Townsend, performing since 2014 out of Victoria, BC (for those of you frantically searching for which one of the 50 states is abbreviated to BC, please go return your high school diploma).
Coming in strong with a sound and emotional backing that falls somewhere between the extremely wide gap of Silversun Pickups, Amigo The Devil, and Manchester Orchestra–sprinkled with a hint of Bilbo's birthday party from Lord of the Rings–"Rule 33 (Pyre)" even sounded like it could have been a contender to replace Sia's "Breathe Me" in the Six Feet Under finale's closing scene. Fortunately for Dusty, I was one of the few in the room who was unfamiliar with him, as the audience started going crazy just for him coming out and doing a quick tune-up. After warming up, he introduced his partner Luna Charlotte to help provide backup vocals on "Rule 34" (yes, that song is about what you're thinking it is), complete with the announcement that Charlotte is pregnant. The merch line became absolutely mobbed during intermission to the point that I even overheard staff discussing plans to restructure the queue.
Finally, it was time for whatever chaos Wood had up his sleeves. To set the tone before his entrance, a Chris Hansen recording played over the speakers asking everybody to "Take a seat,” put away their phones, and generally be respectful for the duration of the performance.
With the tone set firmly on hilariously unhinged, Wood made his entrance to what can only be described as nuclear levels of applause. The Hansen recording wasn't just theatrical flourish–it was Wood's way of establishing ground rules for an audience he clearly expected to test his patience.
Explaining that increasingly fewer people seem to know what to expect from his shows, he recounted a Google search that suggested his shows were “extremely weird” and involved "kids throwing rats on stage," recommending people "stay home and eat rocks instead." Following this, we were taken on a journey through a much younger version of Wood, starting with a post-car accident arrest at the age of 19.
I would unfortunately be lying if I claimed that I was able to keep up with the pacing and trajectory of Wood's opening while trying to juggle getting photographs as my "first 3 songs" timer counted down and attempting to be as unobtrusive as possible.
When I tuned back into the chaos, it was during a rant about how "Your mind doesn't stop developing until you make a Reddit account," joking (or maybe not) that heroin is better. Following that was a mention of how a trip on 25I-NBOMe has caused him to still get occasional visuals. If it wasn't abundantly clear already from these couple of statements, Wood made sure to explicitly call out that in his own words he used to be an "absolute fuckin street rat" before seeking help and ending up in the care of Dr. Sugarman, who Wood thought sounded more like a pimp than a doctor. The crowd was treated to call and response segments of "He was SO OLD!" "HOW OLD WAS HE?!", which Mesa managed to pass with flying colors, unlocking what felt like a secret dialogue option where Wood thanked the audience for actually listening.
This moment of gratitude came with stories of past audience members who devolved from listening to discussing Kohl's closing times to drowning him out with chants of "KHAKIS! KHAKIS! KHAKIS!" We learned that Wood uses a face mic specifically because he needs to "turn himself into Tim Burton unveiling the new Samsung Galaxy" in order to be able to vocally overpower some of the crowds that he contends with. He went through the lengths of (supposedly) hiring Chris Hansen to record the intro–a man who made a career out of getting literal human garbage to sit down and shut up and even that wasn't enough for most fans on this tour.
The storytelling careened between Dr. Sugarman's death, Wood's first ventures playing doo-wop for retirement home residents ("a genre about teenage girls that died" in Wood's words), and pointing out that “Beetlejuice” is about a pedophile. When an audience member near the front audibly exclaimed "What the fuck," Wood pounced on the opportunity for the back-heckling that's become essential to the tour's experience, though he made sure to tell them it was a perfectly reasonable response and that this was entirely to move the show along.
The stories led to the memory of a specific retirement home incident in which a resident that Wood described as "the human embodiment of the impermanence of everything" began shouting "THAT'S ENOUGH NOW! DID YOU HEAR ME? I SAID THAT'S ENOUGH!" Security motioned to keep playing and removed her from the room. Truly a divine foreshadowing for Wood's career yet to come.
Somewhere throughout this, an audience member decided it was the perfect time for an unprompted "HOW OLD WAS SHE?!" attempt, prompting Wood to joke they were reminding him of late-stage dementia and giving him caretaker fatigue. A few people near me decided that was their line and promptly left the theater, not returning.
The show shifted from absurdly chaotic into something more heartfelt as the theater participated in a sing-along to "Memento Mori: the most important thing in the world." Wood then recounted that there was a girl from the nursing home days who coined the name “Will Wood and the Tapeworms” and let him believe he'd come up with it himself. She's still with him to this day, on tour selling merchandise, and she was the inspiration for "Cicada Days."
Holding steady on the somber tonality, Wood pointed out that the trajectory from stories of arrest and substance abuse to his current career holds an implication of "getting better." But in his own words, he is NOT good, and the fact that he'd spent his time on stage making pedophilia jokes was all the evidence needed to affirm that to himself.
The story then shifted back to drugs–an acid trip at 18, describing himself at that time as "16 until he was 24." The final song, "Skeleton Appreciation Day in Vestal, NY (Bones)," was written about that trip, but has grown to mean something else entirely. It's the things that make us all "spooky" and "scary" that make us into what we all are, finishing by saying that "you can't make somebody's character better by making their lives worse."
The final song wasn't the end, however, as Wood had one more story and an exciting announcement: he and his partner became engaged shortly before the tour started! The proposal story was absurdly chaotic, starting with two questions: Did you know Costco sells engagement rings? Did you know Instacart will deliver them?
While shopping for tour supplies, they saw a stunning ring listed on Instacart but assumed it was an incorrect listing. ‘It would be funny to order it as a joke,’ they thought, setting the alternative to the hypoallergenic cat food they actually needed so it got replaced when the ring inevitably couldn't be delivered. Then the delivery came, requiring a signature. So there was the engagement ring. Wood found himself down on one knee, realizing he could only propose to the love of his life if he could be doing it for a bit. "Would you marry me if I did this for real sometime?" It wasn't until after that he realized he'd been ready for a long time, but would never have done it of his own accord.
After the stage cleared, quite a few immediately left while the rest stayed locked in, refusing to believe nothing else was coming. Their skepticism was rewarded when Wood returned for one last story about almost ruining his own encore by walking off and sneezing into the supposedly-turned-off mic. With one final song “Black Box Warrior - OKULTRA” that included some freestyle bits making self-deprecating jokes about his sex life (immediately retracted since it wasn't as good a joke following an engagement announcement), Wood reached the end by throwing his elbow into the piano keys and making his final exit.
A handful of lucky people managed to be in line when Wood made a momentary appearance at the merch stand post-show. It was incredibly entertaining to see swarms of people walking past completely unaware that the person they'd come to see was literally in their peripheral vision. A few did notice and took fleeting photos from a distance that surely will be blurry messes, turning their memory of "meeting" Wood into essentially a cryptid photo and proving they either learned nothing from Wood's criticisms of certain portions of his fanbase, or missed it entirely while hyperfixating on mentally turning Wood into what they want him to be.
Prior to this show, I had only been a casual listener to Wood's music. I never dove into the lore or communities behind him. After being exposed to some of his life experiences through both this set and the recently released recording of “Slouching Towards Branson,” a lot of his music takes on considerably different meanings.
Unfortunately, I did dive into the Reddit community while writing this, and the only conclusion is that Mesa was incredibly lucky to have such a well-behaved show. The fact that there's an entire subreddit analyzing whether Wood is "mentally well" based on tour reports and secondhand accounts of people getting ejected from shows perfectly encapsulates why he probably needs the dramatically comedic Chris Hansen recordings in the first place. These are people who've never met him turning crowd management decisions into amateur psychological assessments, completely missing that removing disruptive audience members is basic professionalism, not a mental health crisis.
What struck me walking out of the Ikeda that night wasn't just that we'd witnessed a great performance; it was realizing how rare it's become to see an artist actually connect with an audience that knows how to listen. Wood spent well over an hour being genuinely vulnerable about addiction, recovery, and proposing purely for the bit with a Costco engagement ring, while half his fanbase treats him like content to be analyzed rather than a human being telling his story. Mesa proved that when you give Wood the space to actually perform instead of crowd-wrangle, the results speak for themselves.
If there was a lesson to be learned, it's that sometimes the most punk rock thing you can do is just shut the fuck up and let the artist do their job.
Fish in a Birdcage full setlist:
Rule #47 - The Birds Are Plotting
Rule #13 - Waterfall
Rule #33 - Pyre
Rule #34
Rule #4: Fish in a Birdcage
Will Wood full setlist:
Half-Decade Hangover
The First Step (Will Wood and the Tapeworms song)
2012 (Will Wood and the Tapeworms song)
Chemical Overreaction/Compound Fracture (Will Wood and the Tapeworms song)
Marsha, Thankk You for the Dialectics, but I Need You to Leave.
That's Life (Frank Sinatra cover)
Memento Mori: the most important thing in the world
Cicada Days
Skeleton Appreciation Day in Vestal, NY (Bones) (Will Wood and the Tapeworms song)
Encore:
Black Box Warrior - OKULTRA
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