In the passenger seat you have Aaron Dilloway, perhaps the greatest modern American practitioner of harsh noise and an alum of the almighty Wolf Eyes, while behind the wheel is the king of New Orleans mutant boogie, instrument inventor emeritus Mr. Quintron. They’re playing a swing of Southern dates — with a very notable Florida focus — and the only thing that’s certain is that neither performer nor audience will emerge unscathed.
The tour, appropriately, kicked off on Friday the 13th in Memphis and comes to Will’s Pub this Friday. Orlando Weekly got them on the horn for the exclusive lowdown.
For such a weird and epochal pairing, the reasoning behind the tour is disarmingly wholesome: friendship.
“We were both performing at our friend’s birthday party, and we got to talking about how it would be fun to go on tour together,” says Quintron.“We’ve known each other for 30, over 30 years now.”
“My high school band’s first concert was opening for Quintron’s old band in 1994 and then he invited us to play in Chicago. Our first out-of-town gig was through him as well, and then he recorded our album,” says Dilloway. “He’s a very influential and supportive person to me from very early on.”
“We ran around in the same circles for a long time, shared a label, and Miss Pussycat put her first record out on Aaron’s label, Hanson. We’ve been sharking the same waters for a long time,” says Quintron.
“But we’ve never toured together,” marvels Dilloway. “We’ve been reconnecting a few times over the last few years, especially at the Wave Farm in upstate New York.”
That wasn’t just casual upstate summer socializing. Dilloway was at Wave Farm to stage his reimagining of the John Cage piece Rozart Mix in 2021, a sprawling visual and sonic installation centered around analog tape loops and multiple tape machines. Dilloway recruited Quintron as one of the tape ops. From that collaboration, the seeds of this tour were planted.
The “Sunshine and Lollipops” tour is very Florida-focused, in stark contrast to most itineraries for august experimental personalities. But for Quintron, it’s second nature.
“Miss Pussycat and I have a long history of playing a whole lot in Florida, largely because of its proximity to Louisiana. But we just fell in love with touring there. It’s kind of its own universe. We used to do whole tours of almost only Florida, as its own loop,” Quintron explains. “And the itinerary that Aaron and I are doing, I booked it as … an old familiar pattern. I personally love Florida in the summer. I love Louisiana, I love New Orleans in the summer too. There’s no festivals. The festivals are over. There’s less tourists. I dig hot and sweaty. I get more work done like that. So yeah, I’m going where the birds are not flying.”
Despite that fond affection, Quintron hasn’t been in Orlando since a 2019 release show for an all-instrumental Mellotron record put out by much-missed former local enterprise Total Punk. (Quintron threatens to resurrect some of that material on this tour.) Dilloway, meanwhile, recalls playing Miami right before COVID hit and that’s about it.
The week promises to be a proper reintroduction, with shows in Jacksonville, Gainesville, Miami and Tampa along with a side trip to Ringling’s Circus Museum in Sarasota, natch. Plus some ancillary mischief.
“I had this crazy idea that after every show, I want to go to a comedy club,” says Quintron of post-show festivities. “Kick back, you know, have a few brewskis and get a laugh or two. All very practical.”
But before they get a chance to relax, there’s the matter of the show. Dilloway’s live sets are some of the most searing and cathartic in the noise and experimental realms — period. Using arcane electronics and often a contact mic lodged in his mouth, this is free improvisation at its most wild and untethered and physical.
Quintron — though without his creative foil, Miss Pussycat — is that rare mix of tech magus (with mostly self-designed or customized instruments) and consummate performer. Onstage, he’s a blur of hands flying over keyboards, feet stomping pedals, shouts and grunts and flying sweat. Intriguingly, the two hint at the possibility of blurring their two sets together.
“I never really know what I’m doing until I get to a space and just figure out how it sounds in there, see the layout of the place. Most of my sets are all improvised for the most part,” explains Dilloway. “We’ll see.”
“Mine is going to be familiar territory, but with a lot of new stuff, and things will be more stretched out and more improvisational. But not like a total departure, unless something happens to them,” says Quintron. “I hope there’s some crossover. When we were in upstate New York, we hatched the idea of crossing over at the end or the beginning or something. Some blur from one set into another.”
Failing that? You can buy a memento. “We have a tour tape that is a collaboration cassette that’s completely fucked up,” assures Dilloway.
Expect fucked-uppery of the highest order one way or the other.
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This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2025.