Nekkid concerts? A project with Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer, and Kyle Cassidy? Sure!

Jill has been following Kyle Cassidy on LiveJournal and Twitter for a while because he is a freakin’ amazing photographer, a man-about-town, and they have some mutual Philadelphia friends, too. Kyle has photographed some fascinating people, and has been photographing the Dresden Dolls and Amanda Palmer for eons now… and he also shot many of the photos for Neil Gaiman’s book “Who Killed Amanda Palmer: A Collection of Photographic Evidence.”

Kyle’s photographer life takes him to some neat places around the globe, and for the past few months Hot Breakfast! and Kyle were coincidentally in Tucson and Austin at the same time on two separate occasions, yet missing each other by just a few hours each time. We all pretended to be concerned that we were stalking each other. 🙂

Kyle often alludes to “seekrit projects” via his LiveJournal, which naturally makes his readers lean in and read extra-carefully, trying to eke out any clues as to what he’s working on and who he’s working with. The other day he barely revealed just a few small details of his latest Neil Gaiman / Amanda Palmer / Kyle collaboration, and mentioned he needed a few couples of “certain ages” willing to be photographed tastefully naked for this seekrit project. Since Matt and I are of certain ages, we volunteered, mostly because we have been wanting to finally meet Kyle! (And after you hit 40, any concerns you ever had about being naked in front of folks just goes away… we look like what we look like. Having done a lot of theater helps, too.)

This morning we headed up to Philly, where Kyle and his (jaw-droppingly beautiful) wife Trillian so warmly welcomed us and made us feel completely at home. We got down to business after learning more about the project, and we took our solemn oaths of secrecy. As a thank-you for contributing to the project, we snapped a few fun HB! photos covering our jibblies with Matt’s guitar and a strategically-placed tambourine… and hey, since we had the instruments out, we played a bit. Naked house concert! Woot!

We have a show tonight in Wilmington at the Chris White Gallery, but we figured we could do a quick living room concert. What a beautiful life we have… we are surrounded by people who are doing what they were put on this earth to do. Damn, it feels good. We don’t need a ton of money in the bank account when we have the ability and opportunity to create and share art.

Here’s a video of us singing “Defender” in Kyle’s living room. Hopefully you can see from the preview that we are indeed clothed for this rendition.

Life is pretty awesome.

Your pal,

Ji11