Brains and Talent: Performer John Wesley Harding

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BRITISH FOLK-ROCKER John Wesley Harding has always been known for having too much wit, brains and talent to confine himself to music. That's why he's a best-selling author under his given name, Wesley Stace, and why he and his band, the Minus Five, are teaming up with equally ironic and absurdist comedian Eugene Mirman for Wes & Eugene's Cabinet of Wonders. The traveling variety show features a rotating group of performers and musicians; we're getting a stripped-down version at Iota on Saturday.

» EXPRESS: How did you come to do tours with comedians and such?
» HARDING: Well, we've done it around America, so I know exactly how this works now. Started off, I was in New York and I did these three shows called the Cabinet of Wonders, and the idea was to bring together my writer friends and my music friends, because my writer friends all want to be rock stars, and my music friends want their words listened to. It's a really cool tour because you get to hang out with your friends, but you also get to see what your friends do, and you get to see how each city reflects the show.

» EXPRESS: Speaking of variety, your Web site noted you're a fan of both Henry Purcell and Cat Stevens.
» HARDING: Purcell is kind of a bit of an obsession of mine, and my third novel [coming out this year] is about a composer who writes the first great English opera since "Dido and Aeneas." … Singers like myself — folk singers or pop singers or whatever — there's a real kinship with the baroque because it's based on the same song structures as I use.
As for Cat Stevens, I just think he's — despite some occasionally overly optimistic and rather empty lyrics — I just think he was the great voice of the singer-songwriter movement. Which was a very interesting moment, after Bob Dylan, when people said, "We don't want to reach for the stars like Bob Dylan; we want to write about our lives." A lot of that music was about approaching maturity.

» EXPRESS: How do you think folk music has changed since you started?
» HARDING: Well, that's what "Top of the Bottom" is about on my album. The game has changed since I started, and I'm lucky I get to keep doing it. ... That song was about what's happened to music, and making it a funny and entertaining critique.

» EXPRESS: With all your other projects, will you continue to write, record and perform music?
» HARDING: I will have to, because I don't think any record labels are going to come in and say, "Hey, it's 1992. Let us give you lots of money that we will probably never get back."

» Iota, 2832 Wilson Blvd., Arlington; with Chris Mills, Julia Slavin, Sat. May 23, 4:30 p.m., $15; 703-522-8340. (Clarendon)

Photo courtesy Bill Wadman