Portland, Oregon’s Kyle Cheatham recently brought his Night Game Cult project to the back to the Denton stage for his first-ever homecoming show. The musician was warmly received, bringing his outlandish sense of bizarre theatrics and unforgettable songs to a crowd that remembers a slightly different Denton.

The sometimes controversial Cheatham also has the distinction of having played in revered acts such as Pointy Shoe Factory and The Ditch Kids, but it was in The Night Game Cult that I really noticed his unique visual and musical abilities. The live shows were sometimes carried out in complete darkness with body-painted backup dancers, with the singer himself emoting his synth anthems under a layer of makeup. Needless to say this wasn’t always understood by local audiences at the time.

But as it so often happens in the world of music, Cheatham’s performances seem less strange in 2011 than they did five years ago. It’s much more common to see performers that use minimal accompaniment or backing tracks now doing so at popular festivals. Hindsight has made it much more clear what a local innovator Cheatham was and it’s good to see him back in The Metroplex getting recognition. You have a second chance to catch the singer at a followup performance in Dallas on Saturday when he’ll be appearing at Pastime Tavern with Oak Cliff’s Darktown Strutters.

FrontRow: Tell me about the transition from The Ditch Kids and Pointy Shoe Factory into Night Game Cult. What did you take from those experiences that you used in your solo act? How did you want it to differ?

Kyle Cheatham: Well, being a solo act means you don’t have to worry about others flaking on practice or not contributing to promotion. It’s all on your shoulders. Plus you have complete creative control.

But Roberto Barsi of the Ditch Kids really opened up my ears to the piano/keyboard. Just a phenomenal pianist. And Daron Beck and Tyler Walker of Pointy Shoe Factory got me into a whole bunch of new music I maybe would have never heard (Chuck Jackson, Korla Pandit, Martin Denny, Quintron, White Noise, and United States of America to name a few), which definitely had an impact on the Night Game Cult sound.

I never went out of my way to make The Night Game Cult differ from my other bands. It just kind of happened the way it happened. I just wanted to make dark, electronic, glammy music, but also positive music with lots of theatrics and black lights and candles and stuff. Phantasm 2012.

FR: What originally brought you to Denton? What were some of the bands and who were some of the artists that influenced you or that originally connected with?

KC: I lived in Coppell and there was nothing to do there. Denton seemed like this musical wonderland. Space Rock was huge right when I got to Denton. It’s like, “Oh, Six Finger Satellite and Silver Apples and Mazinga Phazer and The Make Up play here? I want to be here.”

Some big local influences in 1997 were The Banes, Asi Nisi Masi, Hairpin Curve, Socially Retarded, Maxine’s Radiator, Light Bright Highway, Sub Oslo, Wiring Prank, Center Divider, and The Sillies.

Artists that had and have a big impact on the Night Game Cult’s sound/presentation are John Carpenter (Assault on Precinct 13), Tangerine Dream (namely the Firestarter soundtrack), Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave (Phantasm soundtrack), The Germs, Clan of Xymox, Tones on Tail, anything glam (Bowie, Eno, Roxy, T. Rex, etc.).

Visual art like Raymond Pettibon, Aubrey Beardsley and the films of Kenneth Anger have had a lot of sway.

FR: There was very little music that I can think of locally that sounded like Night Game Cult in the time that it existed. How did you feel about how different it was? Was that a point of pride or did you sometimes feel like you couldn’t relate to others artistically?

KC: I think the only things that made my stuff so different was my lyrical content being super, super optimistic in a not-so-cryptic fashion. And it was during maybe a really dark time in our history (post 9/11)? I feel like I needed to be really hopeful and that people connected with that because a lot of us were scared.

I also think I was a f*****g clown, though maybe in a more Santa Sangre/Netherworld sort of way. People like theater and I think I was doing that when maybe not a lot of other local acts were.

I don’t think I was ever really that proud, mainly because I wasn’t on a label. It was the opposite, where I saw all my friends bands (Jet Screamer, Mandarin, Lift to Experience, Darktown Strutters, Baptist Generals) get signed or get help releasing their records, and I thought: “I have something just as cool, just different, and why can’t I be on a label?!”

But I could also be a huge a**hole, so… Also I feel had I not taken drugs and drank so f*****g much that maybe more dreams would have come true. Sooner, at least.

FR: Not to get too comparison-happy, but you were doing really innovative work at the same time as people like John Maus. That sort of style hadn’t really caught on then. I feel like people have come around more to a solo performer that uses prerecorded tracks much more than they did at one time. Has that been your experience? How do people react to your music in Portland compared to Denton?

This one is tough. I think what makes my stuff way more interesting in the club is that I dress up or do light shows. There is definitely something to watching people play their own instruments, and all I do musically is sing (though I do play the instruments in the recording). But again, I think lyrical content can go a long way, as can a good voice, which at times I think I have.

I’ve heard the word fraud thrown out a few times, but to me, a fraud is like what Milli Vanilli did. Like “This is us singing,” and it’s not.

People in Denton seem to be more open to what I do, especially now. People in Portland haven’t really heard me yet because it is really hard to get a show in that town. Super competitive. Over 1,000,000 people. Plus I was a bit of a mess for a while there, just drinkin’ too much.

I’ve only played 2 shows in Portland in 2 1/2 years. I’m gonna finally play at a good club there, but that’s only happening because a friend of mine from another town is touring through. Portland has been a tough city. Those who have heard me seem to love it, but that’s only a hand full of peeps.

FR: As distinctive as your music is, your stark, line-heavy artwork that accompanies your releases. It’s almost iconic in Denton. You see it on people’s walls. I’ve even seen a tattoo. How important was the visual aspect of the music to you and what inspired it?

I’ve always loved dressing up. Me and my sister would dress up in drag and just break out the make up, and I guess I would always take it to another level. Like I would just cover my face in yellow paint just to see what it would look like. A little glitter here, and a  little mascara there…voila!

Keith Moon was always a hero and he was all about dressing up. I think I’ve always felt that my music needs that other facet, because it just feels a little empty live without something visual going on.

Who has a tattoo of my art? I want to see that! I want to make the world look like a dream sometimes, too. More colorful,more surreal, less brown and boring. The world we see should inspire us to want to live in it.

FR: When your music was featured on a compilation that the website I once wrote for assembled (it was the track “The Sparkling Sea”), the reaction from some of the more musically conservative among us seemed to really not understand what you were doing. I thought that was great, and it made me realize that we were really getting somewhere, by including music that was getting attacked by people that had pretty narrow tastes.

You’ve always been pretty sharp about breaking down the criticism your music has received, and some of your criticism of the critics has been spot-on (including some reserved for me). What would you say to those critics?

Oh yeah, they said I should turn down the ‘suck’ knob, and that I sounded too “1986.” Funny how 1986 got really popular after that, what with 80′s Nite everywhere.

But I think critics have every right to hate whatever they want to hate, just as I have every right to hate them. It’s just opinion and you can’t argue about taste. But you can persuade people to like what you think is cool, and that could give more power to what you think is cool. Which in turn could give you more power, if thats what you’re aiming for. Art has sway.

FR: I’ve heard nothing but praise for Television cover band you played in once? Any chance that could happen again?

Televation will happen again. The name’s too f*****’ good for it not to!

FR: What has it been like to be back, now that you have had one show in The Metroplex? What’s next for you and making music in Portland?

Being back in DFW has been so great! I find the warmth of people in my home town of Denton to be quite unique to most anywhere I’ve ever been. I realize that I really took Dallas-Fort Worth for granted, and yeah, your summers are hellish, but so are Portland’s endlessly rainy winters.

As far as The Night Game cult is concerned, I just recorded a new EP with a guy in Portland named Josh Inwood under the guise of ‘Neverland,’ but I think we’re just going to call it The Night Game Cult because it’s simply a better name. We’re playing at a club in Portland on Aug. 31 called The Holocene with R. Stevie Moore and Tropical Ooze. R. Stevie’s tour manager is in the works to set up the 1st Night Game Cult US tour.

Image: Kyle Cheatham in one of his dramatic live performances at Denton’s Secret Headquarters, 2007. Photo by Brit Robisheaux. Courtesy of Brit Robisheaux.