“The coolest question that I could get asked is to describe the change that happens to the music when certain perches get ascended to,” says Rushadicus, aka the Cello Goblin.
“Um, like metaphorical perches?”
“No,” he says, calmly. “I mean literal physical perches, like the way it feels to play on top of a tower, or on top of a tree, or up on some railing, or hanging upside down off something, because it changes my feeling, and the music becomes exciting … which I guess becomes metaphorically relevant to the type of the music.”
There are multiple videos on IG and TikTok of the Cello Goblin, or Rushad Eggleston, ascending to many perches, while playing both cello and a kazoo, singing and pattering.
That’s right: Rushadicus climbs on tables, flagpoles, chairs, beams, even the cello itself, so that his music—which for lack of a better term I’d call elven speed-metal—can reach new heights.
The show defies genre. It’s not fair to Eggleston’s musical talent to call it performance art, though he creates quite a spectacle in colorful costumes, making odd noises and luring the audience into the moment—whether that involves deep discomfort or profound joy.
His strange and wonderful musical storytelling is entirely improvised, which allows Rushadicus to pull from his extensive personal lore created from years of live performance and online videos.
That lore is a rotating menagerie of archetypes—with a cackling, joyous goblin at the center—but there are also tree sprites, rabbits, jesters, clowns, fairies, a very sweet little boy, and a lot of hilarious impressions of “normal” people that I’m not sure he realizes are hilarious. Eggleston insists he is not a comedian, but rather a “rowdy mystic.”
His current tour is an evolution of all the music that has come before. Eggleston grew up in Monterey, where he learned guitar and improvisation, then went on to study classical cello on a full scholarship at Berklee College of Music and delved into the folk genre.
But he got bored, and discovered metal. At some point, each type of music that he mastered felt stale and he had the devilish desire to subvert and transcend it.
Thus began the formal phase of what Rushadicus calls “goblinity,” though, he acknowledges, “I’ve always been a goblin. I’ve always been weird. I’ve always made up words.”
One such word is “jick,” which, from what I can tell, is a type of goblin prana or chi. A “vejickment” is a show, and his followers—both online and at his shows—seem to know all about it, making comments like: “nice jick.”
And it’s not like the vejickment is suckitudinal. No, this guy is talented, and could honestly be playing anything anywhere. His manager, Ryan Masters of Heroic Dose, calls him a “legit musical genius.”
Rushadicus manages to evoke sounds from a cello and a kazoo that I would have never thought possible—he really does sound metal AF, but also weirdly classical, jazzy, not to mention somewhat feral, and always full of surprises, which are part of the art.
“When people are in disbelief, they get to leave the mundaneness of life and go into an alternative chaotic goblin reality, which is sometimes kind of happy.”
That happiness spreads to fans, one of which gave him some of his most treasured feedback: “You’re doing what I wish I could do, but I can’t, so thank you for doing it.”
The Cello Goblin and Pacing will perform at 8pm on Aug. 22 at Art Boutiki, 44 Race St, San Jose Tickets: $17.69; artboutiki.com.
