Known for their imagery as much as their music, avant-garde musical art collective, The Residents are one of the most iconic bands, ever. While the band’s experimental sounds are not likely to score any Top 40 airplay, their visual element over the past five decades has guaranteed an introduction to new generations of fans. Whether it’s the tuxedoed eyeballs, beaked denizens or any other of their guises, The Residents never fail to make an impression.
Plans for the groups 2026 originally included a tour to celebrate the 45th anniversary of their six-song, 1979 album, Eskimo, which was to include a date at The Belly Up Tavern on January 15. Once The Residents are back on the road, the now postponed road trip will feature the album played in its entirety. Check The Residents website for rescheduled dates.
What inspired the upcoming Eskimo tour? I spoke to Homer Flynn, founding member and co-owner of The Cryptic Corporation, the management and public relations firm who represents The Residents.
“This started with the French consulate, kind of,” said Flynn. “Something was organized between the French consulate in San Francisco and some French government agency in Paris, and this was, I don’t know, 7, 8, 9 years ago, and they decided to do this event where one day they would bring in as many musicians, entertainers, speakers at meetings as possible, and ultimately they requested The Residents to come in and kind of be the closer on that. It was March of 2024, and so the interesting thing about it was that they only wanted 20 minutes. 20 minutes is not that hard to do.”
While The Residents didn’t have anything that was ready to perform at that point, “somehow Eskimo had been floating around, and they decided, well, let’s just try it and see what comes out of it. And it came together effortlessly.” They then got another request to perform, at the Exoticon Festival in Los Angeles last summer (June 07, 2025). “At that point, they expanded it to more of like a full set, and that went really well. They started talking to agents, and ultimately things just kind of started falling into place.”
Although The Residents released an album in 2025, Doctor Dark, the pending tour focuses exclusively on Eskimo. At six songs, the albums brevity was a minor challenge. What can audiences expect at the upcoming multi-media show? “In and of itself, (Eskimo) it’s not quite long enough,” Flynn said. “So, they started researching, looking for ways to expand it, and ultimately found, (while) researching the album in the 1970s, there are all of these incredible Eskimo folktales from the 1800s, early 1900s. And so they went through (them), and there are, I don’t know, dozens of these things. A lot of them are very cool. And so, they picked out five of them. I’m their visual person, their graphics person. So, I’ve been working on creating new videos for these things, and that’s gone really well. There will definitely be some visual surprises in that way.”
One legendary tale about the Residents involves the theft of one of the eyeball masks.
“That was at a show in L.A. It was probably 1985, 1986, something like that,” Flynn recalled. “This was in the old Hollywood Palace. It’s an old vaudeville place. And so, when you get backstage, there’s this spiral staircase that goes up and connects to all the dressing rooms. Somebody snuck backstage. And while the Residents were in the green room, I think, after the show, somebody grabbed an eyeball, then went up another flight of stairs, found an open window and dropped it out the window into a debris box below. And then casually walked out. After the show, everybody goes, wait, there’s an eyeball missing. Nobody could figure out how the thing got out, because you don’t put that under your coat. This was right around the holidays. Then we get a call a week or two later. Some guy says that a friend of his had stolen it. And he had stolen it back from the friend and wanted to return it. Which he did.”
So that eyeball made its way home. Unfortunately, that was not the case a second time. “About ten years ago, somebody wanted one of the eyeballs for a big museum show,” Flynn continued. “And then the museum show traveled around. I think it went to Japan and Europe. It finally came back and was in Seattle. And so, they wanted to ship it back. But ultimately, I’m the one that kind of takes care of all this stuff. They didn’t bother to tell me in advance if they were shipping it. And I was on vacation when they shipped it. They shipped it back and FedEx put it on my front porch, and somebody stole it. And that one has never surfaced again, which is too bad.”
The Residents members have always been anonymous. How crucial is that to The Residents’ mystique? “I think it’s very crucial to their personal happiness. And enjoyment of life,” Flynn said. “I mean, you know, they’re extremely anti-celebrity. And they really enjoy having separation and space between their personal lives and their professional lives. And the anonymity really kind of guarantees that. I know that’s really important to them. I mean, my feeling is that relative to their mystique and how their people view them, it was more important early on than I would say that it is now. People have just kind of accepted it more and stopped.”
After more than five decades of making music, The Residents are perhaps bigger than ever, having been influential on the music, performance and art scenes. Indeed, British label Cherry Red Records is currently in the midst of a major reissue campaign for The Residents catalog. How does Flynn feel about the legacy of the band? “I think that the myth is growing quite larger,” he said.
www.residents.com
