Kevin Parnell is a Photographer, Playwright and Wavelength's Media Editor. Can we even pretend like this isn't a conflict of interest? If he made terrible music, we'd probably keep hush hush about him playing a show on his birthday. But lucky for us he doesn't make terrible music. His songs, most written solo before being filled out by some improv jazz impresarios, are a vibrant landscape of acoustic cartoons. Ryan McLaren sat down with him and some members of his band, but they ended up getting distracted and talking about the jazz scene. So they did the email thing, which always seems to work out better anyway.

MUSIC. MUSIC. MUSIC. MUSIC. MUSIC. MUSIC. MUSIC. MUSIC. MUSIC?

The important thing about music is not instrumentation, but finding the musical in everything in else: in language and words and conversation, in streets and cityscapes, the buzz, the hum, the drone, everything around has music of its own. I think this passage from a new play I've written sums up what I'm saying: 'œListen. For a moment. Really listen. Really listen and you can hear a kind of music playing right through everyone, all these rhythms, swaying, waving, the pulse of a million little voices sipping, slurping, chirping, chitter-chattering away all around the room and all the rooms around the city. You can hear the buzz, the hum, the drone of many, many machines, and bodies reciting poems through moans and groans and shrieks and hahahahaha between pairs of lips and pairs of legs. There is so much happening all at once, so many tiny sounds that no one can ever hear it all. But concentrate and put all that aside. Listen a little bit more. A tiny bit more. What do you hear?'?

IF YOU WERE TO MAKE A MUSIC VIDEO FOR ONE OF YOUR SONGS, WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE?

I write lyrics from a very image and mood based perspective so I would definitely want an animated video, maybe a mixture of drawing/painting and CGI. Pete Thorne has done some great watercolour illustrations of some of my lyrics. A video is a great opportunity to showcase the work of other artists instead of wasting it on hack acting by a band. Depending on the song, the video would be filled with ghost pirate ships, cryptozoological creatures, crumbled castles, masquerade balls, looming skyscrapers, cups of coffee, witch's rituals, peak oil crises, melodramatic headlines, mausoleums, camouflaged paratroopers, disheveled superheroes, and apocalyptic prophecies.

IF YOU HAD TO CHOOSE A DREAM LINEUP FOR LOITERING HEROES TO HEADLINE, WHO WOULD YOU PICK TO BE ON THE BILL?

I don't know about headlining a dream lineup; I think we'd be a better opening band. It would be more gratifying to open for bands that I admire and respect rather than headline after them. Bigger bands included on the bill would be Beck, Radiohead, Sonic Youth, Kid Koala. Local bands I would love to open up for would be Republic of Safety, Jon-Rae and The River, Laura Barrett, Final Fantasy, Picastro, Deep Dark United, The Creeping Nobodies and Do Make Say Think.

WHERE DO YOU FIND INSPIRATION FOR YOUR LYRICS?

I don't usually set out to write a song about something. I take great notice of off-handed comments by people and strangers, random news clippings and headlines, books, movies and television shows, other lyricists. My songs tend to vaguely be a mixture of mythologies, childhood imagery, loosely humorous juxtapositions, and sidelined politics. I'm not informed enough to bluntly talk about or provide answers on politics and environmental issues, so if I approach these subjects, I do it from more observant and lyrical way. The most important thing for me is that in the end, almost every line of a song means something specific, even it seems to be a non-sequitar, but I think my lyrics are interesting enough that different people can interpret them in different ways.

HOW MANY ROADS MUST A MAN WALK DOWN BEFORE YOU CAN CALL HIM A MAN?

There is only one road a man ever walks and he is a man only when he reaches the point of leaving the same footprints in the very same cement.

IF YOUR BAND WERE TO BE COMPRISED ENTIRELY OF CARTOON CHARACTERS, WHO WOULD YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH?

Probably the Mystery Inc. Scooby gang. Think of all the cool places we'd get to explore while on tour: haunted mansions, forbidden jungles, ghost towns, haunted mansions. And they already have a van.