About the Artist

I caught the creative bug on Feb. 9, 1964, when The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. I started writing songs, wearing bangs and Beatle boots, and making scary noises on a Harmony through a Vox Super Beatle. I played in original bands throughout high school and started college as a music major. My grades were shitty, but my writing was good and I got recruited by the English department and switched majors, taking science requirements “pass/fail” and blowing the doors off blue book writing exams. I studied the progressive poets and novelists–John Ashbery, Arthur Rimbaud, Adrienne Rich, William S. Burroughs, Henry Miller, Thomas Pynchon et al–and in the process created Baby Bingus, the omnipotent terror in diapers, in 1974. I also took creative writing classes, where I could let those wild, feral demons run free.

After graduating I pursued commercial music until around 1982, when the various occupational hazards began to take a toll on my creativity. I fled LA back to my Bay Area home, kept writing songs, recording and performing while getting married and making babies (none of whom we named “Bingus.”) I got a job as a copywriter at an ad agency, morphed into writer/producer and creative director roles, started a digital agency (one of the very first), and continued making records.

Then, around 1999, my mother gave me a small set of oils and I began to paint landscapes. Mom was my “rep” and managed to sell my paintings to the local Marin matrons. For a pittance, of course. That’s when the plot for my first novel, Hack, popped into my addled brain. I titled it “Hack” because I felt like a hack: a hack musician and a hack painter, just like Henry Griffin. The story flood gates opened then, and I had more ideas than I knew what to do with, but plenty of time at the corporate office between conference calls and powerpoints to write them down.

When the stories hit a speed bump, I pick up my guitar or my paintbrushes and let the grey matter wander. I’ve been playing with an instrumental quintet, The Treble Makers, at a local coffee shop every Saturday morning for the last 25 years–a weekly brain reboot. Still, the story pot continues to bubble, so stay tuned. More lunacy awaits!

If you would like to stay abreast of happenings in the world of Bingus, check out my Substack. Le Enfant has frequent violent brainstorms that, if not expressed, cause him to level entire cities with a sweep of his giant pudgy hand. You want Baby Bingus on your side. Take if from a career reprobate. 

Finally, thanks for visiting the Land of Bingus. May the farce be with you. 

- Jeb Harrison, assistant minister of Silly Walks.