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Joseph Keckler is a musician, writer, and artist who often zeroes in on moments of daily life and spins them into absurd and affecting underworld voyages. His musical performances have been presented by the NPR Tiny Desk concert series, Lincoln Center, Centre Pompidou, and others. In 2019 he premiered two performance pieces—a dreamlike travelogue, Train With No Midnight, with Prototype Festival, and Let Me Die, an epic medley of operatic death scenes, with Opera Philadelphia—and toured the US as the national support act for Sleater-Kinney. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, Vice, Lithub, and other publications; his debut collection Dragon at the Edge of a Flat World was published in 2018 by Turtle Point Press. This year he is an artist in residence with Dartmouth and the Ringling Museum of Art and is currently working on new videos and recordings.
"Singer with a range that shatters the conventional boundaries...The sensibility of a magician, a trickster’s dark humor and a formidable musical and literary erudition. Major vocal talent"-- Stephen Holden, The New York Times
“Tantalizing… dynamic… with magnetism and poise is so high that he seems to have been born onstage.” — The Village Voice
“Riveting and beautifully absurd, Keckler singlehandedly has the power and chops to legitimately modernize a dying art form.” — Huffington Post
“His timing is impeccable, his wit is sharp… Keckler himself is the masterpiece”– Brooklyn Rail
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