INTERVIEW: ALEXANDER TOMINSKY

THE “PHILADELPHIA CHICKEN MAN” AND MUSICIAN SPEAKS

A lot of online people know about Alexander Tominsky, a Philadelphia resident who achieved viral and local infamy around two years ago when he ate 40 rotisserie chickens in 40 days, with the final bird scarfed in front of a live audience on an abandoned pier near a Walmart. They call him the “Philadelphia Chicken Man.”

Fewer people are aware of Tominsky’s history within the East Coast underground music community. I first came across his work in 2013 via a Vine that was getting shared around amongst some heads—a minor kind of virality in its own right, now that I think about it. In the clip, Tominsky, dressed up in a baseball jersey, screams “put me in coach” while shaking a fence and outputting a harsh sheet of sound. To this day, it is one of my favorite noise performances, and I have only witnessed it through my phone screen.

For well over a decade, Tominsky has been making music, first in Providence and now in Philly, both under the name Spiritual Recess and in the band Pool. His most recent tape is credited to his last name, and, over the course of our recent interview, I learned that he has an exciting new band called The Playful Bunch. About that interview: Last Saturday, I treated myself to a train ride to Philly, where I spent some time driving around the city with Tominksy while the tape recorder was rolling. With the Eagles in the coming Super Bowl, it seemed like the perfect excuse to chat. The first order of business: picking up some food at Wawa.

People love to eat Wawa over a trash can. 

Absolutely. Over a trash can. At the gas pump. There was this thing online where people were rating their favorite Wawa parking lots. I have this problem where I don't eat in the morning. So this is the first thing I've had so far today. 

How's it hitting?

It's good. No, it's really good. I should get a little gas, I'm the kind of fucking weirdo where I could just fill up my tank and it'd be fine, but I always decide to put in like $15 and then nearly run out of gas and then find a gas station to put in another $15.

Is that some holdover mindset from a different moment in your life? 

I don't know what it is. It's not like I'm trying to save money or it's not that I can't afford to fill up my gas tank. Maybe I just like the excitement of potentially running out of gas. I'm an unorganized mess. I always have garbage in my pockets. Gas is always on E. Water bottles near my bed. 

That was an excellent sandwich.  

I’m happy it worked. I was excited when you said you were coming down, you wanted to check out a Wawa, and I'm happy we went to that one. 

So you think that's a superior Wawa? 

Maybe I'm just biased because I go there a lot when I'm on my way to the fishing hole. 

What makes a good Wawa? The kitchens are a little bit bigger?

The kitchen’s bigger, which means things come out faster. But there's really nice small Wawas, too, that kind of have a humble feeling to them. The other good thing about Wawa is if you use their ATM, they don't charge you. 

That’s cool.

I'm in a lot of debt right now, so I might change banks. I was talking to someone who does that stuff for a living and he said if you get a loan and use your house as collateral, you can get a lower interest rate than your actual credit card. 

So you own your place in South Philly? 

Yeah. It'll be seven years in July. It's a small little 900 square foot row home. All the neighbors are great. I've got this one neighbor, she doesn't speak any English, she’s Vietnamese, but we’re best friends, sometimes she'll knock on the door and I'll go out and she'll hand me a bag of fruit and two giant cans of Bud Ice. Yeah, the Tastykake factory’s down this way.

Having been familiar with some of your performances, the chicken thing seemed like part of a larger body of work to me, but most people who were following it and writing about it didn't know you had this history in underground music. 

Yeah, a lot of people don't know about that. I didn't start it as an art project but it turned into one naturally. There wasn't any music really included with this project but yeah, I used to do a bit of performance.

The first time I became aware of you was from a Vine. 

Oh yeah. 

You were doing this harsh noise performance where you were dressed up in a baseball uniform.

Yeah, my favorite part about that performance is I wasn't fully prepared. So while I was driving to the gig, I was recording in my car and I don't know if it comes through but there's this other recording that plays where it's the point of view of my dad and my dad's like, “Put in my kid! Put in my kid!” And then it transitions to where I'm going into the bushes and then my dad goes, “Alex, what are you doing? What are you doing?” And then I pull a guitar out of the bushes and he's like, “No!” And I start rocking on the guitar. 

Why did you end up in Providence? Are you from Rhode Island? 

I am from Rhode Island. Yeah, this town called Burrillville, which is the top left-hand corner of Connecticut and Massachusetts, but I moved to Providence when I was 17, still in high school, into this warehouse space called 17 Mules. I lived there and then lived in this other place, Castlevania, and then I moved in with my friends Mandy and Kylie, and then I lived with my friend Christopher. And then I made the decision to move to Philly, which was probably the best decision I've ever made. 

So you were involved with underground music when you were a teenager? Is that why you ended up in Providence?

So, no, actually, I watched that documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston and I realized that you don't have to be incredibly musically talented, if you just press record, hopefully something a bit honest, something special will come out of it. So I did a lot of that on my own terms. I wasn't really aware of noise or that whole scene, but then I went down to Providence, maybe when I was 15 or 16, and went to a show at Mars Gas. And I was like, Oh my god. I think my friend, Ali Denning, made this giant paper mache skull. I saw all this stuff and it was just so inspiring. I was like, I have to keep going to shows and move here.

So throughout your time in Providence, you were making music? 

Oh yeah. Music, sometimes I would do some weird non-music stuff. There was one set that I thought was really good, where I had a shop-vac sucking the tape out of a tape player, and so it was kind of making its own music, and I was the overlord. Oh my god, I'm taking this into Jersey. 

Oh shit. 

Yeah, I didn't realize I took a wrong turn. 

Can you get off here? Are we hitting the bridge right now? 

Oh, we're hitting the bridge, baby. 

You are in that band Pool, that band did some touring. 

Yeah, we toured a few times. I’ve done a little bit of touring with my own music. Like, my first tour was with Christopher Forgus and my good friend Chad Corbi who was in this band Toe Ring. But I haven't really been playing solo as much. A lot of the times when I would play, I would kind of get savage and wreck my gear. And so I don't really have anything to make music with right now, which doesn't mean I can't create something. 

Well, if you put out a record last year, right? 

Oh, the In Bog one. Yeah, that was a five year, on and off—maybe not five, like four years of recording. I would go real crazy with it and then kind of just stop. When I'd go back to it, it was like I didn't really recognize it, so it was fresh, and I recorded over that. It got to the point where I was so forgetful, there were points where I was recording the same song three different ways. But I am very happy with the way that it came out. It's very kind of slow and musical. 

Did it get much response?

Not really. I posted it on Twitter and didn't really get much reaction to it. A lot of people don't really know about my music, which is fine. I make it for myself anyway. So I really enjoy listening to it. I don't think it's vain to say that it's some of my favorite music out right now. I listen to that tape quite often. 

It's that and Philly sports talk radio?

Yeah, I don't really listen to any music. Sports talk radio, WIP-FM, I think it's so fun because it's so honest and brutal. It gives you a good pulse on the morale of the city, depending on the condition and the temperament of the caller, you know, it’s like if someone's gonna let you go at a green light or not. 

Yeah, wow. So Philly's in a pretty good mood right now. 

Oh, Philly's in a great mood. Yeah, you walk down the street, people are high-fiving, everyone's in the high-fives zone right now. 

It's that magical period of time, that bye week. 

Yeah, yeah. And let's just hope it turns out well because being in Philadelphia, we all love each other, but we'll all cuss each other out. There's been a handful of times where someone drove a little bit too close to me while I'm crossing the sidewalk, especially if I’m with my dogs, I'll just kick their door, you know what I mean? That sort of thing wouldn't happen because they would let me cross the street in this sort of climate. 

Did it take you a bit after moving from Providence to get into the rhythm of the city? 

Yeah, I'm not sure what it is. There's an energy here and it tempts and toys with you when you first move here or if you visit. For some, it's this dark force that is like, can you handle the heat? Can you stick around? Once you get through that, you're good to go. Like, I had a coworker that moved here from elsewhere and he would get heckled and picked on. He was on the subway once and someone punched him. Well, someone punched him, and he punched the other guy back and neutralized the problem. And after that, the hazing process was over and now he has no trouble at all. 

People in Philly can pick up on when you've paid your dues in the city? 

They can and they can smell it, but it's also just like, my buddy Eric, every time he comes here, he steps in dog shit. So I think it's also supernatural. I can't remember the last time I stepped in dog shit, but he steps in dog shit every time he's here, it's disgusting. 

At what point did you know the chicken thing was going to be big? I feel like I tapped in on that pretty early?

You did, and you're actually one of the biggest motivators to keep going. Because I posted on Twitter, but I only had like 350 followers. But then I started posting on Instagram, but I was afraid that my family would think that I was having another manic episode, which I was. So I did it to just close friends only. And then you were like, Oh, there's something really special about this, and so it gave me the courage to keep moving, because one of the problems was not only was I afraid that it was going to make my family nervous, it sometimes made me feel really nervous because I was like, what the fuck am I doing? 

So I guess it started taking off when I put up all those flyers—all of them as in, like, 12. I wasn't going to do it because I was afraid that the neighborhood would think I'm bananas. So I was a little nervous about it, and I had work in an hour, so I frantically got that poster together and posted it up at a few spots. The minute I knew that it was going to gain traction was on my way back, there were crowds of people looking at the posters, and they were only up for like 15 minutes. Something about it really, I think, either confused, or—I’m not sure why, but people kind of found it to be interesting. I also think that they might have thought it was a total joke.

How deep were you in when you put up those posters? 

So I think I was at 32, because it was a week before the 40th.

Early on, where was your mind at? 

I just got like this, I don't know, obsession with it. 

Where were you getting the chickens? 

Well, it was convenient because there was a grocery store right next to where I work. I would pick them up there, eat them before work. And yeah, I'm pretty sure it was a manic obsession. Sometimes I can get really obsessed with different things. I was like, Okay, I'm just going to do this every day for no reason. And then it got to the point where the mania had faded away. And that's where it was like, Fuck, what am I doing? And so it was a challenge to push through to keep doing it. 

I can relate to that. You get an idea and you're really excited about the idea, and you work on it, and then you get to a point where you start to hate the idea, but you see it through and you put it out into the world and you move on. 

And putting it out in the world was really encouraging. I mean, Philadelphia is a pretty tough city, if they think you're bullshit or they think what you're doing is stupid, they'll run you out of the city. 

Oh, I know. 

Instead they embraced it in a really powerful way. And then also just growing up and kind of being a little bit weird and sometimes wanting to be reserved about being a little weird and maybe a little bit self-conscious about it, being around pockets of people that aren't that weird can be kind of annoying. To do something and have a whole community of different people embrace it was really the most rewarding part of it all for me. 

Take me to the final few days. Were you in a fucked up headspace? 

Oh, fucked up headspace for sure. My Twitter was blowing up, my stomach was twisted. 

Were you eating anything but chicken? 

At the beginning I would eat carrots and weird shit, but towards the end because of the sodium, I could barely bear to eat the chicken itself. I had no appetite, my stomach was super sour. So I lost a lot of weight, I lost over 15 pounds easily. 

Do now you get recognized all the time?

Yeah, it can be overwhelming. Yesterday I went to this bar after work, I went to the slower area upstairs, and got bombarded by waves of people. I like it—people tell me different stories, that it made them really happy in times that they needed to find happiness. Two days ago I was at another bar near my house, and this couple came up to me and told me that they met on the pier, and they've been together ever since. And that scenario has happened more than a few times. My wife's a professor, and one of her students met their partner there as well. So it's cool, but sometimes people see it as a treasure hunt thing.

I always make sure to take a lot of time, because I think that there's something to learn from everyone. While I think it's sad that some people idolize me for something so boring and silly, you know those same people have done way more beautiful things, I'm sure, and I take the time to appreciate them as well. It can be exhausting but it's also rewarding at the same time. 

Did you ever get offered any endorsement deals as a result of all of this?

I missed out on a lot of money purposefully, which I beat myself up about. In other times I'm kind of happy that I kept it. 

You got some local business offers?

Local businesses, some corporate grocery stores. The one that I'm really happy I didn't do is this group reached out and they wanted to make the poster an NFT. And I was offered a hundred grand. 

Jesus.

Plus three percent of every transaction. And I guarantee you the same sort of thing happened to that Hawk Tuah girl. She was naive enough. I don't blame her a bit. I think she got taken advantage of and that's what they were trying to do to me. They were gonna do some rug pull shit and I'm happy that I did not follow through with that. I also didn't do it for money so I don't want to make money to do it. I made this mattress commercial without this business's permission. I was like, Wow that'd be so cool if this guy saw this and wanted to actually have me be their guy and they were really upset about it. 

That's hilarious, don't they know that people are trying to pay you for this? 

That's what I said. I think he thought I was trying to scam him. He might have been in the witness protection program or something. 

Do you feel like, purposefully or not, you’ve become a sort of Philly folk hero?

It’s been two years and people really seem to not have forgotten.

Any new projects you’ve been working on?

I just started a new band. That's cool. 

Oh, really? What kind of music? 

It's like, you know, nut allergy, daddy's gun shit. A little like, “Ye Olde Married Gentleman,” grandma's house style. 

You got to extrapolate more on that. 

It’s really hard to explain. It's got some medieval vibes, with dark rock. We have one song that's kind of a polka song about a child finding their dad's gun and wanting to play with it with their friend that's over. Another one's about grandma's house—this mom brings her kid to grandma's house maybe a little too often. Then we cover, you know, “Ye Old Merry Gentlemen,” which is good. There's some hard rock parts. There's some other kind of Italian cinema music styles. It's really loose, but it all finds its way to be connected somehow. 

What's this band called?

The Playful Bunch.

That's a good name. 

I like it because it's open-ended. There's no rules. It can be a really scary name. It can be a really fun name.  

And you are a Freemason, too? How did that happen? 

The Masonic Lodge helped my wife get a grant like 14 years ago. She was friends with this guy Scott who's super interesting and I was always really curious about it and finally I asked and joined and it's pretty cool. A lot of different characters in the lodge. It's a good opportunity to fraternize and get to learn from people that you normally wouldn't because religion and politics is something that is never discussed. One of the guys in the Lodge is in charge of the clock tower at City Hall, another one runs the world's largest organ, others are cops, firefighters, financial people. Yeah, it doesn't matter what. There's one guy that's in it that's pretty much homeless and everyone just sees each other as equal. 

Are there any sort of rituals? 

I can't really talk about that stuff. A lot of people are pretty surprised and concerned when I tell them I'm a Freemason because they're like, it’s illuminati or all it's a cult, which couldn't be further from the truth. People watch National Treasure and they get all excited. 

What is your prediction for the Super Bowl this year?

A mystical man dressed as a handyman yelled out to me while I was walking down the street. He told me it would be 28-17 Eagles. He was very convincing. So I trust in that outcome.

Alexander Tominsky on Instagram and Twitter