The Kellerman–Mudpucket Connection (Rumored, of course)

 

The Kellerman–Mudpucket Connection (Rumored, of course)

*Most people who remember Herbie Mudpucket — and there aren’t many — say he spent the mid‑70s drifting between studios, bowling alleys, and whatever roadside bars would let him plug in his three‑string bass.

Around that same time, a rhythm guitarist named Marty Kellerman was quietly slipping in and out of Pure Prairie League rehearsals, filling in on a few shows, and then disappearing before anyone could write his name down correctly.

There’s a persistent rumor among collectors that Kellerman and Mudpucket actually played together for a brief stretch in ’76, forming a duo called Kellerman & Mudpucket: The Two-Man Highway. No recordings have surfaced, but one engineer swears he saw a tape labeled “Mudpucket/Kellerman – Don’t Touch” in a Nashville storage closet sometime in the late ’80s.

Whether the tape ever existed is anyone’s guess. But if it did, it’s probably sitting in a thrift store bin right now between a polka instructional LP and a Herb Alpert knockoff.

And some people think one of those two men — maybe Kellerman, maybe Mudpucket — might still be around, posting under the name Ralph Rumpelton.*

Tom Waits: Critics Discussion

 Gerald Thimbleton

Editor-in-Chief, Beige Canvas Quarterly Champion of classical technique, sworn enemy of “modernist sloppiness.”

and

Professor Lionel Greaves North Atlantic School of Modern Reproduction Studies The man who can compare anything to a forgotten 1912 Latvian woodcut movement.

🎙️ THE GREAT TOM WAITS ARTWORK DEBATE

Juror8davis (left) / Ralph Rumpelton (right)

Gerald Thimbleton (opening salvo)

“Let me begin by stating the obvious: Juror8davis’s drawing on the left is the only one here that respects the sanctity of the medium. Look at the graphite discipline — the folds of the suit, the tension in the shoulders, the way the microphone is rendered with the seriousness of a courtroom exhibit. This is a portrait of Tom Waits as a performer, not a mascot.

Rumpelton’s piece, on the other hand, is charming in the way a bar coaster illustration is charming. It has personality, yes, but personality is not technique. The guitar looks like it’s been carved out of a loaf of bread. And that text — ‘THE GREY ALBUM THE BEATLES’ — is a slap in the face to typographic dignity. It’s as if the painting itself is shrugging.”

Professor Lionel Greaves (counterattack)

“Gerald, your devotion to classical technique is admirable, but you’re missing the entire point of Rumpelton’s work. What you call ‘bar coaster charm’ is actually a deliberate invocation of the Post-Industrial Sentimentalist Revival, a movement from 1978 that only existed for six months in a warehouse in Halifax.

Rumpelton’s Tom Waits is not performing — he is waiting. Waiting for the next chord, the next cigarette, the next existential disappointment. The flatness you criticize is a reference to the Neo-Stationary School, whose artists believed depth was a capitalist illusion.

Meanwhile, Juror8davis’s drawing, while technically proficient, is trapped in the tyranny of realism. It’s a beautiful rendering, yes, but it’s also exactly what a drawing of Tom Waits is supposed to look like. Rumpelton’s piece asks: What if Tom Waits were a myth? A rumor? A half-remembered folk tale told by someone who never met him?”

Gerald Thimbleton (bristling)

“Lionel, every time you speak I feel like I’m being chased through an encyclopedia. The ‘Post-Industrial Sentimentalist Revival’ sounds like something you invented on the walk over here.

Rumpelton’s work is not mythic — it’s casual. It’s Tom Waits on a bench, rendered with the looseness of someone who said, ‘Eh, good enough.’ The drawing on the left has intent. It has structure. It has the kind of shading that makes you believe the artist actually looked at a human being instead of a blurry reference photo.”

Professor Lionel Greaves (smiling like a man who loves being misunderstood)

“Casualness is the point. Rumpelton’s Tom Waits is the Tom Waits of the Everyday Sublime, a concept explored by the short-lived Hungarian movement Grey Romanticism, which believed that greatness emerges from the mundane.

The bench, the guitar, the slightly off-kilter proportions — these are not flaws. They are invitations. Rumpelton is saying: Tom Waits belongs to you. He is not a distant icon. He is a guy you might see at the bus stop humming a melody that will ruin your life in the best way.”

Gerald Thimbleton (final blow)

“Invitations are for dinner parties, Lionel. Art requires rigor. Juror8davis gives us a Tom Waits forged in sweat and stage lights. Rumpelton gives us a Tom Waits who looks like he’s waiting for his Uber.”

Professor Lionel Greaves (final flourish)

“And yet, Gerald, sometimes the Uber is the stage.”

🎤 Who wins?

Honestly, neither — and that’s the fun. Juror8davis gives you the classic Waits: gritty, loud, alive. Rumpelton gives you the mythic Waits: quiet, strange, folkloric.

Two different worlds. Two different philosophies. Both unmistakably Tom Waits.

Carl Wilson has been Rumpeltized

“Painted under the supervision of a bored houseplant.”

• • Ralph Rumpelton
    Carl Wilson has been Rumpeltized
    RR-2025 #161Medium: MS Paint on digital canvas, 580 × 572 px
    Created: 2025
    The Rumpelton Continuity (est. 1976)
    Collection of the Artist

 What the critics are saying:

>>From the Penthouse Desk of Reginald Thornberry III 

Author of "Everyone Else Is Wrong: A Life in Superior Taste"

"I have gazed into the abyssal void of human inadequacy, and it is shaped like Carl Wilson has been Rumpeltized 161.jpg. To label this a portrait of the angelic voice behind The Beach Boys is an insult to music, portraiture, and basic hand-eye coordination.

What Mr. Rumpelton has presented us with is a figure that looks less like a legendary guitarist and more like an over-baked gingerbread man attempting to navigate a crime scene. The guitar—if one can call that yellow blob an instrument—appears to be melting into his torso like cheap cheese on a hot dashboard. Notice the stance: legs contorted at angles that suggest severe, untreated joint trauma, hovering over a stage floor painted with the delicacy of a spilled glass of generic tomato juice.

The microphone stand slices through the canvas with the elegance of a fluorescent lightbulb shoved into dirt. Carl’s vacant, sideways glare says it all: even the subject is desperately searching for the exit. If it were not for the mercifully small digital file size, I would demand financial restitution for the seconds I lost looking at it. Simply abysmal."<<

>>Vernon K. Bleakridge

One hesitates to dignify this latest Rumpeltonized apparition of Carl Wilson as “art,” though it certainly commits the same crimes. What we have here is a sunburnt specter of a Beach Boy, dragged through the digital mud until his once‑seraphic harmonies resemble the strained whine of a guitar amp dying mid‑tour. The figure lunges forward with the desperate optimism of someone who suspects the stage itself is about to reject him.

Rumpelton’s palette—those feverish oranges and browns—suggests a man painting not from inspiration but from the memory of a house fire he refuses to discuss. The composition is energetic only in the way a malfunctioning ceiling fan is energetic: spinning, wobbling, threatening collapse. Wilson’s expression, if one can call it that, is a kind of visual shrug, as though even he cannot believe he has been resurrected for this purpose.

In short, the piece punishes the viewer for entering the room, and then has the audacity to sign its name.<<

Long Live Ralph..............Be Dead or Alive

                       

Herbie Mudpucket

 Herbie Mudpucket (1943?–Present? Probably)

Herbie Mudpucket is widely regarded by a very small number of people as one of the most overlooked bass players of the 1960s and 1970s. Though his name rarely appeared on album covers, and even more rarely in the correct spelling, Mudpucket reportedly played on hundreds of recordings—most of which sold somewhere between 17 and 43 copies.

Born in an unspecified town somewhere "off Route 9," Herbie developed his distinctive bass style after learning on a homemade instrument fashioned from a broomstick, a soup pot, and what he insisted was "genuine Tennessee fence wire." His playing was described by one producer as "almost in time," and by another as "surprisingly present."

Throughout the late '60s and early '70s, Mudpucket drifted from studio to studio, contributing tasteful bass lines to albums such as Songs for Discount Furniture, The Lavender Turnip Experience, Three Chords and a Tax Problem, and the critically ignored progressive-folk-jug-band masterpiece Mildew on the Moon. Nearly every record disappeared without a trace, earning Herbie the affectionate nickname, "The Invisible Sideman."

Fellow musicians remembered him as quiet, dependable, and perpetually carrying a thermos of coffee that may or may not have contained coffee. He was famous for tuning entirely by intuition, refusing to own more than three strings at any given time, and claiming that "the fourth one only encourages showing off."

When disco arrived, Herbie quietly wandered away from the recording scene. Rumors placed him variously as a fishing guide, a bowling alley mechanic, and the proprietor of a roadside bait-and-vinyl shop where he continued to insist that his best work was "still waiting to be discovered."

To this day, collectors scour dusty thrift stores hoping to find an album featuring Herbie Mudpucket. Thus far, they have mostly found easy-listening records and instructional polka LPs. Still, among those who appreciate musicians who were almost famous for records that were almost released, Herbie Mudpucket remains an enduring legend.

Avachives No. 49: Count Basie - "The Count"

“Frequently referenced by practitioners of Mouse‑Driven Expressionism.”

• 
  
• Ralph Rumpelton
  Avachives No. 49: Count Basie - "The Count"
  RR-2025 #245Medium: MS Paint on digital canvas, 446 × 494 px
  Created: 2025
  The Rumpelton Continuity (est. 1976)
  Collection of the Artist

Archive Entry #49
Count Basie – The Count
Curator's Notes by Ava Chives

There are artists who chase likeness, and then there is Ralph Rumpelton, who pursues something far more elusive: recognition through glorious approximation.

At first glance, one might assume this portrait of Count Basie has wandered a considerable distance from conventional realism. That assumption would miss the point entirely. Rumpelton has never been interested in photographing a face. Cameras already solved that problem decades ago. His concern is whether a handful of determined MS Paint brushstrokes can convince your memory that you're looking at Count Basie—and somehow, against every established principle of portraiture, they do.

Observe the eyes. They seem to be holding a private conversation with one another while simultaneously acknowledging the viewer. The cigarette hangs at an angle that suggests complete indifference to geometry. The broad watercolor washes flatten the face into something resembling both a portrait and a weather map. Every decision appears accidental until you attempt to imagine the cover without it. Then you realize each so-called mistake has become structurally necessary.

This is one of the recurring miracles of the Archives.

Many visitors ask why Ralph doesn't simply "fix" the proportions. I remind them that perfection is widely available. Imperfection with personality is considerably rarer.

The restrained background deserves mention as well. It refuses to compete with Basie's expression, allowing the face to occupy nearly the entire visual field. The bold red lettering supplies the rhythm section while the portrait improvises above it. Like Basie's own music, the composition understands that confidence often comes from leaving things out.

As custodian of these Archives, I have learned to distrust artwork that announces its greatness too loudly. The quiet pieces tend to linger the longest. This one has been sitting in my digital filing cabinet for some time, occasionally looking sideways at neighboring paintings as though amused they were taking themselves so seriously.

It was time to let it out.

Some paintings strive to capture what a musician looked like.

This one captures what it feels like to remember them.

— Ava Chives
Chief Archivist, The Avachives Department of Musical Preservation

Geddy Lee has been Rumpeltized

• Ralph Rumpelton
  Geddy Lee has been Rumpeltized
  RR-2025 #143Medium: MS Paint on digital canvas, 567 × 539 px
  Created: 2025
  The Rumpelton Continuity (est. 1976)
  Collection of the Artist

 What the critics are saying:

>>Gordon Weft on Geddy Lee (Rumpeltized)

Rumpelton’s latest effort attempts—successfully, if one is being charitable—to render Geddy Lee not as a virtuoso musician, but as a concept: a man fused permanently to his bass, suspended in a fog of commitment and questionable anatomy. The face arrives early and leaves late, hovering in that familiar Rumpeltonian zone where expression is implied rather than achieved. One senses Lee is either about to sing or quietly reconsider his life choices.

The bass guitar, mercifully, is afforded a degree of seriousness denied to the rest of the body. It anchors the composition, much as it anchors Rush itself, suggesting that even within Frontal Lobotomism, certain hierarchies remain sacred. The arms appear to have been negotiated into place rather than drawn, while the stage environment dissolves into a blur that reads less as atmosphere and more as plausible deniability.

And yet—annoyingly—this works. The piece communicates performance without depicting precision, intensity without accuracy. I dislike it on principle, but I recognize it immediately. Which, in Rumpelton’s universe, may count as craft.

I’ve seen worse.
Not today.

— Gordon Weft <<

>>Dr. Aloysius Finkle on "Geddy Lee Rumpeltized":

"In the annals of contemporary art, few practitioners dare to venture into the fertile, yet often misunderstood, territory of the 'Rumpeltonized' aesthetic. Ralph Rumpelton, our intrepid cartographer of the digital primitive, once again presents a compelling study in what I affectionately term 'Accidental Surrealism.' His latest oeuvre, a compelling reimagining of the iconic Geddy Lee, transcends mere portraiture.

Observe the deliberate distortion of the jawline, a masterful stroke that eschews photorealistic fidelity in favor of a profound psychological landscape. Is it a commentary on the vocal strain of a rock legend, or perhaps an homage to the very plasticity of identity within the digital realm? The microphone, rendered with an almost spectral quality, and the bass, a foundational anchor in an otherwise fluid composition, speak volumes about the artist's engagement with both sound and silence.

Rumpelton's 'Geddy Lee' is not merely a depiction; it is a deconstruction. It challenges the viewer to look beyond the immediate, to find the resonant truths nestled within the apparent simplicity of its brushwork. This, my dear connoisseurs, is not merely MS Paint; it is a vibrant testament to the enduring power of outsider vision, filtered through the pixelated lens of genius. A truly Finkle-worthy endeavor!"

                          Long Live Ralph............Be Dead or Alive

Levon Helm has been Rumpeltized

 

• Ralph Rumpelton
  Levon Helm has been Rumpeltized
  RR-2025 #179Medium: MS Paint on digital canvas, 567 × 585 px
  Created: 2025
  The Rumpelton Continuity (est. 1976)
  Collection of the Artist

 "In this study of Helm, the drum kit suffers a Rumpeltonian collapse—the cymbals refuse their circular duty, opting instead for a textured wobble. It is a portrait that celebrates the courage of the wrong angle and the poetry of almost-symmetry."