The great thing about Tim Harrington is that he genuinely is as fun to talk to as you’d expect him to be. In conversation, his hurricane energy and madcap persona are just as present as when he’s onstage during a Les Savy Fav set. As you’ll read, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with him, and sadly, during this interview, we simply talked about too much and some had to be sacrificed (one highlight was when he nearly broke his back in Salt Lake City while diving into a “city river.”).

Harrington is, of course, the physically giant, bald and bearded leader of legendary New York art-rockers Les Savy Fav.

For nearly 15 years, he’s been dressing up as the Hamburglar, a poodle, a sea captain, you-name-it, and climbing rafters and ladders, dancing on bars, hanging upside down and stuffing his bulk in places it shouldn’t go all the while fearlessly howling out the band’s anthemic songs.

At the their recent show at the EARL in Atlanta, for instance, he crowd-surfed on a surfboard while wearing jams, and later ran from the stage into the adjoining bar and restaurant while singing and scared a patron completely off of his barstool.

When I met Harrington at the EARL, where they stopped during a mini tour in support of “Let’s Stay Friends,” their first album of new songs in six years, I gave him a photo I snapped from a show of theirs circa ’02.

But before he would take a look, he had to show me the Eminemmy Hill video – a mashup featuring Benny Hill, Eminem and Dr. Who.

Tim Harrington: These guys are all from the new Dr. Who. I’m not a real Dr. Who fan. Someone sent this to me on Twitter. Twitter… it’s never a dialogue, it’s like digital Tourette’s. “I’m going to bed.” “I’m farting.” I like the farting aspect of it, though.

Dry Ink: Here check this old photo out. You remember that beaver pelt?

TH: That beaver pelt was part of my fur trapper sheik look. Where is this from?

DI: Fayetteville, Arkansas.

TH: Fuck yeah, was it the first or the second time we played?

DI: The second.

TH: The first time was off the hook madness, the second time was, not so much, after the first time, we were like “We’re playing here forever!” the second time we played the whole scene was crumbling.

DI: John from Enon played with you the first time, right?

TH: Yeah, that was the first time.

DI: But more importantly, what the hell is that you’re wearing?

TH: This shit was all there at the club. I wish I had taken those glasses, though. I just found ‘em. But that’s how I usually put it together – I don’t travel with all that shit, I’ll see a chair, put it on my head. I did just get this awesome fringe jacket… Can I keep this (photo)?

DI: Yeah, that’s for you. That jacket is pretty fresh.

TH: I’m looking for matching pants actually – fringe suede pants. I’m obsessed with the photograph, not the famous Bob Dylan in buckskins photograph, but the less famous but more awesome Charles Manson in buckskins photograph, which is awesome! I would love to look like Charles Manson in buckskins, not to be scary, just… the guy was a visionary; he had some intense ideas. It’s crazy. He hung out with the Beach Boys as everybody knows. But yeah, he strikes an intimidating figure.

DI: Do you ever have to shop for this stuff?

TH: Uh, no, every once in a while I’ll go on a little spree. Now I do more cognizant costume-getting than I did when we were always touring, because it was like, shit was always piling up and at the end, you had to shake the van out and it was like, “Oh my god, there’s so much shit in here, let me see what I want to keep and what I don’t” Now, I don’t spend as much time… It’s a chopper! (Chopper flies over.)

DI: Welcome to the ATL by the way.

TH: Thanks. What the ATL? Is there a way to say, in an English accent, “What the hell,” but using ATL? (He tries) “What the ATL! Who ate the ATL out of my cock? Who ate the ATL out of this fuckin’ pecan pie, there’s nothing there?” This is going to require some work translating for your transcription. You know, you should bail on the transcription. I like more feature-style writing anyway. You could do more Gonzo-type things, maybe you could develop a style that’s, like, smaller and less gonzo. “Oh, I went to go interview the band and, we talked for a little while in the back and I got distracted, and then I went to the gas station and ate so many chips that my stomach hurt and then I went home… Gonzo! But gentler gonzo.

DI: Yeah, I wish there was a way to, sort of reinvent the wheel, kind of, with interviews – Q&A type things. Do you ever not want to answer a general question with a proper sounding response? Like with just adages or colloquialisms?

TH: I tend to direct the interview to whatever I want to talk about. Classic interviewee move. It’s what good politicians do. Answer the question you want to answer. Go ahead, ask me a legitimate question about the band.

DI: Ok, well, about the band, I do have legitimate questions… You took a long break before recording “Let’s Stay Friends.” You must all genuinely like one another to reform and record?

TH: Well that’s the reason we do our band. That’s the reason why we exist. To please ourselves. That’s our band’s motto.

DI: That’s a pretty straight answer?

TH: Oh I’m going somewhere with it – What I want to do is learn how to write “You are here in service to us” in Latin and put it on our drum head. Or a tee shirt. That would be a good fucking tee shirt. But would it say, “You are here in service to us,” or “You are here to serve to us?” It would be hard to not come out sounding like “You are our slaves.” I’ll bet in Latin it would be hard to phrase it to give it the nuance that “you are here in our service” as opposed to “you are here to serve us,” which sounds more slave-ish… It could be like, um… there is like “At Our Majesty’s Pleasure,” but I don’t know if there’s a Latin way to get that – “You are at our pleasure.”

DI: Latin… it’s ridiculous.

TH: It’s baloney. It’s useless. To write shit in Latin, though, especially in a sweet hardcore font… not Gill Sans, though. I wish that was a guy, Gill Sans. “Oh, you know, Gill Sans.”

DI: He’s bold!

TH: Ha! This morning I was putting fiberglass insulation in this wall I’m building in my house – I’m building a wall down the middle of my house so my wife and I, like in those 80s movies – we’re separating but we’re not… No. I’m building a wall in our house just because I want a mini wall to define a room. But does fiberglass insulation really get in your skin and make you all itchy, or was my dad fucking with me all these years? I was thinking that today as I was buying insulation, was he bullshitting me to keep me from eating it, or rolling around in it? But I think he was right because now my forearms are all itchy. I feel like I hugged one of those fuzzy cactuses. There’s nothing I can find or pull out, but it hurts. Sweet interview, huh.

DI: Yeah, seriously though, I know what you mean, we just bought a house and are trying to do some work on it…

TH: Yeah, well, I’m in a rental, so you know, I’m a big fucking idiot and I’m like, “I’m going to do a bunch of work, and maybe I’ll get kicked out so they can increase the rent because I made it so nice.” You gotta buy! It’s a depressed market!

DI: Yeah, we should’ve waited a little longer to buy.

TH: Oh, so you guys moved too soon?

DI: Yeah, could’ve had our house much cheaper if we had. Well, I say that but…

TH: I’m a terrible procrastinator and if often serves me well. It either serves me well or it doesn’t serve me at all, but rarely has it turned out to be a disservice… to move slowly. Like Les Savy Fav… we’re on a glacial pace. That was a record label, Issac Brock from Modest Mouse’s label. It moved so slow. I think it’s just Glacial Paste now. You got any good band names?

DI: Shark Face?

TH: Shark Face… I was just trying to propose this band name – and this is dibs to the guy I just told it to – The Fagins. Like from “Oliver Twist,” cause the guys are all a little bit older, at least for starting a band, they’re all like 35. The Fagins… They’re all a bunch of sketchy manipulators of young people. And they’re also super Jewish which makes it all the better.

DI: It could also be a nod to Steely Dan? Except I think ol’ Donny Fagan from the Dan spells his name differently?

TH: Yes! A Steely Dan tribute band called the Fagins that also dress like evil Jewish guys from the Victorian era. That is Victorian times right, “Oliver Twist?”

DI: Yeah, I think?

TH: Well I sure as shit don’t know what else to call it. It’s not the medieval times. He’s not a contempry hero… And I would like to be noted in this interview that I said contempry rather than contemporary and figger instead of figure – because if you check the record, you’ll see that early on I said someone strikes an interesting figger.

DI: Charles Manson in buckskins.

TH: Yeah, see, nowadays everyone talks about how kids shorten everything in text messages, but figger and contempry in the olden days… And articulation is lame-O. It didn’t help Eminem with his over-articulated rapping style.

DI: Right, because now he’s being mashed up with Benny Hill and Doctor Who on You Tube.

TH: You know, Eminem is smart though, right? He’s not coming back, I mean, why would he? Like when Jay Z retired it was genius, he should’ve stayed retired. Eminem is like, “I’m rich, so why would I want to expose myself, I’m going to enjoy it.” I like the idea that Eminem is somewhere saying “I don’t care.” Like he doesn’t have an ego to keep going…. That’s the only reason they keep going right? Or maybe not, maybe they have a true artistic motivation? But I bet that Eminem is saying “I was a good lyricist, and I was interested in it, but I got my money, now I’m done-e honey…” What about Busta Honey as a band name? Because it means to break a hundred dollar bill, but also has a double entendre, you know in a misogynistic way. Busta Honey.

DI: Yeah, nice one.

TH: Shark Face… yours is way out in left field, man. What about 912?

DI: Speaking of double entendres, “After the Balls Drop,” the live record you recorded last New Years Eve?

TH: Yeah of course, it has many meanings.

DI: Does it mean you’ve full-blown hit puberty now?

TH: Well, there comes a point, and you’re probably not old enough, where your balls are down by your knees. They’ve dropped so far. In fact I have a tiny testicle-shaped roller skate that I wear when I’m skating around in the nude. And if I’m out on my yacht sailing, I can just drape my long ball over the side to check the depth, or check our speed. I just drop my long scrotal sack into the water in the front of the boat, then I have someone in the back of the boat go “Whoa, your ball just went by, we’re now going 22 knots.”

DI: Or use it as an anchor?

TH: No, you don’t want to get it caught in anything. Ok, so back to the live record.

DI: It must’ve been a blast?

TH: Yeah, it was fun, but what was the most fun about it was that it only took as long as it does to play one show. It was like, “Done.” Someone else mixed it and everything.

DI: You just had to show up at 3 a.m?

TH: Yeah, someone reviewed it and said I sound really tired, but I think that’s bullshit. The thing about it is, well, I might have sounded tired, but the parts I sounded tired were the parts when I was hanging upside down. If you ever hear a live recording of us and its sounds pretty bad its because I’m (unintelligible grunting) and running around doing other stuff. I don’t, however, sometimes maintain focus on the project and I’ve been criticized for that, but the audience is there for the service of the band, so… But, it was a good time though. They were like, “let’s do it again next year,” and I said no.

DI: So what did you do this year?

TH: Went to bed early.

DI: Who’s the new guitar player?

TH: Andrew Reuland. When we were writing “Let’s Stay Friends,” (drummer) Harrison (Haynes) was in North Carolina, and because we were used to a four person dynamic, we brought him in and started writing with him as an ersatz drummer. Andrew was the first person I met when I got to college on the first day, so we’re all friends. Andrew has, since I moved in with my girlfriend and we all stopped living in bro houses, Andrew has always lived in the band. And on our second tour he came with us to make a documentary that… got weird.

DI: What?

TH: It never got made.

(Long pause)

DI: Well?

TH: I’m trying to think if there’s anything else interesting about it… There were supposed to be a lot of interviews, and it turned out that everyone was too embarrassed to get interviewed directly on camera, and there were so few people at the shows that having a camera out also made it embarrassing, so its mostly us hanging out. I remember one episode when Andrew ate a cold kielbasa, which was cool.

DI: So right now, you’re on a world tour, right?

TH: Ha, yeah, featuring two shows in Atlanta and one in New York.

DI: I thought you were playing Chicago?

TH: We go home in between. Occasionally we’ll play a couple shows, but who knows where we’ll pop up next… It’s a mystery. I guess we’ll keep going…. I don’t know what we’re going to do next. We haven’t planned it…. But I really want to go to Brazil.