When Delerium asked me for information for a biography my first answer was I already did it... it consists of two lines, written under the CD's liner notes. You could say my people come from an oral tradition, since I only spill my life-story to strangers when I'm blind drunk in a bar (and not under a magistrates' court order).

It's a bit strange writing this, but I suppose I could tell you that Tarltons are miners by trade and my great-grandfather Bernard Tarlton went out as a prospector to California in the Gold Rush in 1849. I could also tell you that my grandfather ran a hotel and a bar named the Carbon House in the Appalatian Mountains or that his cousin Jimmy Tarlton was a famous country blues slide guitar player born in North Carolina - who recorded on over twenty labels and played up and down the East Coast in the 20s and 30s.

All my relatives worked in the coal fields. Luckily Dad was kept out of the mines by starting at an early age helping around the hotel and was actually raised by the firm hand of my great grandmother MacGowan. It's here he picked up piano in the hotel bar.

After serving in the war Dad saw how big the world was and split the litle coal mining town heading for Chicago where he met my Mom, Kathleen Lucille Nason. Mom worked in a department store and sang on the Kraft Music Hall Radio Hour. Not as much is known about my mothers' side of the family. Her Dad emigrated from County Cork as a teenager. He was a quiet man, and loved to read and take long walks. He committed suicide when she was thirteen and says I get my green/orange eyes from him.

Because of the auto industry, Detroit was a boom town then and was the fourth largest city in the USA behind NY, LA, and our rival Chicago. The factories attracted people from all over America and it was a first and last stop after Ellis Island for many an immigrant family. To this day Metropolitan Detroits' population makes up the largest variety of nationalities of any city in the United States. After getting married Mom and Dad moved there and had five kids, of which I'm the last.

Growing up in Motown it's not hard to figure that the soundtrack to my life jammed. There was a blues scene every bit as good as Chicagos', but throw in a local factory worker and part-time musician named John Lee Hooker, the 60s, the Motor City 5, Iggy and Berry Gordys' vision named Tamla Motown Records and you have a town with personality. Not that it happened in my day mind you. But I had lots of older brothers and sisters in a family where music ruled... in other words the family Tarlton was living large the American Dream: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Groovy-ness.

As a teenager the inevitable happened and I formed my first and only band. We were a three-piece named Trancegland. When the drummer quit to join the army, Deb Agolli joined and we changed our name to Viv Akauldren. With me on vocals, guitar and bass and Keir McDonald on synths, farfisa and bass we toured five hard years on the US underground scene. I don't want to go into details here about the band but the hard facts are we made 3 LPs, an EP and a couple of singles. (All are out of print but you can still find them if you're lucky). There were amazing performances too, that I will never forget as long as I live and I know there's a lot of people out there that feel the same way.

We played with a lot of great bands. Quite a few got famous in the 90s but then was really an innocent time, before the reality of making it occurred to anyone. It was the void known as the 80s but I think we made our mark, and absolutely no one was out there doing what we were. We would have seen them.

Deb and I had married young and when we came back from our first European Tour she wanted out of everything. It had been a good tour and we'd recorded over there what ended up being our last LP. It was November '89 and that, effectively, was the end of the band. We went to England a few months later with our original drummer Robert Wonnacott to go through with a planned south England tour with Brighton's Mandragora. I was a mess.

Deb went on to form Hot Footin' Puddin' Pie and for the last couple years has been in Matthew Smith's kicking Detroit band Outrageous Cherry, Keir started making singles under the name Medusa Cyclone (including one shared single with Pavement plus at least one CD that I know of.

Me? Things got real hard in a lot f ways and basically I disappeared. I don't get into details here about it. One thing I can say is that I left music, but the music never left me. Eventually I moved to Berlin. After a year I discovered busking (street music) and I've been doing it ever since. I'm free to go places and make enough to live. It really is a complicated story, but if some day I should meet you in a bar perhaps...