America’s Underground Prank-Call King Speaks
When Rolling Stone e-mailed the address on Longmont Potion Castle’s website, it wasn’t clear whether anyone would actually reply. And meeting the underground prank-call legend in person seemed entirely out of the question. But there we were a week later, in front of a cheesy, semi-chain sports bar in Westminster, Colorado. A man in a green shirt, the color he told RS he would be wearing, lingered outside smoking a cigarette, looking like a fortysomething version of a kid who would be hanging out in front of a convenience store in the 1990s.
Once we adjourn to the rooftop patio of Lodo’s, the question of why he picked this spot comes up. “I’ve never been here before,” he says. It seemed like a strange choice, too corporate and suburban for such an edgy, shadowy figure. But then again, it felt exactly right: completely weird and unexpected. When we pick up our menus, the first thing he spots is the bruschetta. He pronounces it with the goofy flair heard in one of his famous bits, “Bruschotti,” and only then is it certain: The man sitting beside me is Longmont Potion Castle.
LPC began making prank phone calls as a youth – in the Denver suburb of Littleton where he “got in a lot of trouble” – and released his first proper album documenting the experience in 1988. LPC preceded the Nineties prank-calling heyday of the Jerky Boys and the following decade’s Crank Yankers, and has also long outlived it by amassing a largely cult following with his self-released albums – around 14, not including various collections and related projects, all compiled in a comprehensive new box set, Official Compact Discography. (The release sold out within days, but many back-catalog titles are still available.)
His fans range from Colorado residents anxious to hear local businesses get the Longmont Potion Castle treatment to members of big-name bands like Queens of the Stone Age and Jimmy Eat World, the latter of whom etched quotes from his calls into the runout grooves of their records. The tie that binds is a fascination with the uniqueness that is Longmont Potion Castle: an anonymous soul who subverts the prank-calling genre, dialing up mom-and-pop motels and bewildered celebrities alike, and transporting them to a meticulously constructed alternate universe with its own curious dialect – a place where LPC alter egos such as Dirk Funk, Dugan Nash and Bernard Fuddle run wild in a sea of whips, cleats, millipedes, ointment and putty.
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“They do call the cops,” Longmont Potion Castle says of his subjects-cum-victims as he eats from a plate of fries and drinks a summer ale. (He’s vegetarian, despite allusions in his calls to the likes of 450 pounds of peacock meat and something called “aqualamb.”) Yet even with the potential legal ramifications that come with being a professional prank caller, LPC is relatively at ease about his anonymity. He didn’t want his real name or photo published, but he gave RS the former, and though he wore sunglasses the entire time, it would be easy to pick the tall, svelte dude with shoulder-length hair out in a crowd.
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