Amzie Adams is one of the most recognizable characters of the French Quarter.

Perennially clad in a top hat, sunglasses with holographic eyeballs staring back at you, and pants with buckles lining the outside seams, Adams strides a circuit through the Quarter and traverses Frenchmen Street daily.

A former Marine, he’s also an accomplished musician, a widely-known painter, a fighter of flame-spewing dragons, and a really good storyteller.

Since arriving in 1964, Adams has collaborated with some of the most established musicians in New Orleans and spread his paintings throughout the galleries of Royal Street, the offices of WWOZ, and the homes of dozens of art collectors.

His shotgun house/studio renowned looks exactly as you would expect.

Paint-freckled treasures are scattered throughout, his beautiful homemade instruments are positioned atop plywood, and small plastic eyeballs stare up from a worktable.

His two young band members, Heather Hall and Sammi Foti, squeeze into the front room of the shotgun house, tinkering with the dulcimers and microphones.

They’ve spent the last few days rehearsing new music for upcoming album they’re preparing to record in Audio File studio.

Through the doors behind them, the shotgun has been transformed into a dream-like art installation. Plaster hands hang from the ceiling and Amzie’s paintings are stretched over wall-length canvases.

I sat down with Amzie in the back of his studio to learn more about his story and his work.

How did you come to New Orleans?

I came here in 1964 when I was on vacation from the Marine Corp. What we call leave. I came here with a guy named Marc Craig. He was a fellow Marine. He was like, “let’s go to new Orleans for Christmas and New Years.”

So we hitchhiked down, and we got here, but he didn’t tell me he had a secret agenda. He knew I was an artist and knew I’d love it.

After about a week in the lakefront he goes, “why don’t you get on a bus and go to the French Quarter?” and I was like, “what’s the French Quarter?”

As soon as my foot hit the French Quarter, I knew I was home. He knew, that bastard. In another half hour, I was in a courtyard drawing pictures with people buying and loving them.

A week before, I’d been crawling in the mud with a machine gun.

I know you primarily as a visual artist. When did you start playing music, or have you always done both?

I was going to art school, going to school all over the country. I went to New Mexico, where I graduated, and I was just doing art.

I did a series called the Bouncing Betty series, protesting the Vietnam War. All the artists loved them. They wished they’d made the paintings.

I would show them to the average person and they would go, “I don’t want to see that on my block, or in my city, much less in my house. I don’t even want that in my state or in my country. Give me a beer, give me my TV, I don’t want to think about Vietnam anymore.”

Then my friend showed up from Canada and we started playing music together. People loved the music, thought we were great. We traveled for five years around the country with our band and went to Mexico and Canada.

What instrument were you playing in that band?

Dulcimer. We played two dulcimers acoustically and didn’t sing. People loved it. I got the message that people would like something if you did it so they could understand.

You have to make it accessible.

Right.

I wanted to ask about the top hat and glasses, have you always dressed that way?

It was a natural evolution. I was teaching this girl to play drums and she was living around the corner from me. I’d teach her to play every couple days and every time she got better and better.

There was this beautiful top hat hanging in her house. Every time I’d go to leave, I’d pretend to steal the top hat. After about five or six lessons, I put it on, it fit great, and she said “take it.”

So, I went to bed and had this dream that the top hat was too tight on the sides, and it was too long, and it hurt my head. Then, all of a sudden, my head formed to the hat. It reformed to fit the top hat! I woke up in the morning and thought, well, I guess I grew into the top hat.

The top hat changed everything. I used to just be hippy-dippy-skippy. The dream was real. Then I played voodoo festival after the storm and this bass player from Haiti shows up and he goes, “Oh, Baron Samedi.”

Who is Baron Samedi?

Baron Samedi is the baron of the cemetery. He’s also the connection between the afterworld and the world we live in here, so he’s always who we open the ritual with. He wears a top hat and fucked up glasses, red and black. He comes to you when you die and smokes a cigar and drinks rum with you.

I’m a somnambulist, born that way. Somnambulists are sleepwalkers.

In 1947, I’d be up all night getting in fights with people that didn’t exist and wandering around town. My mother had to tie me to the bed.

I have a fixation with eyeballs. I used to close my eyes and at the beginnings of my dream and eyeballs would pop out. I was only 4 years old, so I was scared shitless. Then I would enter my dream and run from the train or witches. I was in the dream and my body would react.

At 15, I was hit by an army truck. It was a missile truck in New Jersey. It put me in a coma for ten days. When I woke up everyone was talking in the room and then I realized that none of their mouths were moving.

I realized I could read peoples minds. They weren’t talking; I was hearing what was coming out of their minds.

The combination of the accident and being a somnambulist locked together to create this creature who is me.

It was the worst thing that could happen to you. When I came out of the hospital, I saw sideways, upside-down, and had no depth perception. If I threw a ball up in the air and tried to catch it, I’d end up on the ground before the ball would.

After that, I joined the Marine Corp. and even created art there. In 1982, my hallucinatory state was overriding my reality.

I’d pull up to a light in my car, look out the window, and all of a sudden a dragon would jump on the car and blow fire everywhere. I thought, maybe I should turn down the volume on the radio and it’ll be better.

I went through a year of hypnotherapy. If you’re a somnambulist, you can get to the deepest places of hypnosis, but the reason you’d go there is because your dream states are overriding your reality.

It’s a gift and a curse. As an artist, you don’t have to worry about creativity. You just have to paint your dreams because you’re dreaming all of the time. Now I can control it. It changed my life.

After a year of hypnotherapy, I was able to drive my car again, I was able to walk, I knew where my house was, and could function.

So that’s how I got to be an artist and musician.

You can learn more about the art and music of Amzie Adams at http://www.amzieadams.com, or just head to Frenchmen Street and look for the top hat and glasses.