Sarth Calhoun

Conspirators / Tony Diodore

Conspirator

Tony Diodore

Tony Diodore is a guitarist and violinist in Brooklyn. He has played in Number19, Puracane and BM LINX. From 2011 he played guitar and violin in Lou Reed’s touring band, the same band I was already in.

Tony Diodore playing violin, in a black-and-white photograph from 2001.
Tony Diodore in 2001, from the Number19 site, numbernineteen.net.

Tony, Sarth, Leah Coloff, and Mark Righter formed Number19 in 1999. After we released Suspension, Tony went on to play with Puracane, and eventually form BM Linx. Now, Tony and Sarth have joined forces again, playing with Lou Reed.

Sarth Calhoun, introducing the band on his old WordPress site

Number19

Diodore, Leah Coloff, Mark Righter and I formed Number19 in 1999, with Tony on guitar and violin. The band funded its first record, Suspension, out of mp3.com downloads, at one point sitting at number eighteen overall on the site.

Puracane and BM LINX

After Number19, Diodore played guitar and violin on Puracane’s I’ve Been Here the Longest and co-wrote “Watershed.” In 2005 he formed BM LINX with Jonathan Murray. That band released The Portable Genius in 2006 and Black Entertainment in 2008, toured the United States, Canada and Europe, and went on hiatus in 2010.

Back in the same band

A tour announcement on May 23, 2011 named Diodore as Lou Reed’s newly confirmed guitarist. He toured Europe that summer in Lou’s band on guitar and violin, and returned in 2012 for the From VU to Lulu European cycle, where Copenhagen, Bonn and Bordeaux coverage all name him. He also played the Wrecking Ball gala at St. Ann’s Warehouse with Lou on May 7, 2012. The dates are on Sightings and on the page for the 2011 European tour.

Tony once said that I was Lou’s imagination, when Lou wanted to just have some wild sound or some completely different kind of sound.

The creditTony Diodore and Sarth Calhoun formed Number19 together in 1999 (Suspension, 2001) and played together in Lou Reed’s band on the 2011 and 2012 European tours, Diodore on guitar and violin, Calhoun on Continuum and Kyma.

I wrote the introduction quoted above for the conspirators section of my old WordPress site, recovered from the Wayback Machine. The photograph is from the band’s own site, as captured in 2001.