Here's one sure cure for the blues—Google "weird band names" sometime and get ready to cry laughing. A number of websites pop up, revealing such freakish monikers as Drive By Crucifixion, Pat Robertson's Illegitimate Children, Steel Toed Chickens, Worse Than Celibate, Electric Vomit, Amputatoe, and my personal favorite, The Fetus Fajitas. How and why some of these names came into being is anybody's guess, but Joziah Longo has his own reasons for dreaming up his own gooberish appellation—Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams.

Sure, you can ask Longo on any given day where the band name came from and you're bound to get a different answer every time. On the particular May morning when we spoke, the enigmatic front man offered several explanations. First, he wanted a name that sounded big and bombastic, a name that pulled from many different sources. "I wanted it to be funny, tongue-in-cheek, this giant thing that's not too serious about itself. It sounds like a circus from Slambovia, and people call us the Slambovians. People now think of themselves as Slambovians. It's like a country."

But on a deeper level, Longo reveals that it's also a perfect name to hide behind. The last band he formed with wife Tink Lloyd—The Ancestors—had been approached by every major record label in the industry as they played Carnegie Hall and performed for presidents. Longo is emphatically against what he sees as the neurotic, unhealthy, disloyal music industry machine, noting that the band has heretofore refused to signoff on any recording deals. "We stopped playing for a couple of years to shake it off and get away from it," he says. "We disappeared out from under it all. Then we came back with this new name, this crazy name, so no one would even find us from the last incarnation." But find them they did, and the majors and a few big-name managers are courting them once again. Longo insists that they'll pass on the maelstrom until they've found a healthy label or distribution company that has "escaped the velocity from the gravitational pull of the industry." He insists, "We won't do it. [The industry] has the weight of a sumo wrestler. No matter how strong your will is...you'll spend 90 percent of your energy trying to get it to move an inch left or right. I'd rather just create with freedom and find a new paradigm, allow the band to grow as big as it's supposed to grow."

Thanks in large part to the internet, countless rave reviews and mere word-of-mouth, the Cold Spring-based "GMatSCoD" has garnered a quickly multiplying fanbase. Two articles on the band appearing in the New York Times within one year also didn't hurt. "What the hell was that?" shrieks Longo, laughing. "The first guy who did that had never even heard the band!" Hearing this band, one might more easily understand why one reviewer accurately knighted them "hillbilly Pink Floyd," but that particularly intriguing label is only one possible description of the Circus' musical fare. Largely classified under the ho-hum category of "folk," the Circus stirs in a healthy batch of the avant-garde, psychedelic, pop, blues, and roots rock to create a mystical, whimsical wall of sound. And Longo, as chief songwriter and ringleader of optimism, dwells upon rosy topics that speak to and from his cosmic heart. The band consists of Longo on lead vocals, guitar, bass, harmonica, and jaw harp; Tink Lloyd on accordion, cello, flute, and piccolo; Sharkey McEwen on guitar, mandolin, bass, keys, and vocals; and Tony Zuzulo on drums, percussion, and glockenspiel. Their debut release, 1999's A Good Thief Tips His Hat, reveals what the "thievery" is all about—this band borrows musical vibes from the Beatles, The Who, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Hank Williams, The Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Bo Diddley, and countless other icons. "We play very diverse music," says Longo. "It steals from everywhere."

Their latest release, an impressive and very professional looking and sounding double CD set, Flapjacks From the Sky, consists of 21 tracks that are joyfully digestible and satisfying—kinda like stuffing yourself at your favorite buffet. The multitextured Floydian folk fun of "Rocket" opens this enormous musical journey, followed by the popular droning ballad, "Sunday in the Rain," which showcases Longo's deeper, gravely vox (he consistently alternates between a Tom Petty-like vocal and this low-pitched one). Upbeat rocker "Living With God" is not as religious as it sounds; it is merely a reference to finding the god or joy in being with loved ones. Constantly requested at shows, "Talkin' to the Buddha" is a plodding, pondering tune that's almost a throwback to King Crimson. "I believe that everybody can attain their Christhood or their Buddhahood or whatever 'hood you're from," says Longo. "If you can attain the highest level of that hood, just a handful of us can kick the ass of all the problems in the world." Longo croons like a hoarse Neil Diamond in the laid-back country anthem "Fumes." Softhearted "Baby Jane," a nod toward "the invincible spirit of women," is a song that Longo describes as "one of those ones that came down almost in one piece."