One of Danville’s most famous sons has, like Elvis, left the building.
Mojo Nixon is dead.
The musician, actor and radio personality most famous for the novelty hit “Elvis Is Everywhere” died Wednesday while on the Outlaw Country Cruise, where he was serving as a co-host and performer. He was 66.
His family posted this statement on his Facebook page: “How you live is how you should die. Mojo Nixon was full-tilt, wide-open rock hard, root hog, corner on two wheels + on fire … Passing after a blazing show, a raging night, closing the bar, taking no prisoners + a good breakfast with bandmates and friends. A cardiac event on the Outlaw Country Cruise is about right … & that’s just how he did it, Mojo has left the building Since Elvis is everywhere, we know he was waiting for him in the alley out back. Heaven help us all.”
He was born Neill Kirby McMillan Jr. in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1957 but grew up in Danville, a city he often talked about during his daily show on Sirius XM’s satellite radio’s Outlaw Country channel, although details about his Danville upbringing are hard to find online. Sirius says on its website that Mojo Nixon’s father “ran a soul radio station (WILA) in town during the pinnacle years of soul, exposing his impressionable son to artists like Arthur Conley and James Brown.”
One tribute posted on Facebook after his death came from Kenneth Michael Florell, who said: “I always think of you driving the blue WILA radio Soul Mobile with the giant horn speakers on the roof. Or the times you cracked me up in algebra class, imitating a crazed rock guitarist jamming out to the sound of the nearby lifesaving crew siren heading out on another call. Or being at your house listening to you cranking out a killer John Bonham rhythm while a LZ album was blaring on his stereo.”
Sirius says that McMillan graduated from Miami University in Ohio with degrees in political science and history, then moved to Denver where he became a community organizer and played in punk rock bands and then on to San Diego. Sirius says that it was on a cross-country bicycle trip from San Diego back home to Virginia that McMillian formulated the persona of Mojo Nixon, a bombastic mix of the blues musician Howlin’ Wolf and the cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn. “Mojo Nixon is just who I wanted to be,” he told Sirius. “If I could be anybody, I wanted to be this character Mojo Nixon.”
Returning to San Diego, he teamed up with Richard Banke, a local rockabilly musician who went by the stage name Skid Roper. In an interview with Variety magazine for a boxed set of his music that came out in 2020, Nixon said his goal was: “I’m gonna take roots music and I’m gonna infuse it with the energy and excitement of punk rock. It was Jerry Lee Lewis on more speed. Not just speed, but more speed. A lot of things sounded like the Clash, but even faster and stupider.”
The result was a record deal with a small label and the duo’s first album, “Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper,” a collection of rockabilly songs with humorous themes, and titles such as “Jesus at McDonald’s.” In 1987, their third album included the song “Wide Open” that includes the lines: “I’m out in Pittsylvania County on highway seven-one-eight, middle of a cornfield.” That’s in the Dry Fork area of the county.
That third album also produced an unlikely hit that catapulted him to fame and became his signature song. Here’s how Rolling Stone summed Nixon’s career: “Nixon enjoyed a supremely weird yet singular career after he and his former partner, Skid Roper, scored a bizarro breakthrough in 1987 with their novelty hit ‘Elvis Is Everywhere.’A deranged bit of cowpunk/rockabilly pastiche that honored (and lightly skewered) the King of Rock and Roll’s diehard fans, ‘Elvis Is Everywhere’ and its charming low-budget video became an unexpected MTV staple.” That song earned Nixon an appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show, where the crowd wore Elvis masks during his performance. MTV loved Nixon so much, Sirius said, that the network “invited him to film short rants that aired during commercial breaks and even gave him periodic hosting gigs.” Mojo Nixon was on his way to becoming a cult figure.
Over the years, Nixon released 14 albums, some with Roper, some solo, some with his band Mojo Nixon and the Toadliquors. His most recent album was “Whiskey Rebellion,” which came out in 2009. Nixon worked with some serious if not necessarily well-known musicians — Dave Alvin, the Beat Farmers, Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys — but consistently produced quirky songs. Some titles can’t be printed here; the ones that can give a feel for Nixon’s twisted sense of humor: “Orenthal James Was a Mighty Bad Man,” “Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child” and “Don Henley Must Die.” Henley, famous for his work with The Eagles, was amused by Nixon’s attention. One night in Austin, Texas, he jumped on stage with Nixon and helped perform the song about him. “I don’t know how many people can fit in the front room, 100 at the most, but about 5,000 people have told me they were there,” Nixon later told The Austin Chronicle.
Nixon did some acting — he was a drummer in the 1989 movie “Great Balls of Fire” that starred Dennis Quaid as Jerry Lee Lewis. (That’s where he met Winona Ryder, and talked her into appearing in a video for the Debbie Gibson song). Nixon also had parts in 1993’s “Super Mario Brothers” as a musician and 1994’s “Car 54, Where Are You?” as a sidewalk preacher. He also spawned a documentary, “The Mojo Manifesto,” that premiered in 2022 at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.
For the past 16 years, Nixon was famous for his radio work on Sirius XM, where he hosted both a country music show and a NASCAR show, “Mojo Nixon’s Manifold Destiny” from his home in Cincinnati. This past week, his country music show featured recorded clips saying he was on the show’s winter cruise. That’s where he died. “We are devastated,” the cruise’s organizer told Rolling Stone.
Mojo Nixon’s legacy might be defined by what he inspired. On Twitter, there are people with handles such as “Church of Mojo Nixon.” And he’s name-checked in at least seven other musicians’ songs, including ones by Beck and Todd Snider. And then there’s the song “Punk Rock Girl” by the band The Dead Milkmen:
We went to a shopping mall
And laughed at all the shoppers
And security guards trailed us to a record shop
We asked for Mojo Nixon
They said, “He don’t work here”
We said, “If you don’t got Mojo Nixon then your store could use some fixin'”