Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

“I’d like to write a musical. I’d like to write an opera, a mass. But I want it to be done really well and right, and that requires either a solo-piano record or a 200-piece orchestra. And I’d love to do a Southern record, not set in New Orleans or anything — maybe Virginia. Have a big plantation with gay slaves or something. Something Gothic, involving a murder and some sort of affair with the stable boy. And a hoop dress.

“My main objective is to get back on the road to promote my record, to really set up some kind of theatrical thing,” he says. “Some great lighting, maybe a little orchestra . . . And I like traveling. Right now I’m thinking of St. Petersburg a lot, only because I’m intrigued by violent Russian people. I find them sexy, that sort of nuts, nonsensical attitude. But I often find I’ll imagine a place to be something, and when I get there, I’m disappointed. Like I imagined Barcelona to be this mix between ancient Greece and The Wizard of Oz, and of course when I visited there I was really unimpressed by it.

“But I don’t get bored when I’m on the road. What’s great about touring is, you meet all these bored teenagers out there. In Detroit, there were these young skater kids who came to my show and they were like, ‘Rufus, we’re so bored out here in Detroit!’ And I’m like, ‘Oh my God, let me stay here and entertain you! I’ll stay in your bungalow! In your garage!’ That’s all I want to do, is move into some kid’s garage.”

Rufus laughs again, almost spilling his pink lemonade.

“I dunno — I like traveling, but I still find the best place for me to write, in terms of bringing it all together, is Montreal. With my mother downstairs, cooking up pork chops.”