Ken Sleeman, the singing Communist

The Communist Connection

I met Ken Sleeman at Outta the Way Cafe at an open mic around April of 2005. He accompanied his wife, Luisa Rose-Sleeman, a blind singer. Ken was essentially Luisa's manager. About a month after I met Ken and Luisa, she and guitarist Scott Geshen asked me to join Luisa's band, Luisa and the Reverbs. (For more information about Scott Geshen, click here.)

Except for Luisa and myself, the band was comprised of Outta the Way Cafe's primary house musicians for their weekly open mics: guitaris/singer Scott Geshen, bassist Gary Garvin, and drummer Andy Conversano.

Luisa Rose seemed like a decent person, but her husband, Ken Sleeman (aka, Ken Carpenter) was quite another story. Mr. Sleeman was what John Lennon once referred to as a "Jew/WASP." Lennon obviously had a great deal of contempt for such people because they apparently claimed to be Christians but ignored the teachings of Jesus while following the bigoted racial Old Testament teachings of Deuteronomy, Numbers and Leviticus, which sought the utter destruction of all Gentiles.

Mr. Sleeman boasted on several occasions that he was a bona fide Communist, something that I thought was extremely weird. Being a Communist was strange enough, but boasting about it seemed even stranger. But I basically wrote it off to double-talk. At the time, I thought Mr. Sleeman might be trying to entrap me into to talking about politics because he had heard I was not a friend of Zion. I interpreted his pro-Marxist rhetoric to mean the following: "Hey man, I'm an extremist too. If you're an extremist, I can dig it. Let's talk extremist politics. Coolness, man." I didn't take the bait. But looking back, I don't think he was putting me on. He's apparently a real Communist. But in his case, it fits his weird personality. Luisa was wife No. 5. (Ken and Luisa both told me about Ken's four ex-wives on several different occasions, so it is not idle gossip.) In 2005, Mr. Sleeman was around 60. No disrespect intended towards Luisa, but she's literally blind, as in not able to see at all. It struck me as quite odd that a 60 year old sighted man would marry a blind woman twenty years his junior after four marriages had already failed. He always struck me as a control freak, and he was very dishonest. I finally quit playing with Luisa completely because Ken was her manager and he was completely undependable. He would juggle performance dates without explanation and expect me to go along with it. He's a likeable character, even sings in a barbershop quartet, but his word means absolutely nothing.

Ken sometimes had an explosive, violent temper. One time he was trying to wiggle out of a gig that Luisa was supposed to play, and I challenged him on it. "Ken," I said, "if you and Luisa don't want to play with me anymore, that's fine. The proper thing to do is honor the outstanding gigs we've got, then go our separate ways."

Ken exploded and said, "We don't have to negotiate with you, Dave! We could just go tell you to fuck yourself!" He immediately apologized, because he apparently lost control of himself. I let it go for the time being, but I didn't forget it, and I dropped Luisa after honoring my outstanding performance commitments with her and Ken.

Another thing that Mr. Sleeman did that rubbed me the wrong way was he got his wife a regular gig singing karaoke at a gay bar in Wheaton, Maryland. On the surface, I suppose it was politically correct and harmless enough. But in my gut, I could envision Mr. Sleeman selling African slaves to Southern plantation owners had he lived a few centuries earlier. It appeared that this guy would do anything for a buck, not withstanding his Communist leanings which is technically opposed to money. I guess his Marxist side is constantly at battle with the greedy side.