The Slow Poisoner (alias Andrew Goldfarb) is a one-man-surrealistic-rock-and-roll-band from San Francisco. He strums a guitar shaped like a dying swan and sings about swamp women, weeping willows, furtive rituals, cosmic paranoia, creeping fungi, forgotten diseases and witches in the woods. He keeps time by thumping on a kick drum rigged with sleigh bells, and while performing displays elaborately painted signs that bear the title of each song being sung. Originally he was the leader of a five piece band, but over time the group slowly became thinner and thinner as the other members drifted off into mystery. Eventually an apparition of an eight- fisted cephalopod (the Rocktopus) instructed Andrew to go it alone, and since 2005 that is what he has done, touring the country repeatedly and playing venues that range from libraries to science fiction conventions, beauty parlors and laundromats.