Peelander Yellow Paints Hole In The Wall in Austin, TX.

Peelander Yellow is a Japanese rock god. Backed up by his band of action-punk miscreants known as Peelander-Z, his mere stage presence is enough to transform the most jaded, semi-hip 20-to-30 somethings into giggling children. He wails on a yellow axe while singing songs about tacos and bowling in space. He puts on a tiger-shaped lucha libre wrestling mask and blows a whistle like an irate soccer official. Somehow this makes his entire audience limbo. He once broke his foot during a show after leaping from the second floor of a venue in New Mexico. He constantly demands smiles from the audience. Smiles, he says, are the primary form of sustenance on Planet Peelander.

He does not go hungry.

So when I meet Peelander Yellow’s alter ego, mild-mannered Kengo Hioki, at an Austin dive bar actually called “Hole In The Wall,” I half expect to find him picking his nose at fans (he does that) and screaming like a banshee. Instead, I find a man laser-focused on painting a mural; caught in the zen-like rhythm of painting, moving the ladder, and painting some more.

Yellow paints with absolute concentration.

If you’re wondering what a Brooklyn-based, Japanese punk musician is doing slaving over a hot wall in Austin, TX, you’d be within your rights. It may come as a surprise to casual Z fans, but true devotees know that many of Yellow’s off hours are spent in artistic pursuits. In August of this year, he opened a show at Austin’s Guzu Gallery featuring dozens of linocuts: carved stamps covered in ink and pressed onto paper.

The mural business was commissioned by the chefs of East Side King, a trio of food trailers catering to Austin’s booze-soaked nightlife with genre-defying takes on classic Asian dishes. East Side King is the brain child of celebrity chef winner Paul Qui (who won Bravo’s Top Chef: Texas earlier this year) and his partner Motoyasu Utsunomiya.

Utsunomiya asked Peelander Yellow to paint the East Side King truck currently parked at Austin’s The Liberty bar last year. Now there are more trucks, more popularity among those Austinites seeking out the culinary pleasure of pork belly buns and, finally, a full-blown restaurant. You know, with a foundation and stuff.

East Side King is currently transforming Hole In The Wall’s back room into the local chain’s first brick and mortar location. With the new digs comes more paintings by Peelander Yellow. ESK has commissioned three murals for the Hole In the Wall location as well as another truck stationed at a bar called The Grackle on the East side. And, if Austin’s lucky, there may be more.

Peelander Yellow paints an East Side King truck in 2011.

If Peelander Yellow ever decides to illustrate a children’s book, he’d give the great and powerful Seuss’ iconic artwork some serious competition. Hioki has spent two days in the sweltering Texas heat painting the outside of Hole in the Wall by the time I stop by on Labor Day afternoon. He’s polite but curt, welcoming me simply and letting a few words about the heat and some talk of touring serve as the extent of his small talk. The outlines are in place. I can already pick out “East Side King” from the hundreds of shapes begging for details.

Yellow works for about a week at the Hole In The Wall location and also on another East Side King truck stationed at The Grackle. He spends hours each day methodically moving down the mural and filling in details as he goes. The painting happens in layers. Huge swaths of lighter colors serve as outlines that he slowly builds upon. Simple block letters sprout legs and heads and eyes upon eyes.

“Black is a special color,” he says. Then, to illustrate his point, he uses a small brush loaded up with black to turn amorphous blobs of blue and white into grimacing faces, star and Saturn-like planets with only a few deft strokes. A black cloud of faces and stars, skulls and aliens, somehow becomes the body for a whacked-out alligator.

Yellow incorporates existing architectural details into his mural’s design.

“His mind is obviously active,” says Hole In The Wall General Manager Alex Livingston. He points at a nearby stencil sprayed onto another wall depicting a big-breasted woman in Texas duds using a handful of colors and the most basic of shapes. “It’s a nice change from this stencil work,” he says. “It’s been here for a while and it’s on many buildings in town.”

I ask if it took any convincing to green-light Peelander Yellow’s murals on not one, but three of Hole In The Wall’s surfaces. Livingston’s got other priorities. He told East Side King, “You want to paint on the wall? Whatever, man. Go for it. I can’t wait to come to work everyday and eat their food.”

Kitchen Confidential author and host of Travel Channel’s No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain, describes the food at East Side King as “Japanese drunk food fusion.” It’s an apt description, as much of the preparation and techniques in East Side King’s cuisine are ripped right out of the land of the rising sun and other countries in southeast Asia. Take their pork belly with rice which combines tare (a Japanese BBQ sauce) with kimchee and gochujang (a spicy miso paste); two staples of Korean cooking.

East Side King also tends to make use ingredients more local in nature than the techniques used to prepare them. Mint, basil, cilantro, jalapeno, brussel sprouts, and beets all have their place on the menu. Chalk it up to Paul Qui’s more than 8 years of experience at Austin’s high-end Japanese eateries Uchi and Uchiko (where Qui remains the executive chef) which share a similar philosophy about locally-sourced ingredients.

Chef Motoyasu “Moto” Utsunomiya of East Side King stands in front of the completed East Side King truck.

Qui’s partner and self-proclaimed “sushi guy” Motoyasu “Moto” Utsunomiya also came up through Uchi by way of 10 years spent working for another Japanese eatery in Austin called Musashino. I sat down with Utsunomiya at a picnic table next to the new East Side King truck at The Grackle in East Austin. A few days ago, Peelander Yellow finished this truck; playfully turning a photograph of an assortment of cookies into a collection of monsters. Utsunomiya says he couldn’t be happier with the paint job on both the truck and the Hole In the Wall location.

I ask why East Side King is going brick and mortar instead of opening up a fourth truck.

“Trailers are a pain in the ass,” he says. “Limited everything. Water and all that. Hole In The Wall is cool too. That’s why we went with Hole In The Wall.”

I’d heard from Yellow that Utsunomiya played in bands as well. I ask if that’s how he and Utsunomiya met up. It turns out that the sushi chef moonlights as a bass player in some of Austin’s soul and blues bands. He’s even get a soft spot in his heart for Southern All Stars, arguably the most popular Japanese band of the last few decades. But Utsunomiya met Yellow through his girlfriend who dragged him along to a Peelander-Z show. There he first laid eyes on Yellow’s art in the form of band shirts and posters at the merch booth. Later, Ustunomiya paid Yellow a visit in New York and saw his art on paper for the first time.

“I asked him, ‘what are you doing with this?’ And he’s like ‘no, I’m not doing anything.’ And I’m like, ‘you’ve got to show people,’ you know? It’s a waste.”

Peelander Yellow begins work on the East Side King truck at The Grackle.

That was then. Now Peelander Yellow’s got at least a few more painting gigs coming up as the East Side King empire continues to expand. Paul Qui has plans to open up his own restaurant, a solo gig situated just down the street from The Grackle. Utsunomiya also confirmed another ESK location sans wheels located in South Austin between Oltorf and Manchaca. Both new ventures are set to make use of Peelander Yellow’s artistic direction.

“I’m pushing him right now,” Utsunomiya says. “I’m kind of like his manager in Austin. Branch manager or whatever. He has to show people.”

East Side King at The Grackle re-opens on October 11. The Hole In The Wall location will open later this month. Peelander-Z is currently scheduled for a Fall tour starting on October 10 in Cambridge, MA.

Peelander Yellow’s complete mural at Hole In the Wall.