Word on the street was that Jose Sinatra and the Troy Dante Inferno were about to take to the road again. The performer and sidemen haven't toured since April of 2001. That was the "bizarre" (according to Sinatra) Australian tour engineered by a vacationing Australian who caught the act at Java Joe's. The performer and band met "a great response" Down Under and were mobbed by young girls -- really.

As to the word on the street, truth is, "It's an offshoot of something that has happened in recent years," Sinatra said while fondling a volume of Jack the Ripper at Wahrenbrock's Books. "I found at many of our shows there have been ladies whose boyfriends -- and in many cases, husbands -- have been off in other lands fighting for America's freedom...or, that's what they think they're fighting for. But these women are lonely, frankly -- needy in some strange way. Usually I get to that emptiness as deeply as I can with one-on-one sessions after the shows. They are easy to talk to, they're compliant, and I seemed to have helped them. If I ease just one lady's loneliness, then I haven't lived for nothing, you know?

"While their boyfriends or significant others are doing whatever they're doing...I can bring so much happiness and literally screams of joy from these ladies through my music or personal counseling. But what about the ladies who can't get out to see myself and the Troy Dante Quintessence or Quintet or whatever they are? I was thinking about the ladies who are incarcerated.

"Women's prisons are just that. There are no men there. How can you get a feeling of love and intimacy that only a man can give a woman in a place like that?

"Troy and I randomly spun the globe one day and our fingers landed at Las Colinas; next time, a women's prison in Iowa and so on. Always a women's prison -- at least 10 percent of the time. So we made a list of these places. We started organizing the Hands Across Jose Tour. We'll play for women who are political prisoners or maybe...psychotic murderers. But even they have some sense of humanity or womaninity. We have to give back some...thing.

"If we can touch one person deeply enough that they change their whole life, that person is...an idiot."

Jose Sinatra and the Troy Dante Inferno play the O.B. Street Fair June 25.