BIOS

Brother Dege is one of best kept secrets in the Deep South. Writing in the old, haunted tradition of slide-blues greats, writer/musician Dege Legg breathes new life in the Delta Blues genre, not by imitation, but by infusing original songs with his experience of growing up in the Deep South—young, white, alienated, freak-in-the-country-style. With Robert-Johnson-on-Thorazine-style slide work paired with Middle-East-Meets-South melodies, a mindblowing new take on an old tradition emerges—one that is surreal, warped, odd, and droning, but also firmly rooted in the troubled and death-obsessed masters of old. Dege avoids the purist, mid-life-crisis white-guy school of slide playing—with its hokey attempts at singing about country living and faux cottonpicking. Instead you hear proto/post-modern tales, apocalyptic prophesies, endless darkness, yearning stoners, backwoods drugs, hallucinatory angels, burning barns, junkyards, and the floating ghosts of the Deep South. All of it is told in an honest voice by one who lived through it, born and raised Cajun in small-town southern Louisiana. This is delta blues for the 21^st century.

Santeria: Formed in 1994 in the swamps of Louisiana under the pretext of destroying rock and roll. When they realized it was already dead, the band focused their energies on humbler concerns like saving it while creating their own enigmatic style of southern rock. With a line-up consisting of a drummer from India, two ex-mental patients, a neurotic, and a goofball, they went on to redefine what “southern rock” could mean—less dependent on beer guzzling machismo and more focused on small town elements of southern living. In their 10-year existence, they’ve released 4 albums: Santeria (1998), Apocalypse, Louisiana (2000), House of the Dying Sun (2002), and Year of the Knife (2008. Over the past decade, they’ve conducted numerous regional and national tours of the states, often documented in Dege Legg’s book Into the Great Unknown (2005). 

Black Bayou Construkt: After releasing and touring one of the greatest, unheard records of modern south, House of the Dying Sun (2003), Dege Legg and his band Santeria dropped off the radar. Rumors of voodoo curses, car crashes, and psychotic breakdowns abounded. Some of them--not far from the reality of what had happened--and some of them, painfully off base. In truth, after 10 years of hard living and touring in rickety vans, the band decided to go on “indefinite hiatus.” In the interim, Dege went into self-imposed exile, living in seedy motels, driving a cab, recording, working on a book, and composing new songs. In 2004, he was lured from exile with offers of big money and recording contracts by L.A. A&R reps who, having heard the new batch of Dege’s demos (recorded in a trailerpark, no less), saw dollar signs and infinite possibilities. However, the project was to last only a few months with the sessions disintegrating amidst creative differences. Content not to sell his soul, and instead, remain an obscure footnote in the modern musical cannon, Dege returned to Louisiana. But a strange thing happened. Shortly after his return, a new band fell into place—one made up of veterans of Louisiana underground rock, blues, and roots scenes. In a seemingly effortless manner, they joined Dege in a simple mission: make original music with no expectations or head-trips and bring it to the people in a unique and inimitable manner. No bombast. No hype. No A&R. Great songs. Good people. And distinctly southern music. What resulted is Black Bayou Construkt – a psyouthern, post-Americana ensemble of sonic and roots madness, documented in the album Kingdoms of Folly (2009).