A sentence from the original announcement for Brother Dege’s new album Aurora by his label Prophecy Productions I felt hit the bullseye, because it promised the very thing that a lot of people seek, myself included, from the music they listen to – a trip to another place, another reality, someone else’s life. It doesn’t matter if this is a place near or far, a reality familiar or completely foreign, but it will offer you another perspective, a view different from your own and thus something you can compare your experiences to. “Listening to Brother Dege”, the promo text said, “you breathe in the backwoods air, fall under the spell of the swamp, and get to know the ghosts of the Delta.” Sounds great, I thought. Count me in. Let’s go and hear some of the peculiar stories from that special place that is the American South, the land of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Conner, the land of Southern Gothic and Dark Country.
But reality interfered. Before having a chance to sit down and write a review for Brother Dege’s new album and the stories it told, I was informed about his passing away, and suddenly everything shifted. Instead of a trip to another place, and I had imagined it at least partly as a fictitious place, the music and the lyrics now seemed like a document of painfully real issues, and the “ghosts of the Delta” instantly became more threatening and more dangerous. They looked more like the apparitions you see popping up everywhere around, not like inhabitants of the swamp. And instead of a trip to another place I found myself face down in the muck of the here and now, contemplating the misery of what it means to be human.
Dege Legg, better known under his artistic alias Brother Dege, passed away on March 8, aged 56, only days away from the release of his new full-length album Aurora. Prophecy Productions, after careful consideration, decided to proceed with the release, because, as they said in a Facebook post on March 11, to the best of their knowledge, this is what Dege wanted. “We will honour his artistic legacy by making it available to the world,” said one part of the post.
Dege’s legacy is a great one indeed, and it is not just of a musical kind. The more I read about him, the more I got the impression that he had been not only an exceptional artist, but also an exceptional human being. Two things that do not necessarily go together. He was a writer and a musician, with a BA in philosophy, and he toiled along in various jobs to support himself and his art, before one of his songs propelled him to fame and a Grammy nomination.
When Quentin Tarantino decided to include Dege’s song Too Old to Die Young from Folk Songs of the American Longhair (2010) on the soundtrack of his film Django Unchained (2012), Dege became famous and was finally able to live off his music. Until then he worked as a cab driver, dishwasher, music journalist, manual labourer, warehouseman, mechanic, line cook, and a caseworker in a homeless shelter – meaning: he saw and experienced more of life than most of us will ever do. And then he sang and wrote about it. His latest book was published in 2020 and titled Cablog: Diary of a Cab Driver. The blurb reads as follows: “A broke and unemployed musician lands a gig driving a cab through the swamplands of south Louisiana while bobbing and weaving through a night-time world ruled by drugs, guns, saints, and strippers.” Sounds like a good read and probably a good foundation for a movie, too. More real and less romantic than Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth.
Aurora is Dege’s six full-length album and follows fan favourites like How to Kill a Horse (2013), Scorched Earth Policy (2015), and Farmer’s Almanac (2018). In his own words, Aurora “deals with love, psychosis, and the dysfunctions that get repeated within these relationships (…)”. Like on previous releases, the music fuses folk and Americana with Delta blues, rock and psychedelia, and thus successfully transmits the spirit and atmosphere of Dege’s home state Louisiana. This time around, however, some songs are heavier on the melancholia and the mood is somewhat darker. Gone is the cheeky wit and the bits of gallows humour that characterized previous releases. Most painful to listen to, especially at this point in time, is the song A Man Needs a Mommy.
Apart from the well-known droning slide guitar, the naked vocals, and the painfully honest lyrics, there are also a few surprising additions like the instrumental Ouroboros featuring a violine and making you think of a place across the sea and far away from the swamp, but similarly green – Ireland. Album closer The Longing drifts off musingly from a regular piece to an extended recording of torrential rain. Calming, but sad as well.
Little time has passed since Dege Legg’s death and that’s why I don’t feel that is appropriate to rate his latest album. At least I don’t feel comfortable doing it. Who cares about ratings now? But I do want to tell you that Aurora is a good album. It is beautiful, honest and heartfelt, and closely connected to its place of origin, to the landscape, the people and their stories, just like the album’s creator was.
Thank you, Brother Dege. Thank you for the music and the words. May you rest in peace.
(Slavica)
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