Brother Dege – new song ‘How to Kill a Horse’ free download

While the long and seemingly endless wait for the follow up to Folk Songs of the American Longhair, Brother Dege has at least released another new song – after the massive tease that was Wehyah last year.

The new track is called How to Kill a Horse and it sounds a bit like what would happen if you mixed the ghost of Jonny Cash and the current Fleetwood Mac tour into some Louisiana swamp (with or without Christine McVie, the choice is yours). Download it for free and stick it on repeat if you don’t believe me.

It’s dark, it’s eerie, it’s a song that follows you around for a little while after you listen to it – haunting, you might say. It’s really quite something to behold, or should that be behear, and does nothing but reaffirm my total respect and admiration for what a bearded man with a resonator can do. I also believe he must have killed a horse or two himself in his time because it all sounds painfully, fascinatingly real.

Perhaps Tarantino might consider it for his next motion picture, after featuring Dege’s Too Old To Die Young in Django Unchained no less.

 

 

Brother Dege

This man might be one of ‘americana’s’ best kept secrets, well this seems to be the general consensus at any rate. Brother Dege is a man with a beard and guitar, spinning tales about his childhood growing up in the Louisianna swamplands who has been selling his musical wares in the form of one band or another, or even just himself for years. According to Magnet magazine’s website he’s been somewhat off of the music scene for a while, working in a homeless shelter and recording his next LP How to Kill a Horse which should be released sometime in the autumn.

As a teaser for his forthcoming album, a track called Wehyah has been released, free to download or if you’re feeling particularly ridiculous you can pay 89 pence for it on Amazon.

Some of the tracks from the previous album Folk Songs of the American Longhair can be streamed from his Reverbnation page here. A voice that sometimes tears its way out of his throat and riffs that will make a person’s feet move all by themselves. Everything sounds like it’s drenched with the blood sweat and tears of Dege, his roots are everywhere but so it his formidable talent, avoiding the possible cheesey white-man-southern-blues clichés, it’s just honest and not to smooth around the edges and there’s something in the narrative mixed with the gruff vocals that command attention. If nothing else these are some delta blues that will make your beard longer by the end of a single track, for that reason alone I implore anyone and everyone to listen.