A Thousand Years Ago...Dad Horse Experience Played at Reggie's
CRACKLE
WHIZ
YIPSMASH
Where are we? Was that lightning? Is that a Twilight Zone spiral shellacked on the sky like a messo Evil Dead II Monster Squad cray cray? WHOBOY and YEHAW!
Boners and ghoulinas, we just took a ride in the WAYBACK MACHINE!
September 10, 2012: The Dad Horse Experience at Reggie's Music Joint
Once upon a Septembering, far gone from decent remembering, my friend, Professor M., and I went to Reggie's Music Joint - that beloved punk-country watering hole of despair, derangement and dicey life choices - to see The Dad Horse Experience play.
Ahem.
* raises hands skywards *
I have seen the power. (amen)
* gives the gods jazz hands *
I said I have seen the power, brothers and critters, the power and the glory. (amen)
I have heard perditions and proclamations, exclamations and interrogations upon the seen and unseen world...All through the yodeling-songster-banjo-kazoo-is-he-serious-I-think-he-is-acid-preacher Dad Horse Ottn.He of the Grapes of Wrath pants and foot organ.
Yep. I said foot organ. Barefoot, even.
PRAISE THAT!
Seriously, praise be to one man bands that will travel from mothereffing Germany to play to eleven people in a shithole on the southside of Chicago. Dad Horse Experience plays Keller-Gospel. Keller being the word for basement in German. That's right folks, because the light needs to shine in the darkness and you don't get much darker than basement shows, dive bars and degenerate rock and rollers.
Dad Horse plays folk music...but that makes it seem like he sits there with Bob Dylan hair and a Joni Mitchell fluttery shirt. I could bend and say he plays country...but that isn't rightly true either, aside from classic covers of Hank Williams and the Carter Family. And can it still be called gospel music if there are cursewords in your best known God songs? For example:
"Lord must fix my soul, turn the shit into gold, Lord please fix my soul."
or
"Oh my mama she went to heaven & the last word that she said
Son you won't never follow me because you're so mean & bad
Oh but I want to go to heaven, I want to see my mama there
But when I stand before the gates of heaven w/ a bucket full of sins
Lord I'm a bad ass motherfucker but won't you please let me in."
(Because why shouldn't your friends throw gasoline on a fire and shoot at the flames while you sing gospel on a moonless night?)
Dad Horse Experience is a soul-scrubbing, bar-choiring, unusually uplifting one-man-band who can banter like almost none other I've heard. Get his album, Live in Melbourne, if you want the full experience of his confessional style roots music, where you are as likely to hear an existential rant likening the human existence to a sparkler falling into a pile of dogshit on a Portuguese roundabout as cautionary tales against the use of illicit substances.
I. Love. This. Man.
WHIZ
YIPSMASH
Where are we? Was that lightning? Is that a Twilight Zone spiral shellacked on the sky like a messo Evil Dead II Monster Squad cray cray? WHOBOY and YEHAW!
Boners and ghoulinas, we just took a ride in the WAYBACK MACHINE!
September 10, 2012: The Dad Horse Experience at Reggie's Music Joint
Once upon a Septembering, far gone from decent remembering, my friend, Professor M., and I went to Reggie's Music Joint - that beloved punk-country watering hole of despair, derangement and dicey life choices - to see The Dad Horse Experience play.
Ahem.
* raises hands skywards *
I have seen the power. (amen)
* gives the gods jazz hands *
I said I have seen the power, brothers and critters, the power and the glory. (amen)
I have heard perditions and proclamations, exclamations and interrogations upon the seen and unseen world...All through the yodeling-songster-banjo-kazoo-is-he-serious-I-think-he-is-acid-preacher Dad Horse Ottn.He of the Grapes of Wrath pants and foot organ.
Yep. I said foot organ. Barefoot, even.
PRAISE THAT!
Seriously, praise be to one man bands that will travel from mothereffing Germany to play to eleven people in a shithole on the southside of Chicago. Dad Horse Experience plays Keller-Gospel. Keller being the word for basement in German. That's right folks, because the light needs to shine in the darkness and you don't get much darker than basement shows, dive bars and degenerate rock and rollers.
Dad Horse plays folk music...but that makes it seem like he sits there with Bob Dylan hair and a Joni Mitchell fluttery shirt. I could bend and say he plays country...but that isn't rightly true either, aside from classic covers of Hank Williams and the Carter Family. And can it still be called gospel music if there are cursewords in your best known God songs? For example:
"Lord must fix my soul, turn the shit into gold, Lord please fix my soul."
or
"Oh my mama she went to heaven & the last word that she said
Son you won't never follow me because you're so mean & bad
Oh but I want to go to heaven, I want to see my mama there
But when I stand before the gates of heaven w/ a bucket full of sins
Lord I'm a bad ass motherfucker but won't you please let me in."
Click to view(Because why shouldn't your friends throw gasoline on a fire and shoot at the flames while you sing gospel on a moonless night?)
Dad Horse Experience is a soul-scrubbing, bar-choiring, unusually uplifting one-man-band who can banter like almost none other I've heard. Get his album, Live in Melbourne, if you want the full experience of his confessional style roots music, where you are as likely to hear an existential rant likening the human existence to a sparkler falling into a pile of dogshit on a Portuguese roundabout as cautionary tales against the use of illicit substances.
I. Love. This. Man.