BROTHER DEGE

BIO

If you make the trek down to Louisiana, you won’t leave the same way you came…

When you listen to Brother Dege, you practically breathe in the backwoods air, fall under the spell of the swamp, and get to know the ghosts of the Delta. Materializing at a crossroads between soul-rousing rock ‘n’ roll, eloquent folk, graveyard Americana, and psychedelic bliss, the GRAMMY® Award-nominated troubadour absorbs the spirit of his home state in threads of droning absinthe-spiked slide guitar, naked vocals, and blood-soaked poetry. Turning up the amps in the dead of night, an undercurrent of bluesy distortion tosses and turns in tectonic motion beneath bold hooks as his love for seventies and eighties staples funnels into a twisted 21st century take on Southern rock. He emerges out of this smoke with a vision without comparison, bringing grit and gusto in equal measure to Alt-Americana. After quietly generating tens of millions of streams, earning widespread acclaim, and carving out a corner in pop culture history with a co-sign by none other than Quentin Tarantino, Dege pulls everyone into this world on his sixth full-length album, Aurora.

“I’m revealing more of myself than I have on previous records,” he notes. “Musically, I’m trying to mimic the sounds of the Deep South with this multi-dimensional weirdness. I can slow it down to a point where it’s like ‘Robert Johnson on Thorazine’. Essentially, this is my version of where I’m from. It’s the dark side of the Deep South.”

Born in Louisiana to “Air Force parents,” he moved around quite a bit as a kid. The family lived in Northern California and Georgia before Dege and his mom eventually settled back in Louisiana. He initially fell in love with seventies and eighties rock ‘n’ roll, listening to the likes of AC/DC. He taught himself how to play guitar, penning tunes of his own from the moment he picked up the instrument. 

At the same time, the region always made its presence known in his music.

“As much as I rebelled against Southern music, it inevitably seeps through me when I sit down with an acoustic guitar,” he laughs. “It’s slow, moody, and meditative.”

During 2004, he introduced this sound via Trailerville. On its heels, 2010’s Folk Songs of the American Longhair yielded a procession of anthems, including “Hard Row to Hoe,” “The Girl Who Wept Stones,” “Dead & Gone,” and “Too Old To Die Young.” Tarantino personally selected “Too Old To Die Young” to play over a key sequence in Django Unchained and grace the tracklisting of the Django Unchained Original Motion Picture Soundtrack—which garnered a GRAMMY® nod in the category of “Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media.” Dege parlayed this momentum into a string of fan favorite albums, namely How To Kill A Horse [2013], Scorched Earth Policy [2015], and Farmer’s Almanac [2018]. PopMatters hailed the latter as “music that becomes as integral to your deep self as your blood and skin,” and Glide Magazine christened him “one of the best-kept secrets in Louisiana.” Uncut Magazine put it best, “Brother Dege is one of the best-kept secrets in the Deep South.”

Following the dissolution of a five-year relationship, he carefully assembled Aurora.

“It definitely deals with love, psychosis, and the dysfunctions that get repeated within these relationships and patterns of myself,” he goes on. “I thought of it as an ouroboros—which is a snake that eats its own tail. In a relationship, you are swallowing your own tail and tail of your partner, because you blame them for some of it too. The Aurora resembles the spectral light of falling in love.”

As such, he split the album into two halves preceded by eponymous instrumentals, namely “Aurora” and “Ouroboros.” The A-side begins with “Aurora,” while the B-Side commences on “Ouroboros.” Following the former, the first single “Where The Black Flowers Grow” blooms from the throes of lust at its most raw. Slide guitar snakes around a tribal-style rhythm anchored by a thick bassline, “trashcan drums,” and a plea to “Make my black flowers grow.”

“When you fall in love with somebody, you have a particular physical chemistry,” he reveals. “You’re comfortable trying sexual things. So, it’s a love song about getting over your own insecurities about your body. A black flower is a darker beautiful thing”

On the other end of the spectrum, “Turn of the Screw” hinges on an upbeat stomp and a swaggering rock ‘n’ roll refrain. Robust guitar adds a distinct and dynamic kick to the track with a rollicking fire.

“It’s a slide-riffing, barn-burning song,” he says. “You’re taking a chance with your partner, jumping off a cliff figuratively together, and seeing where it goes. Even if you’ve made many mistakes in the past, you turn the screw down and reach the point of no return.”

Elsewhere, his gravelly delivery scrapes across piano and acoustic guitar on the pensive “The Devil You Know.” 
 

“This is a breakup song,” he elaborates. “I’m talking about acknowledging things I’ve done in the relationship and coming to terms with them. I’m confessing to my partner and trying to rekindle things. I don’t want to be alone, and ‘Devil You Know’ is me sitting alone with myself.”

The smoky groove and swaggering guitar of “Loser’s Blues” gives way to the 12-minute epic “The Longing.” Piano underscores the verses as he wanders, “So lost in the longing.” He does a moratorium on this lost romance and looks ahead in its wake during an ambient meditative outro.

“It’s probably the deepest one,” he notes. “Metaphorically, it’s the end of a relationship. You’re coming to terms with things being over. You know it’s not going to be saved. You’re longing for what you once had. Your brain plays on your heart. You remember something really good maybe even better than it was.”

In the end, you might not be the same after you hear Brother Dege.

“As dark as it gets, I’d like for people to know there’s some kind of twisted light at the end of the tunnel that’s worth reaching together,” he leaves off. “I don’t know if it’s an illusion, but even hope embedded in an illusion is better than no illusion or no hope at all.”