​THE DACHA BAND

In Dacha Band terms, some time separates ‘One Fair Day’ and ‘Ashes and Wine.’ After my mother’s death, we essentially took the summer off and did not reconvene until the beginning of the Autumn, by which time I had begun working on a series of dark blues based tunes for which I standard set up seemed inappropriate. The album is the journey of a dissolute pilgrim from England to America and thence downhill. The line, ‘Lord I shall be a Vagabond, I shall put this land to the test,’ sort of sums up the theme. I think it was Greil Marcus who coined the phrase, ‘Old Weird America,’ and I think that sums up the album pretty well.

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For the set, Lee linked two keyboards, one playing a distorted electric piano and the other a Hammond organ module. Everything was overdriven and played live through a big old valve amp that had lain unused in my garage for years and which Lee had fallen in love with and purchased from me. For the first time, Steve went to the sticks, where he has always felt more comfortable and rocked out thoroughly. We had initially intended to employ a lead guitarist for the live session, but when this fell through, I played my acoustic through a filter that made it sound oddly distorted and wah-wah. For the first time since we began the Dacha albums, I employed my ‘Howlin’ Wolf,’ ‘Captain Beefheart’ impression that had once been my stock in trade, particularly on ‘Stone Cold.’ ‘Ashes and Wine,’ is, to all intents and purposes, a live set. All that was later added was a tambourine and a few highlights on the ride cymbal that somehow became lost on the day. The whole thing took about three hours.

 

I think the sound we made that day was as close as we ever came to Lee’s real metier. Generally,  we were a bit too ‘singer songwriter’ for his tastes, which makes the body of his work on the albums all the more remarkable. We were so encouraged by what we had achieved on the album that we set up a live practise with lead guitarist Tom Fairburn and booked the bands one and only gig at ‘The Musician’ in Leicester. It was a Wednesday evening, no one turned up, we were unprepared, goofed up several numbers but were, according to the sound man, ‘The best thing I’ve heard in here in ages!’ High praise indeed. We never played live again.

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