​THE DACHA BAND

‘Down by Sunday,’ recorded during the Autumn of 2007, remains one of my favourite Dacha albums. It was the first album we had recorded that consisted of entirely new songs, written upon a direct linked theme. I had intended the next album after ‘Borrowed Light’ to be a double ‘Hard Luck Stories,’ which I had been working towards for a long time.

 

However, one day, I saw an article on the news about a toxic garbage barge ploughing up and down the north east coast of America, disowned by everyone and unable to land and discharge its cargo, and wrote ten of the twelve songs that day at the piano. The coast was exchanged for the Mississippi River and the songs were written to tell the stories of those on board. The narrator is a dissolute ‘Ishmael’ character, who ‘pays off his marriage’ and pays off his debts before escaping the real world aboard the boat. As soon as I began writing, I knew that the album would, in essence, be one song. It was a world I felt that I knew and could associate with. Nothing was held back. There were no heroes. There was no resolution to the story.