Happy 2025
Year of Queens. Day 200. There are moments when life seems like a story and waking up is turning the next page. So many wonderful strange things happened for DCK in 2024. We played @the_orange_peel. We recorded with @kevin.moloney.music (Sinead O’Connor, U2) and then we became friends with this musical wizard - like some distant Irish cousin showed up in the mountains and now we all cause trouble together. We had nights with @jessieandthejinx and @whiteoaksplitsband at @fleetwoodsavl that went way past midnight and it felt like all three bands were having a conversation about songwriting and telling the truth. Or nights at @shilohandgaines - our home away from home - with @theloverfacesband - when we surfed the energy of an album release show and lots of Irish whiskey. Or at the @whitehorseblackmtn - our home - with @janxspiritavl and friends playing some music in these battered mountains. @slygrog Grog with Mike Andersen and chatting with Spring Pearson before and sharing the stage with @thaliazedek. We had some stopping and going with the flood and members dealing with life. So we went back to the old mountain home in Swannanoa and spent a couple of days each week, three hours, writing songs, like miners heading into these mountain and digging for gems. This version of this band has been around for a little over a year and we have about two dozen songs we hope will wreck you and set your heart on fire. It is like we have fallen into a novel and each day is another page of the story.
Year of Queens. Day 201. Happy New Year. Old Irish saying: may you always be the naughty kid in the classroom. Whenever the teacher steps out to talk with the principal or parent stand on your desk and put on a show for the rest of the class.
Day 202. Year of Queens. We write songs in a peculiar way. They’re never finished when they’re introduced. Mostly they are a sketch. A couple of chords and a verse. A chorus? Maybe? And then something happens. A new melody line. A new chorus. A riff. A different groove. Something new enters the room. My favorite songs are the songs that…. I don’t know how they were written.
Day 203. Day of Queens. It’s often the forgotten things, the cast-offs, the throw-aways, the mistakes which become the songs. Like here’s a song which has never worked - and now it’s the favorite of this group of musicians and even in practices we play “High Rise Love” like we’re a cross between INXS and Blondie at Madison Square Garden. Goes to show - you never know what will work…
It’s a little bit of selfish space - to daydream about music, to always be listening, to be preparing for the next practice or a show, not to be 100% present in this reality, but to walk around with the top of our heads open (like a trap door) and allow weird ideas and music sounds to come on inside.
