Brother Dege, Dan Dyer

Born and raised in southern Louisiana, Dege Legg is of Cajun-French, Irish, and Native American ancestry.

To support his creative obsessions, Dege has worked many odd jobs over the years, including cabdriver, machinist, case worker in a homeless shelter, delivery driver, dishwasher, tire mechanic, fry cook, journalist, and many other jobs.

Obsessions: art, creativity in any form, Dobros, Pablo Picasso, Don Quixote, Vincent van Gogh, Henry Miller, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Bukowski, Faulkner, Black Sabbath, Blind Willie Johnson, Sonic Youth, UFOs, junkyards, zero point energy, kindness, barbarism, crop circles, sitars, psychic telepathy, quantum metaphysics, rodeo clowns, living a good life, service to others, the great unknown, etc.

In 1994, Dege Legg founded the underground, southern psych-rock band Santeria, which toured and gigged in relative obscurity for 10 years, pounding out a strange variety of swampedelic, "psyouthern rock" that relied less on chest-thumping and beer guzzling, and more on quasi-mystical attempts at hayseed transcendence.

In 1997, Dege Legg recorded and released Bastard's Blues, a hand-dubbed cassette release. The album in many ways has served as the blueprint for all his following solo releases.

In 1999, Dege Legg self-released a crudely recorded, 4-track concept album on CDR titled Love Letters & Suicide Notes.

In 2002, Santeria released the landmark, underappreciated album House of the Dying Sun. Five months later, after a west coast tour, the band went on indefinite hiatus amidst a string of bad luck and hardships that were sometimes seriously, sometimes comically, attributed to a voodoo curse believed placed on the band.

In 2003, Dege Legg lived in cheap, low-rent motels for nine months and wrote about the experience before eventually moving into a trailer park.

From 2003-2004, Dege Legg worked as a nightshift cabdriver for a City Cab Co. in Lafayette, LA. His experiences on the job were documented for blog and book form (Cablog: Diary of a Cabdriver).

In 2004, Dege Legg improvised and recorded an album (Trailerville) of "guitar scapes" in the trailer park where he lived. Link: Trailerville by Dege Legg on iTunes

In late 2004, Dege Legg briefly moved to Los Angeles to record demos in a development deal. He abandoned the project and moved back to Louisiana three months later after realizing he was a willing participant in making "the worst music ever made by humans."

From 2004-2005, Dege Legg joined swamp rocker CC Adcock's touring band The Lafayette Marquis.

In 2005, Dege Legg founded the 6-piece ensemble Black Bayou Construkt and released the album Kingdoms of Folly in 2009 Link: Kingdoms of Folly by Black Bayou Construkt on iTunes

In 2007, tiring of forgettable gigs in half-empty clubs, Dege Legg began playing short live and improvised sets in non-traditional venues and filming the proceedings on cheap digital cameras. The venues included open fields, abandoned houses, backwoods alcoves, caves, cheap motels, dumpsters, gullies, parking towers, public bathrooms, sheds, and ponds. The results were posted to YouTube. Link: Santeria Band Youtube Page

In 2007, Dege Legg lived in a homeless camp and wrote a feature story on the experience titled Slipping through the Cracks for the Independent Weekly in Lafayette, LA, which won a Louisiana Press Award.

In 2009, Dege Legg began recording songs for the album Folk Songs of the American Longhair in nontraditional spaces (elevator shafts, open fields, abandoned houses) before eventually recording the tracks at home and in a shed behind his rent house.

In 2010, Dege Legg released the slide guitar album Folk Songs of the American Longhair under the name Brother Dege.

In 2011, Dege Legg began working full-time in a men's homeless shelter.

From 2011-2012, Dege recorded the songs for How to Kill a Horse (the follow album to Folk Songs) in an empty warehouse in Lafayette, LA.

Dege Legg is the author of nine albums and two books (The Battle Hymn of the Hillbilly Zatan Boys and Into the Great Unknown)

Brother Dege's music has been featured in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained as well as the Discovery Channel and the National Geographic Channel.

DYER rose to prominence in Austin, TX during the late 90s as frontman of the much heralded band, Breedlove. For his debut solo album …Of What Lies Beneath, (2004) DYER headed to New York City and Miami
to collaborate with veteran rock legend Lenny Kravitz, who produced and released the record on Kravitz_s own Reprise imprint label, Roxie Records. DYER then returned to Austin, his musical birthplace, to record and release his 2008 self-titled album, a soul-revivalist
recording produced by David Boyle in an old snake-charmer church turned studio on the east side of Austin, and released by local label Fat Caddy Records. Dan Dyer was named one of the top 10 local albums of
2008 by both the Austin American Statesman and The Austin Chronicle.

DYER's voice and live performance intensity are raw and hot, yet soulful and sensitive, drawing from a wealth of classic soul, blues, folk and R&B legends. Fans are treated to a sincere, emotional, and dynamic show, whether DAN is touring the U.S. solo or with his
explosive trio, playing at acoustic listening rooms, or at major music festivals such as Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, Essence Music Festival, or his annual spot (since 2005) at the Voodoo Experience.