The Deli’s Dh Wright on tour with Deep Machine

After the set, it came as no surprise that a friend of the band was in the audience. A heavyset crooner in a hunting cap could be seen lounging with the top half of his back on a large red sofa chair while the rest of his body hung lazily off the side, pressed in by two women, one on each side, sliding down the rounded arm rests. He was loving it.

“This is who we are staying with,” says Crannel, pointing to the sturdy mass getting squeezed into a smiling position on the chair. I rounded up my tab by buying another beer and squeezed through the crowd.

I wonder how long riding under the radar it would be until this band gets discovered. In Montevallo we are a moving mirage. The guys don’t expect to make any money in Montevallo. Money is talked about openly; it is noted that everyone needs to know not to get in trouble or spend too much, for costs must be kept low to make it home. Tonight they are playing at a house party, and while the house owner says he will cover gas, the expenses of food and nourishment won’t be covered. But fans are there and even better, potential fans. But discovery does not mean fame anymore and the guys know that; discovery means making a living playing and touring, discovery to the point of leaving the day jobs to play music and be called professionals in every sense of the word and the amount of dedication it implies. “We want to do this full time, it is too much fucking fun,” says Brennan as he steps inside and looks around for the best place to set up.

In the year of hiatus while Deep Machine took a break, the landscape of popular music has turned and twisted upon itself into a complex melodrama of man vs. machine. As Skrillex has become the most famous beat maker in the world and producer David Guetta prostitutes his beats to the highest bidder, and while our hometown of Nashville has become the center for garage and punk rock, and Franklin bands Paramore, Ke$ha, and others shell out radio singles, Deep Machine has emerged again at a time when the duality of stage presence and live recordings have peaked to the point of no return. “The gig has to be a spectacle and the recordings must emulate the live show,” says Brook, the promoter in Montevallo.

From the front of the van waiting before the show, the men of Deep Machine look out the front window toward the ultimate uncertain destiny of their chosen path and the sky melts around them. Toward fear or fraternity, the smoke hidden in the safest place is released into the air and everyone smiles as the fire is hidden again, for there is no starting over after passing the finishing line, and jail costs more than two hundred dollars to leave. They are traveling not a part of the world but upon it, and outside the broken blinds, the world looks trapped in the idea of shame, that inside this van exists the only truth of life. – Dh Wright

The Deli’s Dh Wright on tour with Deep Machine

The ride to Chattanooga was under way, and I had the feeling we were on the crest of something progressive that was neither good nor evil, but maybe a little of both, in search for reason behind the madness so many bands before them had done and failed to do; taking to the road without a label footing the bill. It was too late to get back home and write the entire idea of going along on tour as a pipe dream with the arching theme of “those who can’t do teach, and those who can’t teach write about it.” We were on our way south.

No one was at the venue when the band began to unload the equipment, but I suspected that people were hiding in the shadows getting their head leveled. We had extra coolant and oil in the van if anyone was interested, but there were no takers. This was the first tour Deep Machine had been on since reforming early this year with Bowden behind the bass. I ask DM what caused the split with their last bass player in the time before the set. “There were a lot of reasons,” Walsh says. “Things are just going to work better this way.” It seems, like all relationships, bands are no different, capable of discovering the worst and best in each other quickly and without mercy, and if the positives are not reiterated, the negatives creep up and have trouble ever going away.

It has only taken Zack a week to learn the complicated time changes, rhythm relapses, hyper metal dance beat mix ups and the color wheel of changes that make up the bands set list. “We can get fucked up when we are jamming, but I’ll wait til after the show,” Walsh says, and Bowden agrees. Starting to get worried about who will attend, “Shows don’t get started here til later,” says Crannel, who had spent the past year living in Chattanooga while Deep Machine had been on hiatus.

It is 10:30 p.m. and the opening song filters through JJ’s Bohemia. Tribal women in the front row move their feet with piercing screams. I think of what Walsh said when I asked him what he thought of having fans that are considered stereotypical hippies, whatever that word means. He says he thinks having fans, whoever they are, is great. “Hippies know how to have a good time. They dance, they are always in a good mood. They are awesome.” It did not hurt that Walsh forgot his black boots and went with sandals instead, as most of the crowd moved about in sandals and t-shirts.

Earlier that day we arrived in town at a diner where the band waited for to-go orders and we looked at the local newspaper already on the table, trying to avoid the full plates of leftovers gone uneaten by a family of food mongers on the adjacent table. I wondered why they didn’t take the rest home. Reading the front page of the local bi-weekly rag, I felt like the band was doing something special and that their story would be on the front page of this magazine or one like it soon. And while I saw the idea of touring as an attempt to define one’s own future on chosen terms, I began to wonder why anyone would care. And if anyone would see this endeavor of low budget touring as anything besides roaming from city to city like carefree gypsies with music and good booze on their side. – Dh Wright

A couple weekends ago, Deli writer Dh Wright went out on the road with Nashville’s all-instrumental Deep Machine and wrote about their travels. Due to the narrative’s length, we decided to split this one up, so stay tuned in the coming week for more of Wright’s account…

The ship hovers toward Chattanooga; there was a procedure to make sure that we had enough oil and coolant to keep the van afloat for a few hundred miles south to Chattanooga, Montevallo, AL and back. Without a spare tire we were moving luck aside for leg room and positive karma. We were leaving behind the Land of Manson, miles outside of the city where he said he would return to Woodbury whenever he gets out – he might even be there already.

I was traveling with Nashville’s Deep Machine for a story about redemption, fame and the pursuit of success through touring and whether it was possible to survive off gigs alone, or so I thought. The story took unexpected turns as the opportunity to survive on creativity comes with a cost.

I remember the days when going to an instrumental show only happened with enough drugs to embrace the lights and scene and not run away from it all, but Deep Machine is different and this difference drew me to the trip. The band’s genre is pure instrumental, with contemporary influences like Fleet Foxes, Phillip Glass, Tool and The Fugees, to the classical and jazz influences of John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

We were out of Nashville. Away from the cynics who had abandoned the city for Austin, TX. Moving down the state line tugboating a trailer of musical equipment, most of which had experienced each and every venue in Nashville. I had known the band before, mostly from the perimeters of catching late night sets among the tranced-out refugees escaping university boredom. Brennan Walsh , Ben Crannel, and Brian Cline I had seen before, but Zack Bowden was new to the band. Brennan played in Thief, a rock ‘n’ roll tantrum with classic rock and psychedelic/experimental sound. Thief played most everywhere in the mid-state during the past few years. Crannel had played in other bands that mostly toured the college town of Murfreesboro, TN, where Deep Machine formed. The story begins that each had a gig the same night and in between sets Walsh, the guitar player of Thief, and Crannel, the drummer of Childhood TV Stars took up their instruments in between sets and Deep Machine was formed. Brian joined after moving into town from Oklahoma with friend Jon Conant of Penicillin Baby to attend the recording program at MTSU. Brian was a natural fit in the band. And Bowden is fresh and already in the pocket, the way all bass players should be.