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