Interviews    Santeria
by Chris Barnes

For my money, Santeria is one of the best rock bands going. Completely unique, unencumbered by trends, utterly astonishing musically and lyrically prolific. They combine elements of heavy rock, Cajun folk, crazy tribal voodoo zydeco and weave in the hypnotic influence of traditional Eastern music. Incredible. Hellride talks with vocalist/lyricist/guitarist Dege Legg about the new album, life in GhostTowns and the "Santeria Curse".


Hellride Music: Let me ask you the question about the new album that's probably been on the minds of Santeria fans for a while - what took you guys so damn long to record?! It seems like some of those songs have been in the Santeria repertoire for a while. Was it a case of just writing new material, money or both? Or neither?

Dege Legg: All the above, except for lack of material. We wanted to give these songs the proper send off, but in the process, and over the course of the last two years, experienced everything imaginable that could go wrong. Money problems. Technical problems. Voodoo curses and threats. Two engineers disappeared…one of them with the tapes. We got evicted from the Santeria Hell House. 3/5 of the band was verging on homelessness. We wrecked two vans and nine cars. Our former percussionist, Matt, lost his mind, struggling with schizophrenia. He believed, among other things, we were being followed-gig to gig-by the CIA and the FBI. Women came and went. Everybody got fired from their day jobs, which contributed to money problems. As a whole, it came to be known as the "Santeria Curse." A lot of weird stuff was happening around us. The local paper even did a story on it. We found a cow's heart stuffed in our mailbox. A few months later, I was walking home, down a gravel road by our house, and this crazy dude jumps out of the shadows with a Rambo knife pointed at me…wanting to know what I was doing and who sent me. Days later, Primo got spooked and tossed his voodoo bones in the swamp. Everybody started carrying guns. It was this insane whirlwind of madness, swirling around us. We couldn't make it stop. Seriously, I know it sounds like bullshit, but there's stuff happening out there, in the world, that we can't even begin to comprehend. It's strange and fascinating, but it doesn't make it any easier to get a record done-fighting it out with these things-when all you want to do is eat or sleep or play some rock and roll.

Hellride Music: Geezus! .... how do I follow up an answer like that?! That's intense to say the least. Ummm... how about a band bio or something?

Dege: Band bios are usually pretty boring, so here's a simplified timeline:

1994-Dege Legg, ex-mental patient/dope fiend, meets Krishna Kasturi, a drummer who'd immigrated to Louisiana from India with his parents. They form band with a crazy Mexican named Rico on bass. Ethnic diversity of the members leads to the name "Santeria." Loud strangely tuned, southern-distortorama guitars, jungle polyrhythms, wandering bass lines, and walls of feedback characterize the music.

1995-The band plays hundreds of gigs, for the next few years, throughout the southern US, to unresponsive audiences…who either want them to be "heavier" or "more arty." Jay Guins joins the band on 2nd guitar, but is dismissed after two weeks for being unable to execute "sick metal riffs" to the band's satisfaction.

1996-Rico splits. Ryan Pankratz, a local musician, enters on bass. Over the course of 3 days in Colorado, band records 9 songs for debut record. Due to lack of funds and an indie record deal that never materializes, CD is not released until 1998. Matt Gautreaux joins the rhythm section, pounding a large African drum called a djembe that takes precedence in the mix much like a guitarist.

1997-Santeria continue to hammer out gigs to confused but curious crowds, improvising drum fueled live sets, out of creative frustration and lack of vibe with the world.

1998-Debut CD, Santeria, is released to OK reviews characterized by an inability to place the band's sound. Pankratz leaves to form Icepick Revival. Troy Primo, a local guitarist, invites Dege over for a one-on-one jam session. Fearing the meeting is only an opportunity for Dege to steal stuff out of the guitarist's apartment, Primo proceeds cautiously, but is pleasantly surprised when Dege asks him to join Santeria. Jay Guins rejoins Santos on bass. A five-man, tribal-power rock unit is born.

1999-Fueled by the righteous creative vibe between the band members, new songs are written by the day. Santeria begin to earn reputation as a "crazy fucking live band." Sweat fests, tribal drum jams, rock action, guitar schizo-nystics, and some occasional nudity, among other things, become staples of the live set.

2000-Band makes first attempts to record House of the Dying Sun. Sessions result in the disappearance of two audio engineers along with the composite tapes, containing a total of 15 tracks. Broke and disillusioned, Santeria release Apocalypse, La, a collection of live and unreleased tracks. They continue playing gigs throughout the southern US, slamming audiences with high-octane rock action.

2001-Band makes second & third attempts at recording Dying Sun. This time, with 2x Grammy winning producer, Tony Daigle. Matt "Jah-One" Gautreaux (djembe) leaves band after struggling, for years, with paranoid delusions brought on by acute schizophrenia. Rob Rushing, a drummer, percussionist, and artist of abstract sounds, replaces him.

2002-Santeria release House of the Dying Sun.

The future is unwritten.

Hellride Music: For me, the Santeria musical output is pert near impossible to describe. You've got a hard rock thing going, some folk-inspired stuff, that signature polyrhythmic thing and mystical vibe - describe for us how you would describe Santeria's music.

Dege: I call it southern tribal rock. Primo calls it "swampadelic." Krishna calls it whatever he wants. We've been called Eastern Rock. Southern Rock, Alterno-Rock, Muslim Trance, Tribal Metal, etc…if you boil it down, it's all just rock & roll. That's it. Sometimes we do things, musically, that are strange but rooted in certain traditions. Sometimes we do hard rock that's got eclectic elements tucked away within it. Nobody in this band is into the same kind of thing…that's what keeps it interesting. We respect each other's tastes. Whatever comes out is natural and inspired. I like what we do, but I realize not everyone's going to dig it-and that's cool, I don't take it personally. We never set out with a plan or a strategy. We never shot for a genre or a scene, because WE HAD NO SCENE. We're stuck out in Swampland, Louisiana, for fuck's sake…staring at each other and scratching our balls, waiting for the bomb to drop. Well, let's make some music and avoid suicide for a little while. Sounds good. Suicide's overrated anyway. Santeria is the sound of us. It's new rock and roll. We like to explore different things that come from within us. Sometimes I get the feeling a lot of bands are just negative reactions to other bands or other types of music, rather than genuine expressions of themselves. Tell me your story. Don't rip off other motherfuckers. Have some guts. If you're from Wisconsin and work in a donut factory, but obsess about Don Quixote …put it to music. "Segregation society trips" are lame. The politics get a little petty at times, musicians and their bullshit. Maybe it's because we're all insecure creative types who want to get our hot dog in the lollipop, I don't know. Boundary maintenance: "We're this and you're that. Let's keep it that way." Let it go, it's rock & roll, bitch, not Quantum Physics. They just give it a new name every ten years. Some of these turds act like they reinvented the wheel.

Hellride Music: I'll drink to that. How do you guys go about creating music? Is lyrics first, music later or vice versa? Creatively, how do you guys mesh during the writing process?

Dege: It can go down any number of ways, but usually, I bring in the chords and lyrics, play it for the band, and they ramp it up. They project the context of the song like film. I'll have a definite idea about what it should sound like, but sometimes their interpretations will really change things up. Sometimes it's completely off, but sounds cool. Sometimes Primo will bring in a riff. Sometimes Krishna will bring in a drum thing. Sometimes Rob (percussion) will mutate our songs on his computer and we'll go from there. I try to be open about the exchange of ideas so as to keep the creative vibe happening. Nothing's worse than being in a practice room where the vibe ain't vibing--it's like a morgue. If we get stuck, sometimes we'll try to play sounds…like, "Hey, let's play the sound of cannibals setting fire to a UFO junkyard" or "Let's make a collective weird noise that sounds like hippies…naked, covered in blood, and staring-childlike-at the sky." It doesn't always come out sounding so cool, but it never hurts to try. No matter how stupid or strange the suggestion, we'll give it a go. Everything is hit and miss. For "Laredo," the direction was, "It's 1910. You're a drug-addled, washed-up Muslim cowboy, riding a rickety train through the Texas desert. I don't even know if Texas has a desert, but that's where you're at. You have no friends. You have no money. You're wearing a poncho that looks like a popped bean bag and you're making a spiritual trek, not for salvation--but to Mexico--to sell what's left of your soul…for the 1000th time."

Hellride Music: Lyrically, House of the Dying Sun is phenomenal... Dege, you've out done yourself. You are no stranger to the Word, though, poetry seems to come natural to you. On House... do you recall the mindset you were in when you wrote the lyrics to the songs? Is writing a tough thing for you, or does it just flow? I'm always second guessing my words even writing these crappy reviews I do.... the torture of the poet, the bain of the journalist.... ;)

Dege: Thanks. I'm not a "singer-singer," so I make up for it in words. Rather than hit every note in the
harmonic spectrum, I ambush the music with the lyrics and metaphors. You can take an OK song and make it
great with the right lyrics. Listeners neglect the words sometimes, but that's OK. It only steels my resolve, making me more determined, like a demented astronaut, to explore things I find interesting. I grew up-a book worm in the sticks-wanting to write my own Naked Lunch, but music carries so much more emotion. So that's where I went. Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen. All of them great writers. Early on, before Santeria existed, I had an epiphany of sorts. I was writing songs-twisted drug blues and weird acoustic stuff. At the time, I was frustrated and bitter about my little place in life. Stuck here. No opportunities. No money. No nothing. Dixieland ennui. Just that one day, after bumming out on shit, I realized that everything around me was seeded with symbols and meaning. I could vibe the exoticism of all the seemingly bland things around me. Everything has symbolic value-like mirrors facing one another-you just have to mine it. Louisiana is so rich in texture and vibe...it's amazing, but you become immune to it, as with any place you live, and you have to rediscover its unique elements. With Dying Sun, I was feeling pretty much the same thing, but at a later stage. It was pure inspiration to write about the environment of my surroundings, the way I saw them: the southern sticks, the apocalypse, the open fields, the placebic nature of religion and superstition, the Bible belt guilt trips, the cultural isolation, the shitkickers, the small towns, and the mysterious voodoo of the unknown. It just all came together and made sense. To me at least. The country is like space--strange, open, dark, and sort of lonely. It's a global kind of theme; the south is only the setting. That's where the songs came from. The words came easily, but revision is always part of the process. You've got to let it thaw a few times. I've never really thought of myself as a "writer" in the academic sense. Mostly, I feel like a crazed sort of carnival barker.

Hellride Music: Tell me about the lyrics to "Death Trip", "Strung Out On A Dream" and "Zixox" - do you recall the experiences that formed those words?

Dege: I like to leave things open without being completely incoherent…or too pretentious. A song is like a plumbing device made of PVC pipe for your brain. You can twist it and use it in any way you want. I packed all of these songs with little Dixie symbols and metaphors without getting too wordy. I didn't want to write "Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald"…too much yack, and not enough ass crack. Believe it or not, "Death Trip" is a twisted love song…set in a GhostTown where couples ain't got nothing to do but destroy each other. It's about being attracted to people and things you know will fuck you up in the end, but you commit to them nonetheless, because you really want to…for the love of all things irrational. "Strung Out On a Dream" is about any sort of pursuit that you're trying to succeed at, but always failing at in some way or another. For us, it would be this music thing. I was raised working class, in the country, where art is considered a luxury for people who live in New York City and wear berets…not hayseeds like us. The pressure to succeed and make money in society is so overwhelming. It's sick and depressing at times. Even when you've transcended all of those robotic modes of thinking, you still, strangely enough, sometimes feel guilty about being a loser with no money. Sad and true. People who think that the underground runs on "integrity" alone are usually lost rich kids who have the security of a future. "Zixox" is kind of like our "Freebird." It's a journey through the darkness of the south…from the religious guilt trips…to the drugs you think will save you…to the may-day Hail Mary prayers in jailhouse...to the murderous rednecks and racial stuff…to the isolation and loneliness…to vainglorious attempts at transcendence…to a humble, ultimate sort of transcendence by means of creating art and music…with your friends…in your little town…alone and spinning round on the Earth rock through the great unknown. If you pile up all the letters in the word ZIXOX, and tilt the "I," you get a symbol that looks like a weird rebel flag ...kind of like a "Kilroy was here" thing or a mutated Dixieland Kilroy thing.

Hellride Music: You guys live in a small Louisiana town, but I don't get the sense you are caught up in the stereotypical Southern small town way of thinking. I don't see any references to Confederate flags, heavy drinking or isolationism as one might expect - and I'm just basing this question purely from my own experience in music from your guy's part of the country. Do you guys make a concerted effort to stay away from that type of thing and focus on other aspects of life? Or does it just occur as a natural part of the Santeria experience?

Dege: All natural…this is us. We're the odd men out, down here. Freaks in the country. It's just our take on things. We invert the southern stereotype and abstract it a little, because that's how we feel. Obviously, being in a band that is multiethnic, we aren't into the racial bullshit. The traditional elements of southern culture are there in the music and our hearts, but we mutate them so that they resemble the actual world we live in…not the one that was popularized by great bands before us. We take bits and pieces and twist them…like the Rebel Flag-we've got a Santeria logo on it, but the colors are swirling around and mixed up. We try to inject things with a new vocabulary…one that doesn't completely rely on the greatest common denominator that people usually associate with this area. Things are still really backwards down here, but they're backwards in slightly different ways than they once were. It'd be easy for us to harp on all the clichés to gain some acceptance, and it'd be within our rights to do so, but we've got to burn our own trail to the Promised Land. We're not trying to be anyone other than ourselves. That takes guts. It's hard to pull off sometimes, because new things confuse people and take time to digest. It's uncharted territory. Rather than stand there and ape somebody else's trip in a timely and convenient fashion, we've elected to do our own thing. If it fails, we can at least say we tried.

Hellride Music: Let's revisit the song "Zixox" for a minute. It'is a trip - tell me about the last part of the song with what I've termed the "Swamp Orchestra" with all of God's little creatures accompanying Krishna. Whose idea was this and how did it all go down?

Dege: It's the sound of Louisiana at night…and the things your imagination hears within it. Rob and Primo did a great job of tweaking that stuff in the studio. The initial idea came from a solo CD I did in 1997 called Bastard's Blues. The sound of the countryside, at night, is so surreal and beautiful…insects and frogs and all kinds of things radiate this buzz and drone like alien electrodes in the darkness. I ended that CD with a field recording I'd made of night bugs and a summer rainstorm…whining in the background like an instrument in the song. It really added atmosphere. Everybody tripped out on that. "I like those rain, bug, and UFO-in-the-country sounds at the end." We took that same idea and applied to the context of House of the Dying Sun, tacking it on to the end of "Zixox." We all made new field recordings, and they edited it all together in the studio. Primo and Rob, alone, are responsible for that particular section sounding so good. They did an amazing job, assisting Tony, and deserve much credit. That's Rob, playing all the jungle-swamp percussion stuff at the end, and Primo, twiddling knobs, working the board. And the dobro-slide thing, at very, very end is the opening strains to the song, "House of the Dying Sun," which didn't make it the cut, but will definitely be on the next CD. That song, in itself-this old world apocalyptic blues thing-is going to blow some minds.

Hellride Music: What other bands from your part of the country should we know about?

Dege: The usual suspects: Suplecs, Deadboy&TheElephantmen, Dixie Witch, Liquidrone, etc. Also, a new band from around here called Object at the End of History. They've got cool ideas and the right attitude. And I can't forget the Urbo Sleeks! They're our old brother band of sorts…an amazing indie-rock band from Lafayette that moved to Athens, GA last year. They were fed up with this place, so they split. Check them out. Great band.

Hellride Music: What's next on the Santeria agenda? How will you guys spend 2003?

Dege: U.S. tours are in the works for Spring (west coast) and Summer 2003 (east coast) to pump Santeria music to the people. We'd like to do the "Southern Domination Tour" with Dixie Witch and Alabama Thunderpussy, but I'm not sure if they're interested. We're the odd balls, man…so you know how it goes. We'd like to do Europe, but not many people there even know we exist. Also, another CD is in the works. We're already recording new songs that range the gamut from war-drum rockers…to a Hindu "Moby Dick"…to a doomy lullaby that sounds like "Amazing Grace" played at 3 Mile Island…to some barn burners that go deeper into the southern wasteland. We're not going to stop as long as we're inspired and the vibe is kicking. I get bored easily, so I like to keep busy. I want to try new things. I want to do a whole CD of "Tomorrow Never Knows" (Beatles) type songs. Apocalypse chants with more drums and the guitars set on HEAVY-TRANSCEND. Less song-structure, more tranced out…no rules, just loose ideas...like singing in a pseudo-Arabic Bagistad Blues language. That's weird, I know-a southern rock band-jamming Eastern, but that's us. It doesn't necessarily have to make sense to anyone but us. If we don't get it done in Santeria, I've got a side project in the works called Hippy Death Cult that will explore all the weirder elements in full. I want to call that record, "Dopers For Progress."

I'm also going to do a 3rd solo/acoustic CD in 2003…with Tony Daigle producing. He won two Grammys in roots music, recording everyone from Dr. John to Sonny Landreth to Gatemouth Brown. Can you imagine what that shits going to sound like? It'll be like a tripped out Harvest meets Bringing it All Back Home for the radioactive world. I've been putting it off for a long time…in order to finish Dying Sun and now I've got about 50 songs written and ready to go. It's all GhostTown blues-type stuff along the lines of "Laredo" and "Strung Out on a Dream." In fact, both of those songs were tracked, with Primo and Rob, for the next solo thing, but they ended up sounding so good we threw them on Dying Sun. I've got an acoustic jungle-vibe song ("Madrugada al Raso") that clocks in at 45 minutes, like Sleep's Jerusalem. It could be a CD with just one song. People could put it on and just Zen-out for an hour…in altered states. I really want to push the limits of what a singer-songwriter can do. I'm serious. If you want to get down; you've got to roll around in the dirt and free yourself.

If for some reason, none of this stuff pans out, I've got a blonde mannequin wig, along with a fake mustache, that transforms me into this corny James Taylor-type songwriter-dude I've named "Cliff Knotes." It's pretty absurd. I'll wear sweaters, eat snakes, and play love songs.

Other ideas are in the works. I just want to explore…and I want to stay busy while inspired to do all this stuff. For me, the biggest challenge isn't making this music-IT'S FINDING LABELS TO RELEASE AND DISTRIBUTE IT. The indie labels don't seem to want to take too many chances on musicians down here. That's a shame. How many more straight stoner-fuzz-heavy rock bands do we need? In two years there will be so many of them, you won't know where to turn.

Hellride Music: You're preaching to the choir. This is why Santeria is such a breath of fresh air to me... you guys are totally on your own program... you're own sound, vibe, etc. I don't even thing you are aware of trends. OK I'll stop kissing your ass. Any last words for Hellride readers, Santeria fans and a country that looks like it's hellbent on going to war? Feel free to include any plugs or thank you's.

Dege: Things are getting intense. War? Could it be the beginning of the end? I've got a bad feeling it is. I feel the whole world making a slow, rolling turn into the darkness. Can you feel it? It's like a riding on a huge earth-moving machine that is veering off course at .001mph. I don't know…seems like war is inevitable. Human beings haven't evolved enough to avoid war. We're still uncivilized. We're cavemen in cars. In the last 3000 years, there probably hasn't been a moment when there wasn't a war raging in some part of the world. USA. We're big. We're overblown. We're the cops of the world. Guess what? People are going to hate us…and the Fundamentalist Christians are as scary as the Fundamentalist Muslims.

Thanks to all of Santos people, you know who you are. Thanks to Tony Daigle for doing such a kick-ass production job on this CD. Thanks to all my brothers and sisters in the Santeria crew for putting up with my madness. Thanks to Dave Hubble, the local underground radio guru. And thanks to all the open-minded, non-bigoted, non-full-of-shit people who've kept the faith and stuck with us. We don't take any of it for granted. We know you're out there. Stuck in GhostTowns across the world…waiting, wondering, dreaming, cussing, and watching as the rest of the world passes by. It's OK. We know you're out there…and we're right there with you in spirit…whether the illusion of salvation is there to be had or not.

Purchase House of the Dying Sun at the Hellride Music Super Store

Listen to a Real Audio version of Laredo

Read the Hellride Music review of House of the Dying Sun

Visit the following Santeria websites to be enlightend: http://SanteriaBand.com, http://DegeLegg.com and http://GolarWash.com

Copyright 2002 HellrideMusic.com
Interview by Chris Barnes 1/08/03