A little over a year ago Devil's Ruin Records, one of the more worthwhile roots labels out there these days, sent me a handful of their releases, among them the debut full-length by German one-man band The Dad Horse Experience, Too Close to Heaven. While the other albums I listened to from the Devil's Ruin catalog were all great listens, this one impressed me a good deal more and has since become a disc I revisit often, all eleven songs of it. More recently I received a copy of The Dad Horse Experience's new album, again on Devil's Ruin Records, titled Dead Dog on a Highway, which I have been listening to regularly for the past few weeks.
With his peculiar banjo playing, the deep punctuating notes of his basspedal, brief kazoo fillers, and a rather distinct vocal delivery, Dad Horse Ottn has gone from stumbling through a hard and sinful life to picking himself up and pushing on towards redemption, with little more than a banjo in his hands and a message on his tongue. Much in the same way that he glued together the broken pieces of his life, he has stitched together a patchwork of sound from Appalachian folk, old-timey gospel, and country blues. But there is something else in his sound, something that belongs to him and him alone, something that respectfully borrows from and yet wonderfully reshapes the ideas of the old standards upon which it is clearly based. And the parts that are unquestionably unique to him reside within the catchy note patterns and occasional strums of his banjo, just as they reside within his busy vocals; both of which have become more than a little indispensable to his overall sound.
Speaking of Dad Horse Ottn's vocals, there is only the slightest accent to them, and they could just as easily be reaching us from somewhere deep in the mountains of Virginia as from Germany. His passpedal playing – something which originated from old school one-man band Jesse Fuller, and which is actually quite rare these days – really adds to his sound; during one song it sounds like the floor pedals of a church organ, and the next song like a tuba presiding over the low-end of the composition. All of that, along with his lyrical content, which can be a bit dark and sometimes self-deprecating but always full of meaning -- at one moment full of spiritual brilliance, and the next fumbling in the blackness for the switch -- go toward the whole that is The Dad Horse Experience's sound, to which he has attached the term "keller-gospel."
Dad Horse Ottn is an artist whose songs stand a little to the left of Heaven, bursting forth out of him like so many confessionals, like so many folky hymnals and country gospel hosannas. Having spent much of his adult life at the dark bottom of it all, he now concerns himself with ascension and never stops reaching for the light, with his newly altered worldview and ongoing spiritual metamorphosis. When listening to his music one can hear his soul surging against his mortal encasement with every pick and strum of his banjo's strings, each time he applies pressure to one of the pedals of his bass rig, and every time he sings one of his original lines of lyrics. To use one of his phrases, Dad Horse Ottn has dedicated his life of rebirth and musical conveyance to "turning shit into gold."
If you are interested in checking out to The Dad Horse Experience's music, you can click here to download a free song. Or click here to stream the most listened to song on Dad Horse Ottn's new Dead Dog on A Highway album, "Kingdom It Will Come."
Recently I had the opportunity and pleasure of interviewing Dad Horse Ottn. What follows is the content of that interview in its entirety.
To begin, how about a little history of The Dad Horse Experience? And to go along with that how about a little history of you, Dad Horse Ottn, as well?
Ja, or how about a little history of light and darkness? Guess there was just a slew of darkness at the start and basically that is what will remain. A small flicker or firework in between, we are all part of it, throwing spray cans in campfires, aiming on it with shotguns if we are reckless enough and shit.
Actually, I was just a lad like you, neither good nor bad, and had my ups and downs in life. The ups were not too high but the downs were pretty low sometimes and subsequently that was a blessing, not so much in the moment but if I try to catch the picture as a whole. I hit bottom during a journey in the US when I was hard drinking with a girl in Mesa, Arizona. One morning I woke up on a motel room floor, naked, alone, without my wallet and full of fear and shame. The classic. A two-month hangover followed and I attended AA meetings held by some Hopi Indians. They gave me the name “Sad Horse” due to the fact that I was constantly crying all the time. I couldn't stop the tears from squirting for weeks. Later on children popped up and someone changed the name to Dad Horse. Adding that to my surname, I was walking as Dad Horse Ottn on earth since. I did few things in the ‘90s, good and evil, but finally - I was in my forties then - I picked up an instrument and began to play music, trying to put some of the weirdness of my life into songs.
Is there anything to the moniker The Dad Horse Experience?
You heard about the Jimi Hendrix Experience? ‘60s. Kind of that and shit but gospel music and hell, no guitar!
Your approach to the one-man band concept is rather unique, really. Hell, your approach to music in general is unique. How did the whole "fotdella" thing get incorporated into your setup, for starters? I mean, I haven't really heard of anyone else using a fotdella, save for the "Lone Cat" himself, Jesse Fuller, who invented the instrument, and that was quite a long time ago. The kazoo is also an interesting choice of instrumentation. And while the banjo isn't really unusual or unique, your technique certainly is. How about a little insight into your instrumentation and sound?
I wont say “fotdella” by the way because it reminds me of a really rude word in German for which I don't want to find the English translation. So better let's start with the tenor banjo: The reason I play it is because it only has four strings and my fingers were too shaky to learn a 6 string guitar…believe me, I tried so hard to learn it for at least a week. It didn't work and I spent another week in prayer and God sent me a four-string tenor banjo, an instrument which I never knew existed before that point, but in the same evening I could play Stand By Me on it. I taught myself to play all this shit in a year or two but felt I should add some bass notes. I was looking for a bass player but I couldn't find one who was able to play dumb enough that it fitted to my pure and simple tenor banjo playing. Again I went into the inner shelter to pray and God showed me an Italian Eko K1 stand-alone bass pedal on ebay. Bang! I bought it, and was good. The kazoo, phh, I wish I could play some solos but I could not, so I got the kazoo to fill the boring parts of my songs, and it is easy to tune.
Too Close to Heaven, your debut full-length album on Devil's Ruin Records, was very well received by the independent and underground music scene, and by roots fans and one-man band enthusiasts alike. I too was very impressed by it, and I still listen to it all the time. One cannot help but notice the gospel nature of it all, however, and the recurring lyrical content having to do with...well, a strong desire to save your soul. Have you always been interested in spirituality, or are you a wayward sinner led back to the lord after years of transgression and madness? And if so, how did that happen?
I probably was a wayward sinner who has always been interested in spirituality. Like so many young men in these days I made the mistake to search the spiritual sources in booze, sinful delights and evil rock music and shit. Not only did this not work too good, it led me into devastation and moral bankruptcy. Let me spare all the details, but then it went like in Amazing Grace: “I once was lost, but now I'm found.” I remember it was on the 9th floor of a hospital, in the smoking room of the department for lung cancer on a rainy afternoon, or maybe it was in that mentioned motel room in Arizona, that I somehow entered into something like a personal relationship to an entity much bigger and more powerful than myself, which tried to help me kick the shit out of my mind. I think it was in that smoking room, yes. The following years I spent with a full-time job not picking drugs or booze, with good success, avoiding sinful women with less success, but anyway…and building up a life according to spiritual principles more or less. This was pretty hard in the beginning: the first time I was praying at home I had to shut down the curtains, embarrassed that somebody might see me through the window. I would have preferred to be seen with a dick in my hand than sitting on my knees with folded hands, you can bet. But you can get used to everything if you do it long enough, and after I gave over my life to God's guidance it naturally led me to the tenor banjo and all that shit. So what else should I do after all than do gospel songs?
What have been some of your most memorable touring/gig moments to date?
Actually I am not used to memorizing too much but an impressive thing was touring the US in 2010. Due to the fact that somehow my music evolved to be rooted in the Appalachian folk and gospel music it was like coming back to the spiritual proto-soup and I was quite nervous if my weird approach to their music would be approved by the inmates there, when it was closer than Myspace. But finally when I played my second night at the Buccaneer Lounge in Memphis, and an old weirdo with a hat and pants stained with curious blots started to dance in front of my bass pedals, it was like a third birth. First the natural birth, then the spiritual rebirth, then the musical re-rebirth. Weird place, great night.
As an ongoing point of curiosity for me I would like to inquire: Why did you choose the one-man band path over that of the full band lineup one?
I didn't choose it; it just happened this way. Actually as I started traveling in my car I have never had the feeling of being just one man if God & son is with me. There is never such a kind as a gospel one-man band if Jesus is on the bill.
Now, I know you have collaborated with a few other notable artists here and there over the years, like your contribution to Zebulon Whatley's most recent Sons of Perdition release, Psalms for the Spiritually Dead, for instance. What other collaborations and/or contributions have their been, if any? And...what is it like straying from the one-man band format to work with others on their projects?
It was good. I like the Sons of Perdition's music and Lonesome Wyatt's a lot and I don't remember more collaborations actually. These days I have started working with gifted Australian weirdos from the famous Puta Madre Brothers to train them as the back-up band for the Dad Horse Experience's tour in Australia next winter (which is summer for them, weird enough) and it is a good feeling to control them and benefit from their musical skills.
While your sound has clear Appalachian folk, bluegrass, and country blues influences in it, you have taken to referring to it as "Keller-Gospel." Why that term? What does it say about the sound and lyrical content?
I call it Keller-gospel because it differs from most of traditional or ordinary gospel, which is being sung by great big choirs in the cathedrals where the sun is shining out of every priest’s butt. “Keller” is the German word for basement or cellar, and Keller-gospel is meant to be sung in the dark basements of our souls filled with tears and desperate moanings, the places where our parents used to send us when we did wrong, and where the light is really needed most of all. Also I was living in a one-room basement apartment at the time when I started all that shit, so it is really gospel from the cellar and for the cellar, opening the door of the fridge to let some light into the darkness.
You have just released a brand new album titled Dead Dog on a Highway, which has proved a worthy follow-up to Too Close to Heaven and opens to the next chapter in The Book of Dad Horse Ottn, as it were. Obviously you have stayed true to the dark and dirty roots style that has given your project a good deal of recognition and appreciation in recent years, though with a few small differences and points of experimentation. What's the lowdown on this album and all that has surrounded it up to its release?
In my eyes, while Too Close To Heaven reflects my spiritual path of a full decade in which I became a musician and found this mission, Dead Dog On A Highway is now based on the daily life of a traveling gospel musician that followed. So you can find on it lots of highways, car trunks full of merchandise, dead animals beside the road, highs and downs, girls that you leave behind and all the moving and traveling based on a spiritual quest for knowing God's will for a poor little evil-doer like me. Also the album has more instruments and things than the first one had. It was a blessing that I found producer Rolf Kirschbaum, who has worked with Sandy Dillon (of whom I am a big fan). I knew that my deranged musical skills - which might be pretty sufficient to bring my songs to souls and hearts of an audience if I'm on stage and can get in direct touch with them - are occasionally limited when it comes to putting my songs decently on a studio recording. Rolf helped me to bring the music to a level that the songs deserve to be presented on a studio album and which I could not have achieved alone so easily.
Is there anything of note presently happening or coming up in The Dad Horse Experience's near future? Tours? Collaborations? Comp songs? Etc?
Well, having been touring and recording for twelve months in a row I try to have some recreation time during the summer in my hometown in Germany, wondering why my bank account is so dry but my cellar is so flooded. After big rains here, I spend my time trying to save soaked diaries and photographs and most probably my next songs will cover some autobiographic elements telling previously unheard history of the ‘80s and other dark remains of the collective unconsciousness and shit. I am also working with other musicians on a few different projects, for example, on an old-timey curiosity band. Also I am working on the songs of Thomas A Dorsey and Washington Phillips, which may lead to something. I constantly study human nature from driving a taxi to pay the rent, which might lead to some musical results in the future. At least I won't get homeless, right? I'm also working on my footpedal skills.
In late December I have a tour in Australia for three weeks and the usual European routes before and after. In late 2012 I hope to make it back to the US, possibly heading to Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, California, Oregon and shit. Tell me if you know good places for me to play there.
Lastly, if there is anything I failed to cover, or if there's anything you would like to discuss or express, please feel free to do so now. The floor is all yours.
Actually, the floor is a mess but that is because so many homeless musicians from all over the world use my apartment as a cheap hotel. Anyway, I should mentioned at the end that the Dad Horse Experience wouldn't have done all that shit, good or bad, if – beside God and Lord Jesus - not so many friends and people had helped, like all my friends and supporters in Bergamo and Milano, Ralf Dee and Johnny Hanke from Bavaria, Tina from AA records in Berlin and Andree Klose from Hörwerk-Studio in Bookholzberg, Tobias Lange, Annalena Bludau and Timo Warkus from Bremen, Nicolas Drolc from Bruxelles and Alex Hebert from Denver, Joshua Warfel from Devil Ruin Records and Friedel Muders from Fuego, Kitty Reed from Dortmund and Gregg Weiss from Puymirol, Mr. Marcaille from Lille and Mr. Occhio from Pinerolo, Albe & Enri from Occasional Disaster Booking in Italy, Anto Macaroni and all of the Puta Madre Brothers from Melbourne in the Land of Ozz, Jason Mathews from Memphis and Reverend Deadeye from North Carolina, Honey Vizer from Oregon and Rafael Martinez del Pozo in Spain, Agnieszka Ledochwska from Poland, Veronika Schumacher from Berlin and Christoph Mueller from Aachen, my dead grandmother in Heaven and all the ladies that were better to me then I was to them, not to forget Saint Murdoch for Myspace at the times it was still working, and hundreds more which I feel sorry I couldn't name them here also and shit.
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