A hot new single, ‘Mystery Writers,’ by Divine Horsemen arrives this Friday. Chris “D” Desjardins, formerly of L.A. punk band the Flesh Eaters, reunites with Julie Christensen, X drummer DJ Bonebrake, Peter Andrus, Doug Lacy and Bobby Permanent for “Mystery Writers”. PKM spoke to Chris D and Julie Christensen on the eve of the release.
In Los Angeles, circa 1979-82, Chris “D” Desjardins and his Flesh Eaters created a sinister, Southwest roots/punk hybrid that influenced everything from post-hardcore noise, to goth rock, and on through to alt-country of the ‘90s. Not to mention having been a writer for the groundbreaking Slash magazine, and producer and A&R man for the subsequent Slash Records label, Chris’ early punk years exploded with action. Some would say he could spontaneously combust.
Notoriously intense, the Flesh Eaters didn’t last too long, and Chris D’s next project, Divine Horsemen, went through their own contentious permutations during an initial lifespan of 1983-87. Since then, Chris has been a writer, a film programmer, cobbled together various Flesh Eaters runs, while offering up other music here or there for an indie film project or the honorable fuck of it.
“See You in the Boneyard” – Flesh Eaters:
Lately, like Bill Murray in Broken Flowers, Chris has taken to scouring the country for old bandmates to debate what went wrong, and see if they can’t patch things up – perhaps most intimately with his ex-wife and Divine Horsemen co-singer, Julie Christensen. Having divorced concurrently with the demise of the original Divine Horsemen, they’ve crossed paths frequently since.
In some cosmic time portal tumble in 2018, Chris got the Flesh Eaters back together for a fine reunion album, I Used to Be Pretty (Yep Roc, 2019), then did a tour that proved most of those guys never stopped making music and could stomp right back into their swamp. Maybe most revealing was the full-throated addition of Christensen on back-up vocals for a few of those gigs. I saw them at Bowery Ballroom in 2019, and it was one of the better reunion shows I’ve seen.
Keeping the portal tumble going, Chris D has fashioned a new Divine Horsemen to enact another movie sequel-like reboot, and Christensen is back as co-focus. After years of seven solo records and back up singing for Oingo Boingo, Van Dyke Parks, and Leonard Cohen, Christensen must’ve decided more ragged glory needed to be revisited. And so, the new Divine Horsemen album, Hot Rise of an Ice Cream Phoenix, has been entirely recorded with the single “Mystery Writers” and awaits a release date.
Starting with “Mystery Writers” is a good leap, a rugged, stomping blues. Things soon get more twisted, with Chris D’s voice showing off his bendy pitch-stabs and gravelly growl that glare or glance down at Christensen’s sinewy wails. Their characters and vocal parts trade in strength and suspicion throughout a set of mostly new material. The pairing has survived divorce and decades of intermittent musical activity, and the lyrics are metaphorical reflections on the hows and whys of returning to relationships, personal or artistic – with Chris D’s characteristic desperate, film-noir flavoring through it all.
More stomping blues trudge past (“Any Day Now”), some Stonesy swaggering (“25th Floor”), and just enough speedier, distortion-fueled stabs (“Handful of Sand,” “Stony Path”) to keep it from slipping into a dour rhythm too long. In fact, the obvious energy and care put into this, via playful performances and mysterious path-leading wordplay, raises the album above its dark heart, like in the winking fisticuffs of “Can’t You See.”
As in their past, Divine Horsemen are a more melodic and instrumentally varied vamp on the Flesh Eaters’ dirty Americana punk. There’s the tender accordion in the sweeping “Mind Fever Soul Fire” that has an airier feeling than most here, albeit with Christensen singing of “drowning in a concrete soup.” The acoustic-led “No Evil Star” and jangly “Falling Forward” are widescreen pretty, but filled with the moans of a raw life lived. Lines like, “The Devil may care, but I don’t anymore. My triumph came through a lot of pain before” express a general assessment of not just Chris and Julie’s relationship, but the often halting music careers of the members here, veterans of many a L.A. rock rumble. Lead guitarist Peter Andrus and keyboardist Doug Lacy are Horsemen alum; Bobby Permanent on bass; and pounding everything into and back out of line, the great drummer DJ Bonebrake of X.
It somewhat culminates in the acoustic tit-for-tat lament, “Barefoot in the Streets,” with the two listing off their past complaints, while dreaming of finding new shadows to explore. Ending the album with a synth-stringed song called “Love Cannot Die” would seem almost ironic in a Flesh Eaters album, but here seems genuinely searching.
We searched out Chris D and Julie Christensen for answers to how and why they’ve dredged up the past to figure out their future.
PKM: First tell me a good memory that pops into your head from the best days of the original Divine Horsemen run.
Julie Christensen: I will always have a lovely memory of the morning after Chris and I had a particularly romantic – and debauched, as usual – evening, when there was a brush fire in the Hollywood Hills behind where I was couch-surfing at the time. That’s when Chris wrote the words, “I’m the one who started the fire in the hills, so you’d have to stay one more day,” and began writing the song “Time Stands Still.” Even my Archie Bunker of a dad in Iowa thought that was romantic as hell.
Chris Desjardins: I was in my last few months of working at Slash Records in late 1983 when I met Julie at a recording session I was producing. Julie was singing back-up for Top Jimmy, and I was both smitten with her and musically blown away from the get-go. It was the first of a few sessions I ended up producing / mixing for a compilation of folk rock-type songs done by punk and roots rockers.
I had just broken up the line-up of the Flesh Eaters in the autumn of ’83. The band had been overreaching, as far as loudness and abrasiveness. Although I got along with everyone in the line-up, the other three guys often bickered amongst themselves at the start of each rehearsal. It was getting tiresome. We kept being lumped in with the more hardcore bands. I was drinking too much, and the volume and gradual erosion of dynamics in the songs burned me out. I finally called it quits, though I remained on speaking terms with everyone. I wanted to go completely the other way, doing more dark, old-school country/folk-inspired material, mostly murder ballad-type stuff.
After meeting and getting to know Julie, that started taking shape as Divine Horsemen in early 1984. That coincided with being forced out as an A&R/in-house producer at Slash, due to a budget shortfall. I also was having creative differences with Slash head honcho, Bob Biggs. He brought me back temporarily in March to work with the Del Fuegos on their debut album. That got aborted when I was not slicking-them-up enough, and Mitchell Froom was brought in, ostensibly as a co-producer. My input became low priority, and I bailed after the first day in the recording studio when it was evident my “co-producer” was calling the shots, and that the aim was maximum homogenization. So that was the climate I was working in while the first Divine Horsemen album was in rehearsals taking shape. That first Divine Horsemen album was recorded in June/July of ’84 with a huge contingent of musician friends such as Dave Alvin, Dan Stuart, John Doe, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Julie C., Chris Cacavas, Texacala Jones, Slim Evans, Kerry McBride, Bill Bateman, Kid Congo Powers and last, but not least, Robyn Jameson, who had been bassist on the third and fourth Flesh Eaters albums. Julie referenced the song “Time Stands Still,” which dealt with our budding romance as well as the start of collaborating musically.
“Time Stands Still” – Chris D:
PKM: And what about a bad one, when you knew things were heading south?
CD: We toured for about ten days as Divine Horsemen once in mid-1985 through Arizona and Texas, then lost our guitarist, Matt Lee, to another L.A. band. Also on that tour, Julie had to go into an ER in Austin in terrific pain with what turned out to be a miscarriage. It was so early on, she didn’t even know she was pregnant. Luckily we had a couple days downtime and were able to do our last couple of shows…. SST was very supportive, had their own tour-booking branch, and we toured extensively in 1987. Unfortunately Julie and I were experiencing addiction issues that started to gradually erode our relationship.
We released two albums in 1987 through SST. Gradually the band had, since early 1985, steadily returned to a louder, more electric, rock ‘n’ roll approach. Lyric subject matter stayed the same, maybe with a bit more surrealism. Behind the scenes, Julie and I were having problems scoring drugs. We also had our van stolen, along with all our gear, the day after our last gig in New Orleans. I had just enough money in my pocket to fly the band back to L.A. We tried to clean up numerous times the remainder of that year, including once for a week in a ramshackle wood cabin in a Colorado mountain ghost town while it was snowing! Gluttons for punishment. I was usually the one who backslid. She finally managed to stay clean from August on, and she gave me an ultimatum about cleaning up, or else. I started secretly using right before we went on our last tour. She found out mid-tour and gave me another ultimatum. If I did not detox and stay clean once we returned to L.A., she was gone from both the band and marriage. We’d gotten married, I believe it was, in late 1985.
Although we had successful shows, that last tour was rough on us. I had to be hospitalized overnight after the end of a great Boston gig, for what turned out to be a kidney stone… I managed to clean up for two or three weeks when we got back, starting in mid-October. By the time we were recording what turned out to be our last song, “Handful of Sand,” I was secretly using again. I don’t remember being locked out of the studio at the end of the night, as Julie says, but this turned out to be our last night together. She discovered the next morning I was still using, was justifiably livid, and she was gone from the house – and the band – in less than an hour. Ironically, the lyrics I’d written for “Handful of Sand” were about getting clean. We barely spoke afterwards for quite a while. I was in bad, demoralized shape for a good year or two.
JC: I was already clean for a couple months, and we were recording “Handful of Sand.” Our wonderful guitar player, Peter Andrus, engineer Paul du Gre, and I felt we had to take over the session from Chris and essentially bar him from the room. Chris’ obsession with the beauty of what he hears in his big mind was getting into the realm of “the great being the enemy of the good.” Chris and I had a huge argument. I don’t even remember the details of why… But the rest of us got the session done, and what we came out with was one of the best recordings we ever did.
PKM: Was there a moment where you truly thought Divine Horsemen was a completely dead entity? And then, when did the idea seem like a good idea to start again.
CD: I’ve always, along with probably 90% of every other working musician, had the spectre of “making a living” looming over my shoulder. Thank god for my family and friends. It was a miracle that, despite still using drugs, I was able to continue doing music, though it was not under the Divine Horsemen name. It always has been a fact that Divine Horsemen can’t exist without me, but also cannot exist without Julie. We had fused into one musical entity, and the creative tension in our vocal styles and slightly different approaches to music proved to be so distinctive, that one without the other seemed impossible. Back then, I never thought Divine Horsemen could be resuscitated. I had a one-off band called Stone By Stone, which put out one album, I Pass for Human (SST, 1989). We played a lot locally in that year, but were not drawing very well, despite the style hearkening back to the Flesh Eaters. I was in a depressed state and purposely oblivious to a lot of things.
A funny story is that Nirvana opened for us at Al’s Bar, and I have absolutely no recollection of their performance! By that time, though, I was well into the habit of not showing up at the club until it was 15 or 20 minutes before our set. From later anecdotal evidence, it seems I shared a drug dealer with Kurt and Courtney when they were briefly in LA. Because of the lack of crowds for Stone by Stone, I started using the Flesh Eaters name again in 1990. Under that name, we started doing better, between 1990-93, when once again I stopped doing the Flesh Eaters.
And I often wonder about legacy, but it’s all pretty ridiculous when you come down to it. It’s all a “Hot Rise of an Ice Cream Phoenix.” Before you know it, it’s all melted away and has disappeared. Still, one plugs away.
PKM: After you two divorced, was there a long period of not talking at all?
CD: I was a real pest to Julie for at least six months after she left, sidelining her after 12-step meetings when we ran into each other, angling for reconciliation. But she was angry and bitter, justifiably so. After mid-1988, I don’t think we spoke again until late 1996, when I called her to let her know I’d finally gotten clean and had lost the drug craving. I have 23 years now. We talked on the phone a few times in the ensuing decade, but she had built a whole new life, married again, with a young son, occasionally singing back up for Leonard Cohen.
JC: At six months sober, I got the job singing backup and duet for Leonard Cohen, and was on the road for seven months of 1988. My personal and music worlds completely changed. After I’d come and gotten my things, and the papers were unceremoniously signed, I would see Chris once in a while at meetings. Unfortunately his journey with recovery was almost 10 years longer. By the time he got back in touch with me, I had married, moved to Ojai, CA, and birthed the son I have with my current husband, John Henry Diehl. It was so good to heal some old wounds and become friends again. My husband, who has always been supportive of my artistic endeavors, is also happy that we are rebooting Divine Horsemen. He really enjoyed the Flesh Eaters gigs he went to as well – though his tastes are eclectic, he’s more into jazz, but has warmed to this music anyhow. Well, the Flesh Eaters, dare I say, has some jazzy influences after all!
CD: In 1997, I started a new Flesh Eaters line-up, with Robyn Jameson returning on bass. We took a break for about six months because I got a grant from The Japan Foundation to go live in Japan for three months to do research on an encyclopedia of Japanese yakuza films I was writing. When I returned, we recorded a new album in 1998, called Ashes of Time. I brought Julie in to sing back-up on six of the 15 songs. Julie also came back in 2003 to sing on several more for what I thought, at the time, was going to be the last Flesh Eaters album ever, Miss Muerte. That album existed in the studio only and was never performed live.
“Miss Muerte” – The Flesh Eaters:
PKM: When I saw the reunited Flesh Eaters at Bowery Ballroom last year, the band felt/sounded like it was really locked in and ready for more. So can we assume there’ll be more Flesh Eaters action in the future; or was this Divine Horsemen re-boot in reaction to the Flesh Eaters inaction?
CD: I was hoping we were going to start work on new Flesh Eaters material this year. In theory, everyone was down for it, however the guys were all super busy, and the world-at-large has also come up with its own set of disruptions. But the clock is ticking. We’re all seniors.
PKM: How long did it take to write and then record the new Divine Horsemen material?
CD: Our guitarist Peter and I started woodshedding in the rehearsal studio that he has longtime-rented with his good friend, Bobby Pollard – aka Bobby Permanent who is also our new Divine Horsemen bass player – in May, 2019. Peter and I co-wrote “Mystery Writers,” “No Evil Star,” and “Stony Path” together. Julie and I co-wrote “Barefoot in the Streets.” Julie also co-wrote “Falling Forward” with her friend Lathan McKay. There are two other relatively new songs, “Any Day Now” and “Strangers” that were written and previously recorded by Julie’s Nashville friends, Tim Lee, Susan Bauer Lee, and Johnny Duke. “Mind Fever Soul Fire” and “Love Cannot Die” were both written by me back in 1995, and were recorded in significantly longer, less dynamic, more folk-rock flavored versions for a completely acoustic solo album called Love Cannot Die, released by Sympathy for the Record Industry that same year. It’s probably my most obscure record. I was never totally happy with the production on the album. I wanted to re-record more rocking electric versions of the songs.
“Handful of Sand” was the only older Divine Horsemen song we re-recorded. I’ve always thought it was one of our best. It was understandably not promoted and pretty much disappeared. The outside covers we’ve done on this new album are “Ice Cream Phoenix,” originally by Jefferson Airplane, Patti Smith’s “25th Floor” and “Can’t You See (You’re a Lame Motherfucker)?” by Robert Downey Sr./Charley Cuva that was performed in Downey’s film Pound.`
JC: Chris and Peter started getting together in early April of last year. Peter and Chris would send me rehearsal recordings, and I started work on learning the stuff. My son lives in the Los Angeles area, so I’d fly out and stay with him when we started rehearsing in April, July, and I think I went out one more time before recording.
PKM: Is there a sort of mindset you both needed to jump back into, a Divine Horsemen saddle, as it were?
CD: Not really. Julie and I had been talking about doing Divine Horsemen again since at least mid-2014. But I’d just gone through a really devastating break-up in late 2013 with someone who’d been even closer to me than Julie, and I was not quite ready to do Divine Horsemen yet. I’d also just been let go in late 2013 from my teaching gig in San Francisco, due to budget cuts. In mid-2014, I corralled the 1981 Flesh Eaters guys, and thankfully they were all available to do a tour. Once the 2018 Flesh Eaters shows happened, I convinced them we needed to record an album. We went in the studio for a week in April of that year. In the summer, Julie, Peter, Robyn, and I were going to start rehearsing to do some Divine Horsemen reunion shows in [the fall] with DJ Bonebrake on board.
JC: The agreement is to let Chris drive on most things. I always found my own ways to put my stamp on things, even in the before times. But as soon as I heard “Mystery Writers,” I felt like I dropped right into the voodoo of this thing.
PKM: After quite a few years working your own albums and singing with Leonard Cohen, was the Divine Horsemen for you a chance to get a little wilder? Not to lay a “non-wild” veneer over your other work, but, you know…
JC: From 2006-08, I worked on a couple albums simultaneously, one of standards, and the other an anti-war themed collection of songs in the style of seventies rock. After that, I started longing to rock, and in 2013, after going to Folk Conferences and Americanafest and finding a tribe, we made a move to Nashville. In 2014, I had a June gig, and the guitar player I work with the most listened to some Divine Horsemen with me and said, “Oh my god, let’s do that gig with a rock’n’roll band, and do a couple of these songs, and do your stuff like that!” I was so excited to rock again, and that band is so great, it almost played itself. The folked-up rock album that came out of that was, The Cardinal. I’m very proud of it. And I’ve done a more acoustically-oriented album with that outfit since. I knew I couldn’t sustain a rock ‘n’ roll band, and keep it working, on my own, though we did have one fun and successful tour in Iowa, where I’m from.
“The Cardinal” – Julie Christensen and Stone Cupid:
PKM: Got to ask about the album title, Hot Rise of an Ice Cream Phoenix. Where did that come from?
CD: Jefferson Airplane, along with the Lee Hazelwood/Nancy Sinatra duo, have certainly been subliminal influences on Divine Horsemen vocals. I’ve long wanted to cover “Ice Cream Phoenix.” As far as the Hot Rise part, maybe it’s a bit redundant, since the idea of an “Ice Cream Phoenix” rising from the flames implies it’s going to immediately melt anyway. But I decided to put the obvious in there. It’s specifically referencing the impermanence of all things – originally and specifically music groups. Of course, I didn’t know it at this time last year, but with what’s happening with the world-at-large, with the resurrection of fascism/Nazism, rapid climate change, and then the pandemic, the title seems more uncomfortably appropriate than ever.
PKM: Where did you record the record, and how long did it take?
JC: At a studio called Tangent, in downtown LA. Craig Parker Adams, who engineered and co-produced I Used To Be Pretty, was going to have us at his previous studio, Winslow Court Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard, but got kicked out of it by greedy landlords, and we had to go elsewhere. Overdubs and mixing were done at Craig’s house, where he turned his garage into a studio in lightning-quick time. I came back to L.A. in October to brush up with everyone. We recorded the basics of the album, mostly live, in two days last October, with four other days of extra vocals, lead guitar, and piano at Craig’s. Chris and Craig spent a lot of time meticulously mixing after that. The main thing is, with all that lead-time and living with the music, I feel like we sound like a band that had already been playing out.
CD: Craig had to really scramble to find a new place. He’d been there for quite a few years and had numerous people pass through, including several efforts with Dave Alvin. Craig is also the go-to guy for the Zappa family to mix down all the hundreds of hours of multi-track recordings Frank left at the time of his death…. Julie and I mastered the album in mid-February at Mark Chalecki’s Little Red Book Mastering in Eagle Rock.
PKM: “Mystery Writer” leads off the record. First line: “This is out of date.” Any significance to that?
CD: Oh, right, no lyric sheet yet! Actually the line is, “Bliss is out of date/a stolen car from out of state.” Later in the same verse, Julie sings, “I made it my vocation/putting aside elation.” So once again it’s about the illusion of finding true happiness, or even making the fleeting happiness of lovers able to stay in that blissful state for more than a few months or even a few weeks or days. That’s one of life’s little mysteries of romantic love.
PKM: I’m sorry if this is a sore subject, and I am very sorry for your loss, but I am wondering if there is anything you would like to say about bassist Robyn Jameson. He was aiming to be in this latest Divine Horsemen, right?
JC: It’s unspeakably sad. He was so looking forward, as we all were, to preparing and touring with our older material in the summer of 2018.
CD: In mid-2018, we had myself, Julie, Peter, Robyn, and DJ Bonebrake on board. But then Robyn was murdered in July when he went to the aid of a woman being attacked by a violent sociopath on the street one night. He was in a coma for several weeks, but the consensus of several doctors was that he was brain dead, and that led his next of kin to decide to take him off life support.
Needless to say, we were all in shock. Peter and I had gone to see him once in the hospital when we first heard the news. Julie couldn’t come out to L.A. because she lives in Nashville now. Then Johnny Ray – who was a friend of Robyn’s and was the Flesh Eaters’ drummer on Ashes of Time – and I were there the afternoon they took him off life-support. Peter, Julie, and I couldn’t even think about continuing trying to play music within a couple months’ time, so we all agreed to postpone it, to start working again after the Flesh Eaters’ tour ended. By the beginning of that year, I’d told Peter and Julie I wanted to concentrate on recording a new album before doing live shows again, which is how we’ve worked it. Luckily DJ was available.
I love DJ. He is one of the nicest, most professional, most skilled, least-ego-driven musicians I’ve ever met. He is so conscientious. He learns his parts religiously, and even takes notes on individual drum charts after playing each song in rehearsal. He is such a humble, brilliant guy. His ideas are always excellent. I can’t think of one of his ideas we did not put into the songs.
PKM: Does a 20-something punk still sit brooding in your gut, and was he/she able to get their kicks on this album? Conversely, is there a trepidation about trying to reignite those younger feelings at this point in your life?
CD: Definitely. Though I’ve come to abhor the ‘punk’ labeling over the past few years.
JC: I’m not sure if I was ever rightfully “punk,” though I claim it now to be cool, I think! But yeah, I missed the abandon and freedom to let go with a holler.
CD: Between 1999-2009, I had the greatest, steadiest job I’d ever had since Slash Records in the 1980-’84 period, working as a film programmer at The American Cinematheque in Hollywood. I’d really kind of given up on playing music again. I did not have the time, did not have the money, and just no longer had the cojones to keep playing scuzzy small clubs with shitty sound systems…. The music bug momentarily got resurrected in 2006 when, at the behest of the great guys in Mudhoney, we got the 1981 Flesh Eaters’ so-called “superstar” line-up back together to play an All Tomorrows’ Parties festival with them in the south of England. We also did three California shows to warm-up. But nothing happened again until early 2015. Since I haven’t had a “normal” job since mid-2013, and since at this point I’m managing to scrape by financially, things have changed. I can get away with doing a bit of music without becoming homeless. I love doing this stuff, and I have lyrics for 11 new Divine Horsemen songs, plus a 12th for the Flesh Eaters, but… the pamdemic! Ack!!
PKM: Do either of you have a memory of the first time you sang together, or a moment where you knew it was working?
JC: I really “got it” the first time we did a live electric set at Anti-Club, with the audience there. Though I was only 27, I’d been on stage hundreds of times in so many situations up ‘til then, but this was different: an incredible rush. I also felt in my gut that it was important.
CD: As soon as we first recorded together in 1984. It was immediate. She was not put off by my untrained voice, and I wasn’t intimidated by her musicianship or her vocal range. We kind of got each other from the get-go, and I think she would agree we both learned a lot from each other. It was very rare for egos to get in the way.
PKM: You’ve probably got to watch the pipes a little more these days, no? Did either of you ever lose your voice during that Flesh Eaters tour?
CD: Oh, yeah. Both in 2018 and 2019, my third gig each time I was approaching laryngitis. It’s a nightmare when you have virtually no vocal range to begin with. Julie didn’t have to really worry about it, because she only sang back-up on five shows in 2019, and not on every song. She also knows tricks and proper things to do to care for her voice. As far as my voice, you just have to tough it out. Usually after the fifth or sixth gig, you’ve had at least one night off, and your voice is also getting acclimated to the routine.
JC: My voice has some limitations that I was not dealing with back in the day, but I still hang in there pretty well!
PKM: Among the many reasons you might take up this project of reanimating previous bands, is there a part that kind of wants to make sure you’re not forgotten? With the digital age, and so many millions of bands and songs floating out there, even some of what we’d consider canonized groups can get lost in the shuffle.
CD: Part of it is just the need to create. I also write books, and I put out several volumes of fiction between 2009-13, as well as some non-fiction film studies. But the fiction does not sell particularly well. I thought it would sell to my music fans, but apparently for many of them it’s ‘a bridge too far.’ Ha! The great thing about writing is you don’t really spend any money, and you don’t need to get together with other people to be able to accomplish it. But yes, certainly it helps to have a relatively regular output to keep a meager stream of royalties trickling in. And I often wonder about legacy, but it’s all pretty ridiculous when you come down to it. It’s all a “Hot Rise of an Ice Cream Phoenix.” Before you know it, it’s all melted away and has disappeared. Still, one plugs away.
PKM: Tell us about the vintage live collection that’s coming? Any actual memories from either show?
CD: It’s a 17-track collection culled from two shows: one at Safari Sam’s in Huntington Beach in late 1985 – right after Julie and I were married apparently, as I announce it when introducing the band onstage – then a show at The Rat in Boston in February, 1987, shortly after Peter had joined the band. Not sure when that live album is coming out… because of the pandemic. It took us forever to find decent live Divine Horsemen recordings. Suddenly these two sets surfaced within the last couple of years.
JC: Things are pretty hazy from back then! But when I listen, I get chills of recognition and a warm feeling of satisfaction, that we did sound that good, I mean, as good as I remembered it.
PKM: Any chance of any other Divine Horsemen reissues, with extra tracks, that kind of thing? And any tour plans?
CD: Well, hopefully the rights to the four Divine Horsemen releases through SST – as well as the three early nineties Flesh Eaters releases on SST – will revert to us eventually. Unlike some bands, I’ve never ever had an adversarial relationship with Greg Ginn. We’ll see. People ask about all of them. I don’t think SST does streaming which – considering the shitty rates all the platforms pay – is understandable. But it makes all the stuff harder to find for the fans.
As far as tour plans, does anyone in the music business right now have written-in-stone plans? And the pandemic has put most indie labels into a state of suspended animation. We still don’t have any label affiliation yet, but I’m sure we would have if the pandemic had never happened. Who knows when that will be with this moronic, shortsighted administration in power right now? One can only hope they’ll be history by November 4th.
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