by NATHAN STUBBS
Award-winning writer and musician Dege Legg, aka Brother Dege, has charted an unconventional career course, following a creative spirit and impulsive gut along a zig-zag path that has included stints as a journalist, warehouseman, mechanic, homeless shelter caseworker, and for five years, late night cab driver in the Acadian hub city of Lafayette, Louisiana.
Documenting this dashboard vantage point of the after hours underworld of Cajun and Creole country is his new book, Cablog: Diary of a Cabdriver, out Nov. 10 by UL Press. Crafted from Legg’s personal journal, Cablog is a rare exhibit in the nonfiction genre, a poignant documentation of the often neglected fringe of our community. With an ear for dialogue and eye for detail, Legg captures the charm and despair of real-life character plights. Cablog picks us up for a shotgun ride through the storied downtown corners and less traveled backroads that, much like Brother Dege’s music, dive into a gritty Southern Gothic folklore that is both infamous and inspiring.
Nathan Stubbs (NS) caught up with Dege (BD) for a brief Q&A about Cablog, and how he’s coping through all the historical mayhem of 2020. Go here for a review.
NS: You’ve toured throughout North America and Europe several times with your band Brother Dege & The Brethren. How are you adjusting and what’s daily life like now that the pandemic has put live concerts and travel on hiatus?
BD: All good. To be honest, I needed a break from the grind. After a solid decade of banging around in vans, at the club level, I was a little burnt. I’d already blocked out the spring and summer 2020 for recording and the CABLOG book, so it all worked out perfectly with minimal distractions. And it gave me a chance to recharge the batteries. But now I’m feeling a little stir crazy and ready to roll.
NS: Do you expect live concerts will come back bigger than ever? Or is live entertainment forever changed?
BD: Who knows? All bets are off. But maybe both. It’ll probably come back huge at the enormo-dome level and slowly come back in the club sector. So many smaller venues have closed down because of the pandemic stuff that it may take a bit to get them back open.
NS: You’ve worked so many jobs – musician, cab driver, journalist, line cook, homeless shelter caseworker. If you were to choose another career path aside from music, what do you think it would be?
BD: If I had to do it again, I would’ve gone the academic route and become a professor of something interesting or gone the full-pirate program and lived on a boat.
NS: So many people are going through job adjustments with the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. What’s Brother Dege’s best career advice?
BD: First off you have to be nuts to do music or art as a career after a certain age unless you’re lucky enough to be Bruce Springsteen or someone like that. It’s a tough living with a ton of anxiety. But then again, the creative life kind of chooses you, and then you just hang on and try to keep it out of the ditch. It ain’t always easy. Advice: trust your gut, take the slow-growth train, and don’t wait for anyone to do anything for you. Just go out and do it, especially if you live in the Deep South. Nobody’s going to do it for you.
NS: Your song “Too Old to Die Young” was famously featured in the Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained. “Hard Row to Hoe” was the theme for the TV show After the Catch. (Both songs are from Legg’s 2010 release, “Folk Songs of the American Longhair”) What have you been binge-watching in Quarantine and what guilty pleasure film or TV show would you love to see your music in?
BD: My quarantine TV diet is mostly exclusively composed of kooky YouTube videos on obscure topics like overunity generators, exopolitics, anti-gravitic technology, Van Halen live footage (1977-79), 20th century Arctic exploration (i.e. dudes getting stuck in the ice), and survival documentaries (dudes getting stuck on mountains), nanotech/A.I. (programmable matter). Plus a bunch of other nutty stuff.
NS: A lot of bands are increasingly featuring their music in commercial advertisements. Is that something you’ve considered? Could you ever see “Partial to the Bitters” as part of a coffee promotion or “Hard Row to Hoe” in like a John Deere ad?
BD: 20 years ago scoring a commercial was considered selling out. Now it’s like a saving grace moment for most indie artists. It’s the wild west out there in music land, so as long as you’re not selling war machinery or genocide, I think it’s fairly acceptable nowawdays. I’ve never had any of my music in any commercials, so I’m not sure what would work.
NS: You’ve also been nominated for a Grammy as well as being an award-winning writer. What accolade are you most proud of or is giving awards for art all bullshit?
BD: They’re kind of bullshit and ceremonial – pats on the back from the corporate overlords for being a good slave. But they also toss you credit in the straight world, so I don’t know. Not everything has to be art-damaged madness.
NS: In the book Cablog, you chronicle some of the racial prejudices, mental health issues and drug addictions that are very much in the news today in terms of police reform. What would you say you learned about law enforcement from the vantage point of a late night cab driver?
BD: Whew. Working nights, you’re right on the front lines of the craziest stuff that’s happening in your city on any given night, and cops are right up in it, so it’s not an easy job. I wouldn’t want to do it. And I don’t think most people that criticize cops would be up for doing it either. I’ve been roughed up by cops in the past, but maybe I had it coming, so fair play. But they definitely overreact a lot, probably as a result of getting burnt out and cynical, while cleaning up the mess that’s part of any system. I should remind people that I’m just a kooky artist and definitely don’t have all the answers.
NS: Do you think there’s another book in your future? What other topics could you see yourself delving into in book form?
BD: Yes. The plan is to do a series of books of the “LOG” variety. The next book in the series would be a ROADLOG book – about my experiences touring in rock & roll bands over the past 20 years. CABLOG covered 5 years on the job. ROADLOG encompasses 20 years of the kookiest, nuttiest, most absurd stories from the road, all of which I’ve been documenting in a massive Word document that will be a challenge to edit and revise, but it’ll be worth it. I may have to split into two ROADLOG books (Pt. 1 & 2). Musicians are pretty entertaining creatures when they’re not on a stage. After the ROADLOG book, I have another LOG-type book in mind. It’s still coming into focus. But that’ll make it a set of three in the LOG series. Hopefully, people will be able to buy them like a box-set of CDs, but it’ll be books, which will be cool, I think. It’ll look nice on a bookshelf, like a set of wacky encyclopedias.
NS: It’s hard to escape today’s politically-charged climate. As a writer/artist in the deep south, how are you absorbing our state of politics? Is it starting to seep into your work?
BD: Man, I’m so far in the rabbit hole that it’s almost impossible to have a healthy conversation with most people about politics. I’m 20 years in. I read a ton of books. Plus I know I’m kind of off the traditional grid of thinking, but this is my journey. So I don’t even bother – at least online where it’s ridiculously conservative and tribal on both sides. Like Church Ladies all ridiculing one another. Fuck off. What a waste. Quit being so square. Loosen up. Especially artists. Nobody’s going to you for political advice, dude. I try to look at everything as an exercise in abstract thought. It keeps me sane.
NS: The book CABLOG takes place in the early 2000s. So much has happened since then, it almost seems like a different era. Can you set the stage for us a little bit for the book? What were you going through personally then and looking back, what do you find significant about what was happening locally at that time?
BD: In 2003, I was broke, living in a motel, unemployed, and my band of ten years (Santeria) had just broken up. They all got jobs, married, or went back to school. I had no Plan B. But I still had the eye of the tiger, even though I was going nowhere. You’ve got to have a serious crazy bone in you to survive as a creative person down here. No question. Otherwise, the nerds and odds will just peck you to death. But I got lucky and found a job as a cabdriver. I try to turn everything into an art project – jobs, heartbreak, defeat, whatever – just to make it fun and ward off the humiliation of reality. It’s my survival mechanism. I knew I was going to write about this taxi stuff as soon as I walked in and met the boss and some of the other people that worked there. I was like, this is gold! But I also just needed a damn job, because I was broke. Sometimes I question the nonsensical trajectory of my own life, but I suspect that I was put here to turn this kind of shit into gold.