Deadeye: Well, technically he gave it back to me…

Karen: Yeah, you mean he died right?

Deadeye: Yes.

Karen: Why do you have a sign that says NO TIPPING (on the front of your van)?

Deadeye: I just don’t like to be tipped in any fashion

Karen: Like advice?

Deadeye: I don’t like to be tipped when I’m sleeping…or given money. Well I take money but in such large forms its not tips…its donations.  Not in percentage of what I would for services rendered.

Deadeye: Number one Reverend Deadeye rule…NO TIPPING.

Karen: So what are these items hanging from your rear view mirror?

Deadeye: Here’s an eagle feather…a falcon feather…a little NC license plate with my name on it…a barrette that some girl left in here….a partially smoked cigarette butt that has been lacquered with a little cherry painted tip…

Karen: And all of this together? What does it mean?

Deadeye: They are all gifts that people have given me. Tobacco prayer ties from my brother…a multitude of things all together that someone gave me as a traveling gift so it has St. Christopher on it…and some other things that I think she must have thought would have given me good luck on the road…buttons…lots of buttons…

Karen: Well, buttons hold stuff together so…

Karen: So you hang that there…you don’t wear that. It’s kind of like a…blessing for your van?

Deadeye: That’s it.

I first met the Reverend at the Muddy Roots Festival in Cookeville, TN over Memorial Day weekend. Reverend Deadeye is a one-man band whose act includes the use of a guitar, tambourine, high-hat cymbal, kick drum, washtub, and harmonica. A creepy, rubber human hand sits atop his high-hat. It sports two silver rings, when he hits the pedal with his foot, the hand moves up and down. Lights flash, and a small Dio de Los Muertos style skeleton and rubbery snake jiggle on the top of his bass drum.  His microphone is a taped up old Falstaff beer can he found while hiking. He often uses his tambourine or a bottle of whiskey as a slide on his homemade resonator guitar.

Karen: Did you grow up listening to Christian music? Did your parents allow you to listen to secular music?

Deadeye: We played music more than we listened to it. But we had this record collection my parents got where they signed up for a record club…where you get a record a month. The Blackwood Brothers. The Hemphills. The Happy Goodmans. I can’t even think of any more. There were at least 20 different records we had from that time period. That was the staple of what I listened to.

Karen: So you said you played more than you listened. How do you do that? Did you listen to the radio?

Deadeye: Not really as a kid. My brother was more into it than I was. I remember a time I went into his room late at night…it’s a very foggy memory of him under the covers and listening to like whatever top country music was playing at the time that was probably the only station we got out there. I don’t really specifically remember being told not to listen to it at that age. Later on though, my dad definitely had some ideas about what we were listening to.

Karen: Like when you were a teenager or something?

Deadeye: He didn’t like any of it. He didn’t like Christian music. He didn’t like secular. He didn’t just dislike metal. He came from a kind of bluegrass background of listening to that and he just could not understand drums. Like drums…any time he heard a drum, he said, “And there’s the sound of that washtub! Did you hear that washtub?!” Which is why I play on a washtub. He gave me the idea. “Man, wouldn’t that sound good? A washtub? My dad’s always telling me snare drums sound like a washtub.”

Karen: So you decided to use the washtub for that reason?

Deadeye: I don’t know that I decided to because of that…in that order.

Karen: I know what you mean…kind of like the ideas that float around in your head and then you kind of pick up on them from time to time without a direct linear cause and effect…

Deadeye: I actually just made that connection, right now, talking to you.

Karen: I think a lot of us do that. When we are asked to reflect on why we do things….

Deadeye: Wait a second…I’m thinking, I am playing a wash tub and he used to always tell me…

Karen: So, did he listen to music?

Deadeye: Yeah, I mean the records we listened to. He also listened to other stuff. But music was around us all of the time. Every church service we had there was music. Like an hour of music.

Karen: Worship.

Deadeye: Worship is an interesting way to put it. That’s a Vineyard way to put it. This is different. This is not the same. It is like Pentacostal. It’s more like that.

Karen: It is inducing an atmosphere conducive to being spiritual.

Deadeye: And if it is not, it’s just the idea of belting it out. Even on Sunday morning at church, it may not turn into some sorta crazy dancin’ thing but even if its not, it is just being sung…powerfully delivered.

Karen: The lyrics that you sang, were they typical Christian lyrics?

Reverend Deadeye’s parents encouraged their sons to learn to play the piano. In fact, they weren’t permitted to learn to play another instrument until they learned the piano. To his parents, the piano was the “basic” of music. Both the Reverend and his brother took lessons for a couple of years. The Reverend and his brother have remained close. I asked him about this relationship:

Karen: Your brother, does he still play music?

Deadeye: Yes. He still plays with me when I come through town. He is in Los Angeles. Crazy town. He plays guitar and sometimes he plays the kick drum. He has his own band too a one-man band. Backslider…Brother Backslider…he always called it Backslider and I called it Brother Backslider. Either way…he IS a backslider!

Karen: He is no longer a believer?

Deadeye: <laughs> Actually now, he is heavy into the “Injun Way.” <reaches up to the red cloth hanging from his rearview mirror>…Prayer ties…he gave me these…and sage…feathers. He wrote about half of my songs. Well, he wrote the hits. If I need a hit I just go to him. He sits in LA all day. He has got to be able to come up with hits hanging out in LA.

Karen: Why does that matter?

Deadeye: The music capital. Well, besides Nashville I suppose.

Karen: So he is into the Indian Way? Like Navaho or a “universal Indian” thing?

Deadeye: Actually what he is practicing is Lakota. It might have a mixture of other stuff in it. Because anymore, when you are off the reservation, I think it becomes a little bit more…

Karen: Syncretic…blended.

Deadeye: Yeah.

Karen: So he doesn’t have Christianity as a part of that anymore?

Deadeye: Well see that’s the thing about the Indian way is that it doesn’t necessarily rule out anything else. He is a Backslider…he has to be a Backslider first and foremost.

Karen: Ok, so when you say that, what does that mean that you are?

Deadeye: ME? I am THE REVEREND!

Karen: I know that…but I mean you are a Reverend of the Christian faith?

Deadeye: God fearin’….God damned! My new slogan…

Karen: That’s a good one…then did you like, attend seminary?

Deadeye: Seminary? A good reverend don’t need to go to seminary! Just read the Bible that’s how they did it in the old fashioned days…they just read the Bible…and made up stuff.

Karen: So your religious beliefs are Christian?

Deadeye: Biblical.

Karen: Going back to the Indian thing, your father wasn’t opposed to the Indian way? They led tent revivals but they weren’t opposed to you being exposed to the Navaho religious ways.

Deadeye: Oh no. No-no. That’s not true at all. My dad definitely didn’t like it. Most of the people that were involved that were Navaho in the tent revivals kept it very separate. So, it was very separate. When they would come to the tent meeting it was a tent meeting and they were doing that. To my parents they were backsliding but when they did their Navaho thing they were just doing this thing here…and that thing there.

When the good Reverend performs, he often enters the stage with a bottle of whiskey and begins his set with a bandana across his face. He plays with fervor akin to Pentecostal churchgoers who are filled with the Holy Spirit. Both of his feet pound drum and cymbal pedals while he plays the guitar and tambourine with his hands. Strobe lights flash across the surface of his open suitcase that that reads “Drink!!! Ye damn Sinners.”

Karen: Alcohol…let’s discuss that…did you drink in college?

Deadeye: I wasn’t a drinker in college. It isn’t like I had an X on my hand or something. I just chose to spend the day doing something else.

Karen: What about backsliding? I don’t’ understand what your definition of backsliding is. I like that in that I like when I’m not entirely sure about the definitions of anything. So drinking is part of your show. You take your bottle up there and you use it as an instrument. 

Deadeye: I drink because it would be silly if I had a Fanta soda up there.

Karen: Do you have a stress about performing?

Deadeye: Never, I never have…I don’t think I’ve ever had stage fright. I think when I was in bands I did. It’s different, you have to rely on other people and sometimes things are really fucked up. By myself I’m like, I’m just playing my songs. If I mess up, nobody knows. Every song, I mess up. Like I change them. Some times I just forget them. At Muddy Roots I was in the middle of a song and I couldn’t remember what I was playing. I remember asking someone and nobody knew what I was playing either. Don’t you remember that?

Karen: That’s the benefit to performing by yourself. You just did this cd…

Deadeye: Record.

Karen: Ok, record.

Deadeye: You should play my music for your kids.

Karen: I do. My 11 year-old daughter loves “Get Drunk on Jesus”…but when I’m driving her to school and its on I am always like, “Don’t talk about that at school, ok?” I can just picture people in this uptight Ohio town not being able to handle that. And my 14 year old likes “Fuck the Devil.” I don’t know what Justin Beiber sounds like. I don’t think my kids do either.

Deadeye: Beaver?

Karen: He is some kid that fills stadiums with teenage girls.

Deadeye: Never heard of him…

I’m sure many have never heard of Reverend Deadeye. His songs don’t get regular radio play in most contexts but his shows are lively and entertaining and feel like a Pentecostal church service. Stomping feet, glasses raised and knocking on tables, his fans worship in his church…and it is “his” church. As the good Reverend says at the beginning of every show, “I’m the Reverend Deadeye…welcome to my Goddamned church!” 

Stay tuned for part two of Unites interview with the Reverend.

Related Links:

Reverend Deadeye on Facebook

Getting to the bottom of it