WE KNOW NOTHING…

On my drive to see Reverend Deadeye in Columbus, Ohio, my friend turned to me and asked where I thought the Reverend stopped and Brent began. After all, every performer has their stage version of themselves. No matter how similar the two may be, there is always a bit of a difference between the two. Given that Reverend Deadeye is quite a character, I was interested in learning how he saw this...where he felt that he stopped and his stage persona began:

Karen: Reverend Deadeye is not really your name; you’ve never had a checking account with checks that say “Reverend Deadeye” on them?

Deadeye: Actually I did. Actually I lost a lot of money and they closed my account. I’m pretty deeply in debt. I’ve always failed at everything I’ve ever done.

Karen: Well, financially.

Karen: How did your involvement with The Folk Singer come about?

Deadeye: Marc (M. A. Littler) emailed me and told me he was coming to Colorado and gave me the dates and asked if I’d be in the film.

Karen: How did you know Marc?

Deadeye: I didn’t.

Karen: Had he seen you when you toured Europe?

Deadeye: No. I hadn’t been to Europe yet.  And then he called me and said that they were moving it to Austin and asked if I still wanted to come down. And I said, “Sure.”

Karen: Did he tell you why he asked you in particular?

Deadeye: He was looking for characters. The film all had real people in it. And at first he had like scripts and stuff that he wanted people to do and then he realized early on that it was going to be whatever came out. He just kind of directed it.

Karen: He let you guys all be yourselves. He didn’t explain why he picked you?

Deadeye: Not specifically except that I knew Konrad (Possessed by Paul James) and he asked Konrad to choose people that he didn’t know very well but knew or had met…people he enjoyed working with. All of the people in the film that they chose in advance were there, but then when we started doing it there were other people that they didn’t know they were going to put in the film. It just kind of came together.

Karen: How was that to be “you” in a film? It’s kind of rare to just have someone come up to you and say, “Can you just be you.”

Deadeye: I don’t know.

Karen: My friend John and I were talking the other day about you and he asked me where you stop and where the Reverend Deadeye begins. Is it like a constant ebb and flow?

Deadeye: Yeah I guess so. I mean like when I was plowing the fields in NC with Andrea three days ago, I didn’t particularly feel like Reverend Deadeye…Just some guy plowing a field.

Karen: That’s sort of the mundane part of life. We all have that.

Deadeye: Yes but I did it just because I wanted to do it. Some people do that for a living. Not really for a living but most people out there have to do it because they own property. Everything gets overgrown there is so much rain. It’s probably like that out here too.

Karen: That’s a lot of work.

Deadeye: I’m still sore from it and I have injuries.

Karen: Work is work. Going back to music, at what point in life did you decide or figure out that music was going to be in your life. Was it a calling for you or were you just like, “I do this shit well so I’m going to do it, I guess?”

Deadeye: I kinda went back and forth, there were times that I was like, “Music is all I really know of really do but I’m ok doing other things so that I can”…Jobs were really like a means to an end. At the end of the day, music is what drives me and what makes me feel alive. My whole life that’s all I’ve ever done, really. Everything else was just a side note and a means to an end. If I worked at Pizza Hut it was so I could make enough money to have insurance on my car so that I could be in a band. If someone offered me a job where I had to work on a day when I was playing? I quit the job.

Karen: Did you ever have a chick that was like, “It’s me or the music?”

Deadeye: My first long term girlfriend in the end it wasn’t really like that but in a way it was, because she wanted me to like grow up and get a job and do responsible things. I was 30 and she never really gave me that ultimatum but that was pretty much why she left me. I don’t know because I don’t talk to her anymore.

As our conversation progressed, I began to look around the van. It was FULL…to the rim. I could see books, a few hanging clothing items, some bedding, and a wooden cabinet. The space seemed very small. Reverend Deadeye lifted a lid from a box between the two front seats and pulled out a small laptop. I began to wonder about the idea of home…

Deadeye: 86 to 90…I went to high school in Nebraska and Colorado.

Karen: And the reservation was in Arizona?

Karen: Why did you leave the reservation?

Deadeye: It was probably because my dad wasn’t feeling well. At that time, we left but we left all of our stuff. And we went back to Colorado where my grandparents lived.

Karen: Was it traumatic to leave all of your stuff?

Deadeye: At the time, it was a very just sudden thing. We had some relatives that came and then all of a sudden my mom just said, “Pack your stuff we are going back to Colorado.” But we stayed a lot longer than planned. And then we got people to move into the house and to take care of the church that was there. We ended up not going back for a year. We left the family dog back there and everything. Then we got a place there in Greeley, Colorado and ended up staying.

Karen: Who were you living with?

Deadeye: Relatives. I mean both of my parents’ parents lived in Greeley and I think that summer we must have swapped around. And then we got a place that fall I think. We got a trailer. In Colorado you could just put a trailer anywhere. But in most places they like to make you live in a trailer park. Got to keep all those poor folks together!

Karen: So you went to high school in Nebraska and Colorado? How was that? Teenagers don’t like to move, how was that?

Deadeye: Really? No. I always liked to move. I always wanted to go somewhere else. Even as a child I would like to go away by myself. One time I went to my uncle’s farm in Oklahoma by myself. But my uncle didn’t like me…he was just harsh. He would always yell at me.

Karen: When you were in high school, were you involved?

Deadeye: Yeah, in Nebraska I did. I did all the music choir and swing choir then my senior year the school I was going to didn’t have much going for it so I didn’t really do anything.

Karen: Do you have a place you call home now…where your stuff is? Do you have stuff in North Carolina? Do you have stuff in Colorado?

Deadeye: I have a storage unit.

Karen: How do you feel about stuff?

Deadeye: Stuff?

Karen: I asked you about this bundle of items you have hanging from your rear view mirror first. And the things you put out on your merch table.

Karen: Some of it is due to my packrat nature. Like all of these sunglasses that I have here…they’re all kind of fucked up and broke. Then today I was looking in the glove box and I found this pair of glasses. And then over here look, I have this other and then I put them together and I have one good pair in that mix.

Karen: Did you wear both? Or all three?

Deadeye: I do this. It picks my nose for me. It’s my little experiment. Sunglasses patch…it blocks out the light because I get headaches from the dead eye. If the sun gets to it all of the time.

Karen: How did you make the decision about what stuff to take with you? I just moved and I have this garage full of crap. I always think, if I had to today make a decision, like, we are all going to the moon. What would I take? We get really attached to our stuff. I have a gazillion books, but I can’t take all of my books.

Deadeye: Books are replaceable. There’s probably not a book that you can’t get somewhere else.

Karen: But you have some books, how did you decide what you wanted to take?

Deadeye: Just what I wanted to read at the time.  When I’m in Denver I’ll probably change them out for others. It’s probably the first thing in here that I would thin down as well. If I needed to…which I probably do. But one thing I am not getting rid of is my record player. My record player is in my record cabinet. The vinyl is in there as well.

Karen: Do you listen to cds?

Deadeye: I listen to the cds people give me on the road. I use my computer too.

Karen: Do you predominantly stay in the van?

Deadeye: Mostly.

Karen: How long have you been touring?

Deadeye: Straight for two years. I toured before then only not as much. Now, it’s been, I can’t even remember the last time I had an extended break. I don’t even know what an extended break is anymore.

The Reverend described his tours of Europe and the United States. He explained the difference that having a record company and a manager to assist with the production of cds and organization of tour dates makes in his life. I then asked him about his goals for the future. I asked him if he missed his girlfriend and her goats in North Carolina.

Deadeye: I didn’t really get to see them at the end there. I didn’t get to see my goats. They won’t remember me though when I go back. Apparently they only have like a three-week memory.

Karen: I always teach about the temporal part of language. I talk to my students about how dogs only communicate in the here and now. When they come running over to bark at you, they aren’t saying “Yesterday a guy came by here!” or “Tomorrow a guy might come by here!” They communicate, effectively, about what is going on right now.  There’s no past and future tense in their conversation

Deadeye: There are certain human languages that have that too. The Hopi…I don’t think they have a future or a past in their language.

Deadeye: I only speak Hopi.

Karen: OK.

Deadeye: <laughs>

Given that the Reverend is a man of the cloth, I wanted to know what his exact faith entailed. What does he believe? What church, if any, does he attend? How does he reconcile his personal beliefs with the contemporary church? I asked him to explain his evolution of belief from the church of his childhood to his present understanding of the world. Reverend Deadeye and his brother both have degrees in philosophy. As such, it occurred to me that he must have given his faith a good deal of thought.

Deadeye: There was a time when I felt like my grandparents’ church was a little bit old fashioned so at the end of my senior year, I started going to the Vineyard. I played in the band.

Karen: Did you? You really did? When I was there I was 19 and it was some guy that came out from Anaheim. And we started a “youth service” that we called, what did we call it? <laughs> SANCTUARY…it was kind of capitalizing on the Sister’s of Mercy kind of thing. It was kind of a Goth thing…

Deadeye: Wasn’t the Vineyard really attractive to Goth Christian rockers. I didn’t realize that at the time but looking back, the two Vineyards I used to attend were very punk rock. Spiked hair. Everyone smoked cigarettes. And now there’s a church in Denver called the Scum of the Earth Church.

Karen: You’re lying…

Deadeye: No. It’s the same kind of thing…tattooed people…you can be tattooed as long as you believe that Jesus died on the cross to save your sins. You can do whatever you want. I mean, you can’t do whatever you want. You can drink and smoke. Fornication is still out. That’s not allowed. And the earth was still created 6000 years ago.

Karen: Have you been to the Creation Museum? The one in Northern Kentucky? It is designed with the sole purpose of explaining away evolution and propagating a belief in Creation.

Deadeye: Where is the Evolution museum then?

Karen: I guess that’s every other museum…the Gospels are what you read, right? You cut out the rest of the Bible right? <laughs>

Deadeye: <laughs> You are saying I read only the New Testament? I don’t like the New Testament. The first four books, the Gospels, great…but everything else after that is crap. It’s the reason the church is the way it is. They only read that. The whole idea that the Bible is infallible is ridiculous. It has been messed up and redone so many times…

Karen: But you still believe?

Deadeye: It depends on what you mean by believe? I don’t believe that 100% of the Bible is true which every other Christian does. Like the testament to being Christian is that you believe this. That’s why I would never really call myself a Christian.

Karen: What do you believe?

Deadeye: You want my actual belief? It can be summed up in one sentence…THAT WE KNOW NOTHING…

Karen: I would tend to agree. I mean how can you be so strongly convicted that there is no God or that there is?

Deadeye: That’s why the last time we talked about this I said atheism is not an answer for me. I can’t…because you have to have just as much fervent belief in atheism as you do to be a Christian.

Karen: This comes from way too much grad school post modernist reading so I would say it all comes down to perception and subjectivity. We all are looking through our own lens. It’s still only our understanding and that can’t be generalized. Maybe gravity isn’t subjective.

Deadeye: But sure it can be though.

Karen: So the church of “We Know Nothing.”

Deadeye: Yeah, as soon as you think you know something, you realize you really know nothing…because knowledge is always changing. It’s like knowledge in and of itself may not change but what we think about it changes. Like gravity: the rate as which something falls may not be changing but when you introduce it into the real world, then it is constantly changing. It is hitting different air currents. It may have different friction. In the real world, gravity means nothing…except…except…for the fact that it’s gonna fucken fall!

Karen: That’s where a lot of people get hung up. We all make choices and move forward based upon things we assume to be true…

Deadeye: But that’s what I like about having knowledge being something much more general. I could get behind the Law of Gravity if the Law of Gravity was “if you drop something…it fucken falls”…

Karen: Right…but that is what it is…

Deadeye: It’s like when Epicurus measured the curvature of the earth, he was off by like 15%. And that was like 5000 years ago. And 300 years ago, they were kicking Galileo out of the Science Federation that they had because he was trying to tell them, “Look the earth can’t be flat.” 300 years ago…5000 years ago the guy actually calculated it. People didn’t pay attention to it.

Of course no interview with this man would be complete without me asking him to tell me the story of his name. Reverend Deadeye has a song called, “Snake Bite” that showcases the story of his blindness in one eye. However many times I had heard the story from others, I wanted to hear it from him. When I asked him, I apologized for asking for the story that has probably become boring to tell over and over to interested parties. He slammed his fists down on the steering wheel and spun his torso around to face me…

Deadeye: THIS INTERVIEW IS OVER!!!!

Karen: <laughing> Snakebite story…I NEED to know the snakebite story. But I need to hear you tell me.

Deadeye:………..<silence>……………..THIS INTERVIEW IS OVER!!!! Was that convincing enough?  It’s …………OVER!!!! That’s how you need to end the interview. Just say I slammed my hands down and yelled…THIS INTERVIEW IS OVER!!!!

Karen: <laughing> Come on….tell me! So how old were you and why were you holding the snake, man? You weren’t at a snake handling church?

Karen: I bet your mama loved that!

Deadeye: She didn’t know till it bit me! Karen: Till it bit you in the eye! So what then? You were like “Oh, my eye!”

Deadeye: Oh my God my eye! Oh my God my eye! And the doctor was like, “Oh my God…his eye!”

Karen: They would have to be!

Deadeye: And then they stitched it up…

Karen: Stitched your eye?

Deadeye: 55 stitches in my eye.

Karen: So do you have no sight in that eye?

Deadeye: I made up that number. It was many stitches. No, I can’t see out of it.

Karen: Did they give you some kind of anti venom medication? Or were they just like deal with it?

Deadeye: It’s just pain, boy. My dad was like, “It’s just pain BOY! You can handle the pain!” And my mom said, “I don’t think he can handle the pain!”

Karen: Did she?

Deadeye: My daddy said, “He’s a tough boy…he can handle the PAIN!”

Karen: So you handled the pain. Can you see at all out of that eye?

Deadeye: No. I can see light. In fact it’s just a lens…that’s missing…mostly why I can’t see out of it. But it’s a miracle it is back in its rightful place.

Karen: It is a miracle! It’s part of your testimony!

Deadeye: It’s my testimony!

Karen: There ya go. You got a miracle in your own head!

Deadeye: I should have told that story more convincingly since it is my testimony. “When I was a boy, I used to lay with hookers and do cocaine! And play with snakes! Lord, he healed me.”

Karen: <laughs> There, that’s it. That’s a good testimony.

Karen: So you have all of these items you put out. Like at Muddy Roots. What are these about? These elements…the case and the sign and the Bibles. Did you make these?

Deadeye: Some of them. Some of them were made by Andrea.

Karen: She made some? With the paper verse on the outside?

Deadeye: I’ve been doing this for a while with different Bibles. I have a big one too. I have one Bible that has a cut out for a whiskey flask. Which is where I got the idea in the first place. I couldn’t just throw them away.

Karen: Do you use that Bible? Put the whiskey flask in it and take it with you?

Deadeye: Sometimes when I play. It used to be a regular Bible and I used it more then. It has a cover like that now. It looks kind of funny. For its use it doesn’t look like a Bible. It looks like I might be hiding something in it…

Karen: Well, do a lot of people hide shit in Bibles?

Deadeye: I don’t know. I don’t think so, do they?

Karen: I don’t know. I mean the Bible would be a great place to hide…

Deadeye: Most people would never cut out the inside of a Bible. (Opens Bible to reveal a flask shaped cut out with receipts in it). You could put your money in it.

Karen: And you do…it’s a good place.

Deadeye: That’s why I don’t have any money.

Karen: Cause God did not like you cutting it!

Deadeye: It’s all gone…that’s part of my testimony…when you cut out the heart of the Bible, you cut out God in your life and your money goes down the drain!.....and…..THIS INTERVIEW IS OVER!!!!!!

So…DRINK!!! Al ye damn sinners! And give a listen to some of the Reverend Deadeye’s music.

http://www.myspace.com/reverenddeadeye

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGSpixYqDA0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i2GGerifuQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiNPE9SBKpk&feature=related

Trailer for The Folk Singer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckOl7ddbDDo&feature=related