The first time I met Dan Sartain I left my grandfather’s funeral early to make it happen. I was
wearing a suit.
I ran to the show straight from the service, clearly not in my usual duds, but respectable and
tailored enough that I didn’t feel like I was sticking out at the suburban Detroit club on a Sunday
night.
I’d been hipped to him by the British mag Careless Talk Costs Lives. They hyped the fact that
by the release of Dan Sartain vs. the Serpientes he had already self-released three albums.
Something about that review, the portrait it painted, just made me feel like I HAD to meet Dan.
This guy was my age at the time (21 years old, give-or-take) and I couldn’t wrap my head
around someone so young had enough material to even fill three full-lengths, let alone the
gumption to ACTUALLY release them.
Nevermind those self-releases were micro-editions and that it would take me YEARS to track
‘em all down, when you’re dropping a lyric as deadly as “You don’t know what it’s like to be
alone...You don’t know how it feels, to have the cobras snapping at your heels” you are clearly
wise beyond your years or distribution reach.
Seems like the first dozen or so times I caught Dan live, he never had the same backing band.
Always hustling, always moving, don’t have the time to run tour dates past the bass player, if he
can’t do it, oh well, there’s some other dude who can figure it out and is ready to roll. Shit, that’s
how I got dragooned, happily, into drumming for him back in 2007 and again in 2008.
To know Dan is to ALWAYS be intrigued and to never be surprised. His is a personality where
anything seems possible at any time. Like on that ‘07 tour, there was the faint possibility we
would play Dan’s local hometown Birmingham, Alabama morning television talk show. Local kid
done good, playing the big venue in town...it all made sense to me why it might happen. And
when Dan said “If it actually goes down, I think we just play ‘Where Eagles Dare.’” You know,
the Misfits’ song with a chorus of “I ain’t no goddamn son of a bitch!”
In a vacuum, the idea seems self-defeating and ludicrous, just bad all around. Career-killing. But
to hear the thought coming directly out of Dan’s mouth...it was the most sensible, clear-headed
thing I had ever heard. It made perfect sense to me. Much in the same way he gently unfurls the
lyric here “There’s a rooster in the henhouse...with a big ole dick.” Of course the rooster in the
hen house has a big fucking dick. That’s WHY he’s in the hen house. Shit, do I have to spell it
out for you? Don’t you get it? How clear does it have to be?
Consistently varied and predictably unpredictable...no matter WHO is backing him...the shows
are always flat out great. Because DAN is always great. Because people, like myself, are eager
to get behind him and help spread the word. He garners enthusiasm. He makes you want to do
whatever you can to help evangelize his work...his music, his lyrics, his personality...because
you feel like the world is a better place with more people knowing about him.
Some say this record is a “return to form” and to that my simple response is...Dan has NEVER
lost his form. While stylistic dalliances have come and gone and inspirations and muses have
been chased and abandoned, the quality of his output has NEVER suffered.
To me, that is the truest form of artistry. Warhol was churning out silk-screens until his dying
breath, however bored he may have been of the experiment, because that’s what people
WANTED from him. Were he alive today they would STILL be asking him for silkscreen
portraits.
But a musician? What a tight-rope one must walk. You can’t ignore your past, yet you can’t
wholesale regurgitate it either. How does one conjure something that is both familiar yet new
and engaging all at the same time?
I don’t have the answer. I don’t know how to do it. But I know that’s what *I* want and suspect
that’s what most others look for in the music that grabs them, that captivates their minds, that
moves their souls, that sits with them after months, years, decades.
All of that encapsulates how I feel about Dan Sartain and not just this album, but life entirely. In
his own unique way, Dan holds a mirror up for us to look at ourselves. You recognize a visage
from the past, with memory of how things used to appear. But the focus of attention goes to the
changes...the wrinkle, the fade, the signs of time passing. Therein lies the truth, therein lies the
message, when at its deepest, provides the listener, the viewer, life, with the most pure
meaning.
Ben Blackwell
Psychedelic Stooge
December 2020
