Dege Legg: writer, underground musician, and leader of the psyouthern-hard rock band Santeria, hailing from "GhostTown, LA and formed in 1994. It's been 10 years of gigs, madness, tours, voodoo curses, wrecked vans, band members losing their minds and much more, detailed in the online Santeria Tour Journals, authored by Dege and read by countless freaks across the world. Santeria was it's own beast, uninfluenced by any trends in the under/over ground, slamming out their own strange brand of southern heavy rock that incorporated Middle-Eastern rhythms, dual-effected slide guitars, rumbling bass, and two drummers--one from India. Santeria are currently on "tenured leave" following the drummer's near-fatal car accident during summer'04. During the band's 10-year run and following it, Dege obsessively honed his own brand of southern acoustic gypsy death blues that veered into singer/songwriter territory, but without the woe-is-me-cheese and more of the dynamics that characterize great rock bands. Evidence of this can be heard on his first two solo release: "Bastard's Blues" (1996) and "Love Letters & Suicide Notes" (2000). Pre-production for a 3rd solo release is currently in the works, while Dege shapes and tailors the latest batch of songs with his live band, Black Bayou Construktion--consisting of dual slide guitars, bass, hard rock drummer, piano, and violin.

Black Bayou Construktion: After releasing and touring one of the greatest unheard records of modern, southern underground rock (House of the Dying Sun) in 2003, Dege Legg and his band, Santeria, dropped off the radar. Rumors of voodoo curses, car crashes, and psychotic breakdowns abounded. Some of them--not far from the reality of what had happened--and some of them, painfully off base. In truth, after 10 years of hard living & touring in rickety vans, the band decided to go on “indefinite hiatus.” In the interim, Dege went into self-imposed exile, living in seedy motels, working on a book, and composing new songs. In 2004, he was lured from exile with offers of “big money” and “record contracts” from L.A. A&R reps who, having heard the new batch of Dege’s demos (recorded in a trailer), saw dollar signs and infinite possibilities. However, the project was to last only a few months with the sessions disintegrating amidst creative differences with the L.A. musicians. Content not to sell his soul, and instead, remain an obscure footnote in the modern musical cannon, Dege returned to Louisiana. But a strange thing happened. Shortly his return, a new band fell into place—one made up of veterans of Louisiana underground rock, blues, & roots scenes. In a seemingly effortless manner, they joined Dege in a simple mission: make original music with no expectations or headtrips and bring it to The People in a unique and inimitable manner. No bombast. No hype. No A&R. Just killer songs. Good people. And distinctly southern music. What resulted is Black Bayou Construktion--a psyouthern, post-Americana ennsemble sounding like 70's era Neil Young run through a Rorschach Machine A new recording is forthcoming.

Santeria: Formed in 1994 in the swamps of Louisiana under the pretext of destroying rock and roll. When they realized it was already dead, the band focused their energies on humbler concerns like creating their own enigmatic style of southern rock. With a line-up consisting of a drummer from India, two ex-mental patients, a neurotic, and a goofball, they went on to redefine what “southern rock” could mean—less dependent on beer guzzling machismo and more focused on small, GhostTownish elements of southern living. In their 10-year existence, they released 3 albums, conducted numerous regional and national tours of the states, and abruptly vanished from the radar in 2004 amidst rumors of voodoo curses, car accidents, homelessness, and poverty.
The legend of Santeria lives on.

Dege Legg (Dobro bio): Writing in the old, haunted tradition of slide-blues greats, writer/musician Dege Legg breathes new life in the Delta Blues genre, not by imitation, but by infusing original songs with his experience of growing up in the Deep South—young, white, alienated, freak-in-the-country-style. With Robert-Johnson-on-Thorazine-style slide work paired with Middle-East-Meets-South melodies, a mindblowing new take on an old tradition emerges—one that is surreal, warped, odd, and droning, but also firmly rooted in the troubled and death-obsessed masters of old. Dege adamantly avoids the flashy, purist, mid-life-crisis white-guy school of slide playing—with its hokey attempts at singing about country living and faux cottonpicking. Instead you hear battered tales of apocalyptic prophesies, endless darkness, yearning stoners, backwoods drugs, hallucinatory angels, burning barns, junkyards, and the floating ghosts of the Deep South. All of it is told in an honest voice by one who lived through it, born and raised Cajun in small-town southern Louisiana. This is the new real Delta Blues. New All-Slide CD coming in ‘08.