Where Post Malone Meets Steely Dan: An Interview with DEACON BLUES
Image courtesy of DEACON BLUES’ Instagram // @deaconbluesmusic
A multi-colored essential oil diffuser emits an atmospheric smoke into the background of the room, creating a lively ambience despite the fact that our interview is reduced to a Zoom call. The 23 year old musician is dressed in a matching black beanie and black T-shirt--the uniform of many young hip hop artists--that matches his array of arm tattoos. It’s the singer’s first ever interview and he’s not quite sure of “how this kind of thing works”.
Deacon Blues grew up in Long Island, New York, the place whose musical track record consists of soft rock types like the famous Billy Joel or Blue Oyster Cult, but those sounds couldn’t be further from the lo-fi electronic beats cultivated in his one-man band. As a child, Blues had a hard time focusing in school and struggled to fit in with his peers. He spent most of his time strumming away at the artificial chords on Guitar Hero--that is, until he found an old six string acoustic and he started to teach himself how to play the real instrument. He acredits his fourth grade teacher, Mr. Mcmanus, as the person who encouraged him to pursue starting his first band at just nine years old. He formed a small ensemble with a few friends called Ballistic Pulse. Despite their limited popularity, he found more success in his third band that he formed in high school which performed the nostalgic sound of 00’s punk rock. They held shows all over the Island and garnered a decent fan base as well as some interest from a few labels. However, as most teenage bands end, the group couldn’t get their priorities straight and the boys eventually drifted apart with no label signing to show for it. However, Blues’ passion for music didn’t vanish--in fact he was still recording and messing around with beats throughout the bands’ hiatus.
When Blues discovered Post Malone’s 2018 album Beerbongs & Bentleys, he found the relaxed and distorted tracks not only inspiring, but extremely doable with today’s accessible music software. He then got to writing and began to record some vocal snippets to experiment with his new sound. Blues says that he often feels most inspired when he’s driving around late at night, which happened to be the way that he came to choose the unique stage name Deacon Blues. The idea behind his name came to him when he was on one of his nightly drives as the classic rock ensemble Steely Dan’s song “Deacon Blues” came up on shuffle. “Deacon Blues” isn’t just his favorite song of theirs, but it also denotes a similar story to his own come up. The lyrics deliver a short anecdote about an average man struggling with the monotony of a normal life who eventually breaks free of societal expectations by pursuing his dream of playing jazz. The chorus of the song goes, “They got a name for the winners in the world/I want a name when I lose/They call Alabama the Crimson Tide/Call me Deacon Blues”. Blues thought the lyrics were too perfect to be a coincidence, so in that moment he decided “fuck it, I’m gonna make music.”
The first song of his to “blow up” was his single in December of 2019, “I’ve Been”, which reached roughly 376,000 plays on SoundCloud. His next few singles struck gold again, his latest reaching nearly 400k plays. He says that one of the hardest parts of releasing music as a new artist is picking the right platform to unleash your latest songs--and Blues says that SoundCloud is “the number one place for new artists”. Not only does the app tend to promote small artists more often than platforms like Spotify or Apple Music, but many other big artists--such as Post Malone himself--owe much of their success to the app.
Now, with over a million plays total on SoundCloud, Deacon Blues has accumulated a local fanbase. He mentions that a plan for a few concerts were in the works this past fall, but with the inception of COVID-19, the performances were put on the back burner. However, he’s still hopeful for a tour in the future. “Touring is definitely something I’d be interested in doing,” the singer tells me. Blues’ biggest dream is to one day get the opportunity to work with some of his favorite artists like Travis Scott or Young Thug. At the rate that his music is taking off on SoundCloud, those dreams may be closer than he thinks.