King Dude at Vacation Vinyl, Friday, February 11th, 2011
King Dude looks like a tough dude with his tattooed arms, long hair and biker outfit, but behind his dark songs talking about ghosts, spiders in the hair, shadows and graves, there is a tangible pain and sorrow. Pain? He knows about it since he is behind the brand ‘Actual Pain’, that he created in 2006 to deal with the ‘dark side of life’ and the ‘blight of the world’…
He did a short set at Vacation Vinyl on Friday evening, just before Chelsea Wolfe, a sort of preview of their show on Saturday at Show Cave.
With a remarkable tenebrous baritone voice, King Dude (the pseudonym of T.J. Cowgill), sings about eating flesh and drinking blood, but didn’t he also say he was in love with a ghost? That seems very dark-side indeed, and this is why he jokingly told us he was not used to so much light as he ordinarily plays under the dim light of candles. I think I also heard some Lucifer related lyrics, and some other satanic poetry building a haunting and occult ambiance over quiet reverb guitar. His death-folk embarks you in a weird country where the fog is thick, the light low and the ghosts truly alive.
