Photo credit: Frank Lee Drennen
Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?
Julie Christensen: We don’t currently have a touring vehicle, unless it’ll be a rented van. Back in the day we used Chris’ white van with no side windows (!) until I totaled it loaded one night. Glad we don’t get loaded anymore! Then we had this groovy van that DID have windows, and a platform/bed to cover all the gear and luggage. I think there was a pod on top, too. In 1987, on the first of two tours we did that year, the entire packed van was stolen from a parking place in New Orleans. It was found stripped and up on blocks weeks later, but in the meantime the whole punk/roots-rock community got more alert.
Chris Desjardins: Julie’s pretty much covered it as far as back in the eighties touring with Divine Horsemen. This current line-up of the band has yet to tour due to the pandemic. However, my other band The Flesh Eaters (the line-up with me, Dave Alvin, John Doe and DJ from X, Bill Bateman from The Blasters and Steve Berlin from Los Lobos) toured in 2015, 2018 and 2019, and we were extremely fortunate to have the use of Dave’s touring van, complete with our favorite road manager Danny Bland (now on the road with Steve Earle). That was immensely important, having that leg up, not having to worry about van rental and being assured of the gig income that could compensate for gas and any maintenance. Reliable vehicle rental is a tremendous chunk of the expenses/overhead just getting out there on the road.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
Julie: Well, we DIDN’T in the eighties, but have been on tour other times since: Chris with the Flesh Eaters, and when I was on tour with Leonard Cohen not long after the band broke up then, also with my own bands and Hal Willner’s traveling love-circus in Leonard’s honor.
Now that we’ve tooted our horns, sigh, I do eat healthier now. I carry protein bars or powder without sugar, in case there’s nothing else or sound check goes long. I try not to eat too much starch, dairy, and sugar. It IS possible to do that even in a greasy spoon, but you gotta watch all the salt, cornstarch, and fat they put in.
Chris: Yes, it’s something to plan for ahead of time, bringing an arsenal of pre-packaged nourishment. I’ll have certain things I’ll stay away from eating at truck stops and various roadside attractions. One of the big advantages of being out on the road with the Flesh Eaters, when we had Danny Bland as our road manager, he and Dave were aware of good places to eat in about half the areas we’d pass through.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
Julie: Chris and I don’t break strings, but we gotta watch our vocal cords. I remember Robyn Jameson (our beloved departed bass player) breaking a bass string, which is a real feat. Our guitar player Peter Andrus used to break some strings, and power right through. But I couldn’t tell you how many. However, he’s much more pro now, and probably changes strings more regularly!
Chris: Julie’s pretty much covered that.
Where do you rehearse?
Julie: Oh man, in the halcyon days we rehearsed at Hully Gully, the space Robyn partnered. We were just one of many bands practicing there, and it was a real hang. Everyone worked hard though: Us, X, Tex and the Horseheads, the DIs, Blood on the Saddle!
Our current rehearsal space is a place Peter and Bobby have rented for quite a few years, so it is chock-full of interesting chatchckies and stuff, and you can barely plant yourself, but it’s got a groovy vibe.
Chris: Though we don’t own a touring vehicle, Divine Horsemen guitarist and bass player, Peter Andrus and Bobby Permanent, having a semi-permanent rehearsal rental space has been a financial godsend. The relatively small, high-ceilinged room is jampacked, with barely enough room for 5 band members, but it’s a secure home. Peter and I can go down there to work on our new songs as they materialize and evolve without having to worry about paying a daily or weekly rate. Peter and Bobby have had the place for approaching two decades, and they use it for other projects as well.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
Julie: The first song to spring out of our love affair was “Time Stands Still,†which Chris wrote. There really was a fire in the Hollywood Hills that day, but Chris didn’t start it! First line: “I’m the one who started the fire in the hills, so you’d have to stay one more day.” My dad thought that was so romantic! Chris had written many, many songs before and since, and so have I, on my own.
Chris: I’ll go all the way back to 1977 and the first set of song lyrics I ever wrote for The Flesh Eaters, a punk tune called “Disintegration Nation”: “Countries of the world are on a mission of sorrow/in the Capital of Pain, they’re screaming about no tomorrow”
Those lines seem to remain apropos down through the most recent decades of human turmoil.
Describe your first gig.
Julie: I believe the first iteration of Divine Horsemen played live for the first time at the ANTI-CLUB on Melrose. We played electric, even though the record we had out, “Time Stands Still” was largely acoustic. The gig was charged up, and the club was packed. It was real exciting, and lots of our friends were there, including a past Flesh Eater backup singer, Jill Jordan. I think it might’ve been her who told me, “Wow, you move around a lot more than any of his other backup singers,” and I said, “hoot, I’m just trying to stay out of the way!”
Chris: My first gig with my first line-up of The Flesh Eaters was opening on a bill for The Dickies, The Nuns (from SF), and The Eyes (which then featured both Charlotte Caffey, soon to find GoGos fame, and DJ Bonebrake, soon to join X). That was at The Masque in Hollywood on December 23, 1977.
Julie’s got a better memory than I as far as our first Divine Horsemen gig. I don’t remember much about the Anti-Club show. But we also played Al’s Bar around the same time, a Divine Horsemen set that stands out because Julie and I were nervous about a scary, potentially homicidal ex-girlfriend of mine (who I’d only dated for two months!) who took umbrage that Julie and I had gotten together. We knew she was going to be there, but as it turned out, she was well-behaved that night.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
Julie: Well, back when we were together, Chris worked at Slash, and then at Rhino Records in Westwood. He was a curator for a while at American Cinematheque at The Egyptian Theater, and taught film in San Fransisco. He has done quite a bit of acting, too.
I have waitressed, sold ceiling fans, sung jingles, taught voice even at a couple fancy high schools and my most recent day job was in 2010-11 at an Apple Store in Santa Barbara.
But my longest-standing “job” has been as a wife to John Diehl and mother of the now-adult Magnus: my favorite and most important job.
Chris: Julie’s pretty much covered it. My day jobs that lasted the longest were at places that had something to do with my prime interests, film and music. I was an A&R guy/in-house producer at Slash Records between 1980 & 1984. My longest job was at The American Cinematheque in Hollywood. They’d restored the Egyptian Theatre, which became the Cinematheque’s venue. I started as an assistant programmer/film traffic coordinator in January of 1999, then I got promoted to main programmer in 2005 when my good friend (and boss), Dennis, moved onto greener pastures as an indie producer. By that time, the Cinematheque had acquired the smaller Aero Theatre in Santa Monica as an additional venue on the West Side (which my then-colleague, Gwen programmed).
I left in mid-2009, but already had an overlapping job teaching film genres history one day a week in SF at The Academy of Art University. By 2010, that had evolved into two days a week in SF (teaching 4 classes). That job was probably my favorite, but unfortunately ended in mid-2013 when the school no longer had it in their budget to fly in teachers once a week from outside of San Francisco.
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
Julie: Divine Horsemen made some money back in the day, but touring we mostly broke even, and we blew some of that. When we lost our van, we had done fairly well, but some of that money was in the van!
And man, the times I made money doing music was doing jazz, pop, and “casual, or society†gigs, and doing quite a few cool recording sessions and singing jingles. Otherwise, I wind up paying to do music that’s just the facts.
Chris has made money from his songwriting, and I’ve got a hundred songs that haven’t made money (as of yet) for me. However, I think the licensing and sync world has a lot of opportunities for us, and for lots of musicians. I also think that, mainly since the pandemic, live-streaming tip jars have been a godsend for a great many musicians. I think that will probably continue, even though clubs are starting to open.
Chris: My royalties, both songwriting (publishing) and performance (record), have remained remarkably constant over the last decade or so, but still, if I had to rely totally on them for my livelihood, there’s no way.
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
Julie: The main thing is that indie musicians have to promote themselves. The ways to do it have changed over the years, but the fact is still the same. They kinda didn’t tell me that when I was singing as a young’un. But that was back when actual record companies gave many artists actual money, tour support, and, basically, management. There was always that slim chance you could break into back then! But now, many record companies can’t afford or don’t want to do that sort of thing. Divine Horsemen, and the Flesh Eaters before them, were DIY when that was first happening in the late seventies and eighties. Lots of paste up, pasting posters, analog tape recording, etc. The medium is now digital. It IS possible to roll up your sleeves and do it though. We mustn’t whine about it. It’s just true, and needs to be part of one’s creative toolkit. Enough pontificating. Let’s rock.
Chris: I knew a lot going in, that basically it was going to be a DIY thing, especially when I was still playing what some people might label as punk rock. Once Julie and I started Divine Horsemen, I mistakenly thought a major record deal wasn’t something that was out of the question. But for most A&R people in the majors, we were still not homogenized enough as far as what they thought would fly with the public. We were still too idiosyncratic, and we did NOT dumb things down.
That being said, by the time we put out “Devil’s River” in 1986 on SST, indie SST had become big enough, they were almost the equivalent of a major. They were extremely supportive in that 1986 – 1987 period. And I continued to have a relationship with them after Divine Horsemen split up in December of 1987. I also have to give a shout out to Larry Hardy at In the Red Records, our current label, someone who genuinely loves a wide-range of music genres, some kinds that are a bit esoteric, but he has a solid business model and good sense and has been able to make it work and flourish for at least two decades.