C. Depp (words/music/voice/banjer/keys), Andrew Malenda (producer, guitar & keys, ebow, vocal pitch correction, backup vox/bass/drums on 'Sleepin' at the Xroads'), lispector (keys & singing on "Don't Talk to Strangers" & "Trés trop triste"), Sarah Rose (vocals & guitar on "Talkin' I Woke Up This Mornin' Blues", vocals on "You Really Got Me Goin'" & "Lone Star Light"), Matt Depp (voice & keys on "Best Friends Forever"), Aubierge Desalme (words/singing on "Central parc"), Greg Lisi (live guitar), James Mason (live guitar on "I Fall to Pieces"), Janet Do (Jersey City years cello), Kristen Girard (sometime drummer), Shadow (cat voice), Kaitlyn & Brannen Depp (children voice on "Two Red Eyes" & "Scary Ghost House"), Chloe Danger McCall (singing on "Christmas in Elgin," "O'Jesus" and the 'Discovery School' sessions), Meesie (cat shoulder backups), Mattie Holmes (keys on "Raised in Barns"), Chazz Bessette (engineerin'/accordion on "Be My Frend..."), Erik Schmall (engineering/recording on "Beautiful Brown Eyes," "I Found U Among the Roses" and "Little Darling Pal of Mine"), Terence Overath (engineering/production on "Talkin' if U Wanna Have My Bebe Blues"); Ability to use good judgment and follow through independently within the boundaries of one's own authority; Womb to tomb operation.
Influences
A.P. Carter & The Carter Family, Billie Holiday, Cat Power, Robert Pollard, Andrew Malenda, Julie Margat (lispector), Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, Lightnin' Hopkins, George Jones, Hank Williams, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong, Townes Van Zandt, John Lennon, Willie Nelson, Guided by Voices (GbV), Chet Baker, Ernest Tubb, Jimmie Rodgers, Loretta Lynn, New Order, Beat Happening, M. Ward, Nina Simone, the Supremes, Joy Division, the Police, Yoko Ono, Serge Gainsbourg, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Keren Ann, the Smiths, Morrissey, the Cure, the B-52s, Aretha Franklin, Jimmy Scott, Sade, Irma Thomas, Sarah Rose, Vostok/Boctok, Joe Maynard (The Millerite Redeemers/Maynard & the Musties), the Smashing Pumpkins, R.E.M., Elliott Smith, Faye Wong (Wong Fei), Teddy Wilson, Stereolab, Sonic Youth, Monade, Nick Drake, Cocteau Twins, Radiohead, Dinah Washington, early Sarah Vaughan, Mazzy Star, Cole Porter, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Angelo Badalamenti, Philip Glass, Jesus, black Spider-man, 1st album by le Tigre, the Beatles, Tom Waits, Daniel Johnston, Danny & the Nightmares, Groucho Marx, George Strait, Lefty Frizzell, Dwight Yoakam, Roy Acuff, Gene Autry, Fiddlin' John Carson, Matt Kinman, Charlie Poole, Earl Scruggs, the great Bill Monroe, Smokey Robinson, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Make-Up, Beck, Edith Piaf, Maurice Chevalier, Calvin Johnson, Interpol, Aaron Neville, the Neville Brothers, early Liz Phair, Coldplay, Dale Watson, Tori Amos' "Boys for Pele," Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Gerald Jay King, Lisa Ekdahl, the Need, Cibo Matto, Jonny McGovern, MetalMags (Erica Magrey), Brian Eno, the Roulette Sisters, les Chauds Lapins, Anilore, late Invisible Friend, Sinead O'Connor, Pulp's "Separations," Hal Hartley (Ned Rifle), James Taylor, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Selena, JLo's "This is Me... Then," Billy Joel, Aeron & Alejandra, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, George Winston, Kraftwerk, Marvin Gaye, Francoiz Breut, Jonathan Richman, some Daho, the Doors, Henri Salvador, late Smog/Bill Callahan, Dolly Parton, solo Bruce Springsteen, Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, scary Richard Marx songs, Elizabeth Cotten, the Highwaymen's 1st album, Bob Seger's "Against the Wind," Roscoe Holcomb, John Cohen (New Lost City Ramblers), The Holy Modal Rounders, Django Reinhardt, Woody Allen, Julie Doucet, Lynda Barry, Nan Goldin, Joyce Carol Oates, Soline Astier, LunDi (Claude Herbert), Washington Phillips, Kids in the Hall, Kurt Vonnegut, Judy Blume, Thurston Moore, Violent Femmes, the Temptations, Twin Peaks, My So-Called Life, Thirtysomething, red red wine, Stefan Johansson, Diane Barcelowsky, most Pixies, late Nirvana, McGolrick Park, cats, novena candles, bike rides, street lamps, babysitting, drawing monsters, heineken, lone star light, karaoke, glasses, libraries, walking, pine trees, platanes (american sycamores), questions, Langston Hughes, Amos Tutuola, early & late Robert Wilson, Christopher Knowles, Saint Mark's Place, Saint Sulpice, Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon, Carousel Lounge (Austin), Topo Chico, rollerskating, the old Ole Homestead bar on 1st ave & 6th st (NYC), grackles, Jing Yu paintings, Unsolved Mysteries, Cobra Commander, Dark Heart, Oychir, Hong Kong, Shanghai, irish people, crayola magic markers, ciggies, fabric markers, ouija, letterpress, showcards (Tribune Showprint 4eva), Greenpoint, Brooklyn, steak tartar, Coronas with lime, Marquise Dance Hall record shop, Wranglers, pizza parties, chipotle salsa, patches on jeans, coming-of-age fiction, Encyclopedia Brown, coffee, tea, Lone Star Light, Shiner Bock, digital photography, new york city (mostly), dead people, gossiping, wondering, dreaming, singing...
Sounds Like
"sharecropper" country music & plantation songs; A.P. Carter watching "The Kids in the Hall" alone drunk on Lone Star beers; Townes Van Zandt riding his bike in Greenpoint at night past McGolrick parc; Cat Power & Robert Pollard filtered thru nights spent listening to Billie Holiday one step ahead of the police report; Daniel Johnston & Christopher Knowles heard as ghosts singing through a ouija planchette shaped like a banjo head; Gerald Jay King when he was in high school; Brannen Thomas McBabjerk as an adult-ed musicologist; Amos Tutuola as read by Langston Hughes in the late 1980s Long Island, an episode of "G.I. Joe" featuring Cobra Commander on the background teevee set playing low...
Born in the mid-to-late 1970s in Clarksdale, Mississippi to sharecropper baby boomer parents, C. Depp was never a stranger to hard physical labour with his bare hands. The progeny of a 1st generation 'Gaelic' Irish-American father and a 2nd-to-noone saucy Nigerian-American mother, C. Depp was raised feelin' always wrong-sided in the Middle West South of these still United States.
B'fore America had a President Barry Obama there was, for young C., a Papa Pappie & Mammy Mama, much like the current president's own mixed up Hawaiian Kenyan, as seen in C. Depp's Texas Mexican conjunto family b-ground. In fact, before C. could learn to talk, he had a Huang Fender Jazzmaster blues harp in his even-then moustachio'd mug, playin' along to some Lightnin' Hopkins 78 that sounded like "De Doo Rum Rum, Yeh, De Doo Rum Rum."
In 8th grade, for some local high school talent contest, C. decided to enter with his new song in the topic of a mixed up divided union entitled, abruptly enuf, "U Can't Always Get What U Need (But if U Can Get it Tell Me h-Where)". Needless to say, the authorities were not amused & C. was removed, forceably, from the crowded, bleak auditorium.
Flash forward to the current present date. Having aged out of juvenile delinquent prepatory schools from as far away as Long Island, New York to as close to home as Brooklyn, Texas, C. decides to take a free ride cross country from his flat in the Place de Clichy region of Ile de France, Paris, to whereabouts un-decided. Along the way, Mister Depp finds himself waylaid with a broken bicycle tube in a small Delta Mississippi River city by the name of Memphis, Tennessee.
Deciding to adopt the namesake of his new hometown in tribute to many a great songster b'fore him, most notably A.P. Carter, Billie Holiday, Robert Pollard, Lightnin' Hopkins, Townes Van Zandt & 'Memphis' Minnie.
'Memphis' C. Depp begins recording and gigging out & about in the Shelby County area.
Best advice is to catch one of 'Memphis' C. Depp's local performances at area juke joints, pizza parlours & hipster coffeehouses while the paint is still drying on Tom Sawyer's crooked white picket fence.
Love to his family & realfriends, here, b'fore & after.
C. DEPP: Belle épine
Soft like the moonlight but sad like a scary film.
prefer buying it digital from the man? buy it on itunes store!
uhmm chris.. je cherche mais je ne trouve pas les mots... i like your "entre chien et loup" experimental french songs. we need to make other songs on skype!! and make an album called "sky peut" cause sky can? miss you! xoox
Thanks so much for being a part of tonight's show at Treasure City...it was great to be out in Austin's warm air and balmy night. Hope to be back again!
i would go be c. depp's "frend" in the woods anytime...i would...anytime he asked me. if i could only just get to be frends with him first... wow wee...
Online Now!
Monkey
