Dan Spencer

The late singer-songwriter Judee Sill considered her style Country Cult Baroque, and Dan Spencer finds that this is a perfect way to describe his own music. His penchant for mixing morbid lyrical content and black metal imagery with country-fried Southern rock doesn’t feel forced at all, considering his eclectic taste and background as a mortician. No, really.

Born near Nashville in Smyrna in 1993, the Tennessee troubadour grew up going to see hardcore bands in the region because there were no age restrictions on those kind of shows. He eventually moved to the college town of Cookeville, TN of which he notes, “It’s got this pretty unique history of having a way better music scene than it ought to.” Despite being in the heartland of country music, his interest in the genre coalesced in an entirely circuitous way, via the California-based, punk-pedigreed experimental band Amps For Christ. “They would cover a lot of traditional Scottish folk songs that morphed into Appalachian mountain music, which morphed into country music. I had to hear it through that lens to get into it.”

After having played guitar in indie rock band Holy Coast and managing vocal/guitar duties for the CCR/Allman Brothers-inspired group Pumpkinseed, Spencer began writing and recording solo material in early 2020, just in time for the pandemic to hit. His debut album Bursting With Country-Fresh Flavor (a Seinfeld reference) was unceremoniously released online two years later. Music seemed like a dead end pursuit so he enrolled in mortuary school; a career path that shaped his music.

“Death is a big lyrical topic I’m always exploring,” says Dan Spencer. “I think it really kicked off when I was working at a funeral home and really surrounded by it all the time that I learned new questions to ask about death. I think there’s just a culture, in the US specifically, where people are not prepared for grief at all. It’s also shocking working in that system seeing the random and seemingly meaningless nature of death. It does something to you and definitely inspires you to create art about it, with an infinite bowl to grab from. It makes you so much more aware that whoever is running this show is not guaranteeing you a long, fulfilled life of experiences and dreams coming true.”

It was much sweeter for him when his dreams did start coming true, beginning with a chance encounter with a music industry veteran at a pizza place in Nashville that Spencer was managing on the weekends. Pretty soon his music ended up in the hands of Post Malone, a fellow musician with similarly diverse taste who was already at this point a platinum-selling household name with multiple #1 albums and singles under his belt. Spencer found himself engaged in songwriting sessions with Malone and Brad Paisley after dropping out of mortuary school; it all seemed surreal.

Post Malone’s publishing company Electric Feel and Nashville record company Grey Area combined forces to create the label Feeling Grey, that released Dan Spencer’s follow-up full-length effort, 2024’s Return To Your Dark Master (also a Seinfeld reference).

Spencer explains that Return To Your Dark Master, which is as musically indebted to indie/alt-country auteur Jason Molina as it is to Destroyer, Alkaline Trio and Finnish gothic rock band HIM, is a concept album. “The concept is most directly addressed in the song ‘Fat Vampire’. It’s this vampire who’s lived for hundreds of years and going back through the people he has loved who have died, and he wants to die with them. In the lyrics, the words ‘death,’ and ‘love’ are sort of interchangeable because they mean the same thing to an immortal person who wants to die. Death is tantamount to true love, which is an incredibly Hot Topic goth band concept! But that’s what it is for that record.”

Lyrics have always been a focal point for Spencer. The imagery-rich “Pink Sword Lilies” was inspired by the funeral director for whom he worked, who said his own funeral would be decorated only with spider mums Gladiolus as a “fuck you” to his respective industry, because those are the most difficult flowers to clean up.

The stark contrast between the Norwegian black metal-inspired cover art and the music contained on Return To Your Dark Master might throw some for a loop, but Spencer assures this is not some kind of ironic hipster stunt. “I absolutely like George Jones as much as I like Darkthrone and Mayhem. There’s the little kid in me who has always wanted to put on corpse paint and spikes and set fire to stuff in the woods; that’s why I have a pentagram logo. It’s what we are listening to in the van. Take my word for it – I really do like this shit.”

Spencer’s love for heavy music extends beyond imagery. His band, consisting of lead guitarist Conner Duty, bassist Zach Ramsey, drummer Ethan Young, with Dan on vocals/guitar, often play hardcore shows, thereby making themselves the “softest” act on the bill. Sharing the stage with raging, underground punk bands like Brat Tamer, Shitfire and Lethal Method, but also opening Post Malone’s fall 2024 US tour is something that may seem entirely random, but it makes perfect sense for Dan Spencer, with his Country Cult Baroque approach to music and life.