American Songwriter Premier
‘REVOLUTION IN THE GARDEN’
Dead Rock West ‘Revolution In The Garden’ Cover Art. Collaboration by Frank Lee Drennen & Patrick Dennis
“It’s a great song and remarkable record, expansively produced by David J, Carpenter, and delivered with urgency by Frank and Cindy …bringing back the dual spirit of John Doe and Exene in X ”
…A note about the sonG
Written nearly 30 years ago for The Homer Gunns, today the song ‘Revolution In The Garden’ finally premiered on AMERICAN SONGWRITER newly recorded in an incendiary version by Dead Rock West. I’m just so proud of this new version that they’ve recorded (unbeknownst to me even), and that my old friend David J Carpenter produced so beautifully. We could barely have dreamt of the song sounding like this as kids while writing and sweating over it knee to knee.
Dead Rock West’s new version of ‘Revolution In The Garden’ feels even more timely than when it was written by myself and Frank Lee Drennen over 30 years ago. Two kids in a folk duo The Homer Gunns, and found themselves in thick of rock n roll boot camp with Dave Sharp of The Alarm, who had become our mentor of the craft. I still believe every word that we scribbled all over a huge pad of art paper so long ago.
The Homer Gunns, @ Java Joe’s, Pacific Beach, Circa 1995.
When Frank and I wrote the song we were wide eyed kids heaving the world onto our shoulders, sweating in a garage over two dueling acoustic guitars. Dreaming big dreams and working hard to learn everything we could. The Louvin Brothers and college radio was our inspiration, and our mentor was a man who’d already sold millions of records, Dave Sharp of the Alarm.
Now Dave had taken a liking to us young loudmouths and would pop his head in the room every couple of days to work us like boxers swinging guitars and harmonies instead of fists at each others heads. Sparring for hours at a time as he shoved us back off the ropes and taught us how to stay in the ring with a melody, a lyric and with each other. One day as he was working us into a lather during a 6 hour rehearsal session Dave challenged us to “write something that mattered!”. Something that reached beyond ourselves.
We locked ourselves in that box for days, with a huge pad of paper and our guitars and came out with a two voice assault on the world that we were growing up in and inheriting from our parents. On the establishment. On ourselves. What we were going to do about it? And what did we hope for?
I already had a young daughter and son sleeping just a room away that added an immediacy to my convictions and a tension to our joined harmonies, but Frank and I felt like we were watching the world head in precisely the wrong direction and so we vented. Hard. But all while we were calling out for something more, that we couldn’t even articulate. A hope and a faith in ‘more love’, decades before Frank would write that song.
Well, this song, ‘Revolution In The Garden’, was finished, performed, played live on radio, in clubs, in theaters, at hot dog stand openings, grand plans were made, a recording was produced by Dave Sharp, the band broke up and the song got buried in a box for the next 30 years. How were we to know when we were writing these words 30 years ago, how much more sadly timely they would be now in 2020?
And now, Dead Rock West have given the song a whole new life. My thanks to all of them.
Patrick. xo