Dave Bixby :: “Ode To Quetzalcoatl”
Singer-songwriter, composer, and all-around folk fundamentalist Dave Bixby has been writing and recording music for well over half a century, first starting his humble journey in the solace of song in the early to mid-1960s Rockford, Michigan, where he occupied folk and garage outfits like The Shillelaghs and Peter and The Prophets, before stepping out on his own as a solo musician. Consumed in the youthful ritual of near-death experiences and tonal toastings to the gods of a systematically damaged society, Bixby, like most from his generation, was reaching for something more meaningful than just themselves and the flesh suit they were given, but by leading some trepidation tribe down a primitive path of community consciousness and radical reverberation in music as a whole. While most tampered and experimented with various substances, in particular LSD, Bixby found himself at the threshold of his private perspective of nightmarish reflection and a steady diet of heady hypnosis, the musician was soon part of the great pale moon dance of the 1960s, where most didn’t live to tell the tale, Bixby produced two beautiful pieces of music “Ode To Quetzalcoatl” and 1970’s “Second Coming,” which was now under Harbinger when he later became a Christian disciple, have stood the test of time after all the years and cosmic confusion that followed. Where youthful casualties resided in the deep, dark crevices of their minds, Bixby turned his esoteric evaporation of the self into music, producing some incredibly complexing and harmoniously haunting material that captures the narcotic narrative and soulful spirit of the times while simultaneously reflecting where others have become crippled under the collision of creation and its many moods of memory.
With less than a month and a half between the two albums and the assistance of fellow musician and friend Brian MacInnes, who accompanied Bixby on the “Ode To Quetzalcoatl” sessions using the electrifying echo-laden four-track machine as an instrument in itself, MacInnes helped in bringing the album to the sonic surface in volume and vengeance where its full attention to detail could be heard and felt from any direction. Echoing the harsh and isolating elements of drug abuse and religious ratification, which can be heard on the album’s classic opening track “Drug Song” and the evil emptiness of “666,” Bixby eagerly expresses his fictitious findings within his mind and cautiously channels those atmospheric artifacts towards the tips of his stretched-out fingers with extraterrestrial excitement. Hanging on the biblical balance of life and death, age and endless affinity, the musician carefully crafted his candle-lit seance for anyone to hear if only he knew when or who that would be in the long years to come. Rising from the ashes of alchemy and the natural world, Bixby reinvented himself several times throughout his early adult life, eventually becoming a captain sailing his craft boat on the soothing seas with friends and family, seeking an almighty clarity for the heart, mind, and soul as each wave breaks against the ship’s salty skin as the sun settles and is met by its luminous mother moon high above.