2018 will be remembered as a sad year with lots of great muso’s passing away but none is sadder or will be missed more than my great friend and drummer…Dessie J Johnson (aka. Greg Gilbert)
Dessie was, as described by himself:
the World’s largest midget and World’s youngest oldman, a self confessed genius and lazy drummer….and proud of them all…
80’s pre punk and indie bands like “the Pits”, “This 5 minutes” Tex Perkins & the Dum Dum’s” and ” the Johnson’s” are band names that Dessie was know for….drumming out thousands of tunes over the decades before landing in syncopation with southern Cajan bootleg band “SWAMPHOG”
Rare EP “10 Miles Deep” circa 1998
A great fusion was created with Guitarist/Vocalist Grant Turnbill and Bassist/Vocalist Buzz Talay playing the Cajun sounds of bands like Tito & Tarantula, Tony Joe White, Huevos Rancheros, 1st Edition and the like….
With the relocation of Turnbill resulting in him leaving the band, a replacement was difficult to find to maintain the unique sound that Swamphog was providing. It was then decided that Talay moved to guitar/vocals as half the repertoire was his vocals anyway.
Swamphog 2014
Finding a bass player was proving almost as difficult, for at the time, Talay, was using a 5 string Fender and playing a lot of low “B” notes, which combined with the super syncopated drumming from Dessie j Johnson gave very low down swamp feel.
After a few auditions, Chris Arthur entered the room and seemed to fit nicely but with other projects etc. the band was stalling a little and consequently had a hiatus for a few months.
At the time, Dessie J Johnson had also been filling in for a drummer-less outfit called “the Tractor Jacks” and had done some gigs around the rockabilly scene in Brisbane. These guys wanted to record a song and in true form Dessie bought them over to the BUZZARD RECORDS studio on the south side to record.
Tractor Jacks were then struggling with a line up changes and in the pursuing months lost their lead guitarist just weeks before the 2005 “Wintersun” festival.
Once again, in true form, Dessie J was on the blower asking Talay if he could do a 1 gig ONLY fill in ……”10 songs of rockabilly” that’s all Buzz”….”you’ll be right..you’ll kill em”….
enter CORN LIQUOR
to be continued………..
