Dark Water Rebellion To Play First Local Show in 5 Years

“Our first show in Cleveland in 2016 was right here at the Fillmore,” says Dark Water Rebellion drummer Danielle Gorcie, pointing to the bar that’s adjacent to the Six Shooter Coffee in North Collinwood where we are sitting and having coffee. The band’s singer-guitarist (and Danielle’s husband) Brent Gorcie nods and reminisces about shows the group played that same year. They played at McCarthy’s in the Flats and at Brite Winter, the annual outdoor music and arts festival.

The duo have just relocated back to Cleveland after spending five years overseas in the UK. Dark Water Rebellion will play their first show since returning town on Wednesday, Oct. 29, at the Beachland Tavern. Their Washington, D.C.-based bassist Fabian Abarca will drive up to join them for the concert, and the Faraways will open. D-Rock will spin tunes between sets, and the concert starts at 8 p.m.

It’s been a long, strange trip for the Gorcies. The two first met in Florida, where Brent bartended at a music club. They played in separate bands at the time but eventually would leave those groups to form Dark Water Rebellion. They then took their talents to Southern California, where they lived out of a converted Greyhound bus. At one point, they played close to 300 shows in a single year. After a crash knocked the Greyhound out of commission (fortunately, no one was injured when the brakes failed while driving through Montana), they moved to Cleveland, where they instantly fell in love with city’s collection of small clubs and independent music venues. Danielle once handled marketing and production duties at the Beachland for a time.

They recorded an album at the local Superior Sound studio and cut a music video for the tune “Chamensea.” Brent wrote and directed the video, which features live footage of the band performing at No Class (then Now That’s Class), and it has a storyline matching the song’s theme of jealousy. It includes pyrotechnics by Schuyler White of Ohio Burn Unit.

Also, during the course of that time, the group refined its swamp rock sound. The rousing “Chamensa” comes off as a spirited Jon Spencer-like rave-up that features quivering vocals and distorted guitars as Brent snarls, “I’m a real motherfucker.”

Just as the pandemic hit, the Gorcies picked up stakes and moved to London for five years so that Danielle could obtain her master’s degree in entertainment law. She completed the program and took a job at Warner Music UK.

“I worked for Warner Music for three years,” she says. “Career-wise, it made sense for me, but I decided I didn’t want to be in the corporate record label scene. We missed being part of the music scene. We weren’t playing music. The work was great because I was working on the catalogs of David Bowie and Tina Turner and people like that, but I missed the music.”

Getting Dark Water Rebellion gigs in London was tough, so the duo moved back to Cleveland to relaunch the group and start anew. Danielle now runs Left Bank Creative with her business partner Britt Corrigan. They were featured by Scene recently for one of the best new local businesses.

In addition, Brent’s production company Finsbury Films is slated to produce five full features he’s written with an additional five in the works. At the time of our interview, he’d just returned from Puerto Rico where he was location scouting for his new feature directorial debut, The Fickle Finger of Fate, which is going into production next year. His horror Western, Father Tom’s Heart, will follow. He’s talking to Nick Cave about doing the film’s score.

Brent, who describes the group’s sound as “Delta blues-meets-Nick Cave’s Grinderman/Birthday Party-meets-the Cramps,” says the band has started to write new material and that Daddy G from the British trip-hop group Massive Attack will mix the new album.

“I met him years ago in Los Angeles,” says Brent, who reconnected with Daddy G one night when he was DJing in London. “I gave him my number and had him listen to some of our music. I even sent him a screenplay I wrote. He checked it out and was all in to do the soundtrack. Once that happened, I pushed the music, and he said he was down to mix the new album.”

The duo says that some new songs might make their way into the set for the upcoming Halloween-themed Beachland gig. And DWR has other gigs on the horizon too.

“Now that we’re back and have access to our bass player, we are really motivated,” says Danielle. “We have some lost songs and a lost music video that we plan to release.”

“We don’t want [the Beachland show] to be a ‘there’s a new album coming out show,’” says Brent. “We just want it to be a ‘we’re back’ show.”