Chagall Guevara

In the early 1990s Chagall Guevara emerged as the secular college-rock outlet for singer-songwriter Steve Taylor, whose satirical bent had already distanced portions of his contemporary-Christian following. The band issued a lone, self-titled debut on MCA in 1991, produced by Matt Wallace—already noted for his work with Faith No More and the Replacements—before disbanding the next year.

New York City-born guitarist Dave Perkins had first collaborated with Taylor after completing his own 1987 album The Innocence. Perkins helmed Taylor’s I Predict 1990, whose pointed tracks such as “I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good” further unsettled Taylor’s core Christian listeners. Sensing an opening for a secular venture, Taylor joined Perkins to launch Chagall Guevara, a project that still made limited forays onto the CCM circuit for exposure. The pair enlisted fellow disaffected CCM musicians—guitarist Lynn Nichols, bassist Wade Jaynes, and drummer Mike Mead—to complete the lineup.

Matt Wallace again handled the 1991 sessions; although MCA supplied marketing support, the album never crossed into mainstream success. Corporate restructuring at the label soon led to the band’s release, and the group dissolved. Chagall Guevara reconvened in 2020, issuing the 1991 concert document The Last Amen in 2021. Halcyon Days, a collection of previously unheard studio recordings augmented by three newly tracked songs, appeared in 2022, prompting the musicians’ first live performance in three decades.