Biography
Dave Perkins launched his career as lead guitarist in Chagall Guevara, the Nashville college-rock outfit flavored by CCM that issued its self-titled debut on MCA in 1991. He next joined Passafist alongside former bandmate Lynn Nichols for a short spell before striking out solo.
Born in New York City, Perkins took up the guitar during his teenage years. He first entered the business as a staff songwriter at CBS Records and moved to Nashville toward the end of the 1970s. While there he worked steadily as a sideman for various country acts and simultaneously built a parallel résumé writing country songs and producing records inside Christian-music circles. Later he formed the Dave Perkins Band in New York City; that unit put out the live album Live Still Alive. After its release Perkins shifted focus to Christian music, which supplied the platform for his 1987 solo album The Innocence on Word Records.
Soon after completing The Innocence, Perkins linked up with the ascendant contemporary-Christian singer-songwriter Steve Taylor. He produced Taylor’s I Predict 1990, an album whose pointed tracks, including “I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good,” stirred controversy among core listeners. Sensing an opening for a secular project, Taylor and Perkins assembled Chagall Guevara, drawing in fellow CCM veterans guitarist Lynn Nichols, bassist Wade Jaynes, and drummer Mike Mead.
The band tracked its 1991 debut with producer Matt Wallace, already noted for his work with Faith No More and the Replacements. Although MCA invested in promotion, the record never crossed into mainstream success; shortly afterward the label reorganized, dropped the group, and Chagall Guevara disbanded.
Perkins and Nichols then started Passafist, an industrial Christian band that released its only album on R.E.X. in 1994. With Passafist’s dissolution Perkins stepped away from music to earn a divinity degree at Vanderbilt University, which he followed with a Ph.D.
A mid-2000s battle with blood cancer rekindled his musical interests. Once recovered, he issued the blues-inflected Pistol City Holiness—his first solo album in twenty-two years—on his own Lugnut imprint in 2009. Three years later he scored the film Deadline. Perkins returned with the self-released Fugitive Colors in 2017.
Born in New York City, Perkins took up the guitar during his teenage years. He first entered the business as a staff songwriter at CBS Records and moved to Nashville toward the end of the 1970s. While there he worked steadily as a sideman for various country acts and simultaneously built a parallel résumé writing country songs and producing records inside Christian-music circles. Later he formed the Dave Perkins Band in New York City; that unit put out the live album Live Still Alive. After its release Perkins shifted focus to Christian music, which supplied the platform for his 1987 solo album The Innocence on Word Records.
Soon after completing The Innocence, Perkins linked up with the ascendant contemporary-Christian singer-songwriter Steve Taylor. He produced Taylor’s I Predict 1990, an album whose pointed tracks, including “I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good,” stirred controversy among core listeners. Sensing an opening for a secular project, Taylor and Perkins assembled Chagall Guevara, drawing in fellow CCM veterans guitarist Lynn Nichols, bassist Wade Jaynes, and drummer Mike Mead.
The band tracked its 1991 debut with producer Matt Wallace, already noted for his work with Faith No More and the Replacements. Although MCA invested in promotion, the record never crossed into mainstream success; shortly afterward the label reorganized, dropped the group, and Chagall Guevara disbanded.
Perkins and Nichols then started Passafist, an industrial Christian band that released its only album on R.E.X. in 1994. With Passafist’s dissolution Perkins stepped away from music to earn a divinity degree at Vanderbilt University, which he followed with a Ph.D.
A mid-2000s battle with blood cancer rekindled his musical interests. Once recovered, he issued the blues-inflected Pistol City Holiness—his first solo album in twenty-two years—on his own Lugnut imprint in 2009. Three years later he scored the film Deadline. Perkins returned with the self-released Fugitive Colors in 2017.
Albums
