Cherry Smoke Empire

Cherry Smoke Empire by The Bastard Sons of Dennis.

Cherry Smoke Empire is an album of original songs by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. The name of the album comes from an arrangement of fridge magnets at the house of Q. Wim and his family. Album artwork was created by Dan.

The Bastard Sons of Dennis is a duo which features Q. Wim Lijkkes, who plays acoustic guitar and sings, and Yuri Nation, who plays acoustic guitar and grunts. Alleged additional musicians on the Cherry Smoke Empire album include Sylvia Dulverton on black triangle, Ptolomy Bishops-Lydeard on second bassoon, Horatio Williton on bass clarinet and Cornelius Luxborough on French horn.

We began recording Cherry Smoke Empire with The Bastard Sons of Dennis in 2011. The first track we finished and released was Losing Feeling, and the final track to be completed, Good Times, was finally released in 2017. Besides a number of their live favourites, there are two musical gems on the recording that were a part of the duo’s repertoire for many years, yet were never performed live. The two songs that fall into this particular category are The Cruelest Dream and Pieces of Me.

All of the different parts of The Furniture have additionally been combined and released as a single. You can download or simply enjoy listening to this particular musical masterpiece in its entirety on Bandcamp as well as its own page here at Wud Records. Besides being a brilliant piece of musical strangeness and tomfoolery, The Furniture can be used as a great teaching aid for students learning English or Spanish, as there are a number of interesting linguistic points to be discussed within the lyrics.

There were two other original tracks that the Bastard Sons of Dennis performed live on various occasions which are not included here. They are both instrumental tracks, called Second Act and Green D-8, and are both part of Flicker’s repertoire. Both tracks will be appearing on Flicker albums in the future.

Sometimes and Smile were co-written with Terry Bickers from the band Levitation when he was at university with Q.Wim in the early 1990s. Both of those songs appear on Levitation’s highly acclaimed 1992 Need For Not album.

The arrangements of Sometimes and Smile that you can hear in the Cherry Smoke Empire recording are by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. Sometimes is called Resist in the Levitation catalogue.

01	The Furniture (part 1: overture)
02	Good Times
03	The Furniture (part 2: the wardrobe)
04	Sometimes
05	The Furniture (part 3: the table)
06	Ten Years Later
07	The Furniture (part 4: the chair)
08	Smile
09	The Furniture (part 5: the bathtub)
10	The Cruellest Dream
11	The Furniture (part 6: the cabinet)
12	Losing Feeling
13	The Furniture (part 7: the bureau)
14	Pieces Of Me
15	The Furniture (part 8: finale)
16	Horsemon
17	The Furniture (epilogue)