The Edsel Company: An Out-of-Body Experience in Virginia Beach

by Paul Unger

13 minutes and 20 seconds… that’s all it took.  

This ‘new’ Tidewater band, “The Edsel Company”, which became an acoustic force, according to what we indicate as ‘rumors’ floating around Tidewater, has already broken up after only 13 minutes and some change. But, when they joined forces and played at the Bunker Brewpub last Monday night, June 12, 2023, this was probably a ‘one-off’ performance. Those in attendance did not just witness two guys jamming, they were orchestrating magic, although as brief as the set was, consisting of only three songs, it was off the charts.  This set was total proof that two musicians could use just a beat, a guitar and one microphone to convey real feelings. No smoke or light shows needed here at all folks. And as the minutes rolled by, the audience wanted to know more!

There is not much known about The Edsel Company, other than this band was put together only 3 hours before its performance. Brian (guitar and vocals) and Andy (pongos and snare) only had 30mins of practice before this, so hat's off on that one. All this proved that a band, with only 2-3 hours to a live performance, can indeed miraculously form together, win an audience over, and break-up even before the members themselves knew this would happen.  Some things in life are meant to only happen once because they shine so brightly, this band was noooo exception.

This 3-song gig was in honor of the 2nd showing of "That Was Our Room", the story/film about the Virginia Beach Dome. The film was shown to the audience shortly after this acoustic show.  Soundman Ian Janes, prior to the acoustic performance, with very little time, went above and beyond the call of ‘live performance’ duty to make sure all was ready, 110% checked and the green light was given.

The Edsel Company, started with a very passionate, heartfelt version of the Brian “Idle Edsel” Diederich classic, “Chopping Down Weeds.”  A song about marijuana.  This song has been known locally as one of the most effective and popular protest songs ever written in modern history (depending upon who you ask).  Yet, this song is not about getting high, it’s about wrong-doings of law enforcement that is here to supposedly ‘serve and protect’, but for some reason, this is nothing more than a police marketing ploy. Ironically, according to the song, the police suppress our American right, especially in Virginia, from getting high from a drug that simply grew out of the ground that frees many of us.  The song demands we must stand up against the powers that may be, The Edsel Company let us know this, that we are indeed being suppressed!  Near the end of the song, the audience began to chant along with the band, “War Against the People!!”, over and over, and we all heard and felt strongly about this slogan, together it became obvious to all in attendance: We should be free to smoke good marijuana.

Next, Brian D Diederich, played a song called “The Hilltop of Happiness”, a song that has never been performed to the public before.  Although, I think there are demos and acetates floating around of him playing this song in a studio maybe. Regardless, the song was a ripe and picked ‘cherry’ in terms of the public seeing and hearing it live. In the audience was Bobby D, the older brother of songwriter Brian D Diederich, who also collaborated on the lyrics of this song. Bobby D, otherwise known always as “The Deacon of Ghent”, was happy to hear that not only his good blood brother Brian D was playing their song live, but also that the Diederich songwriting legacy was living on, passed on to future generations. So much so, that when you watch the video below, you see Bobby D pull out his mobile cell phone and start filming to capture Diederich songwriting history in the making.

The last song was a cover of the Stones ‘Dead Flowers’ from the Sticky Fingers album. But it did not sound anything like the original song.  Yes, the Edsel Company do it their way, with fantastic vocals.  The real spirit of this cover was not how the Stones would have done their own song live, or how many cover bands in the Tidewater just prefabricate the sound exactly of the original band. It was the beautiful ‘simplicity’ of how the Edsel Company played it, strictly speaking. Brian D sung this song with 10x more passion than Jagger could ever imagine or want to pull off at a Stones gig in the past 40+ years.

Furthermore, we all got seriously lucky because Brian D had told me 3 hours prior to the set to maybe have a GoPro or two recording. Although, he did not give me any notion how special this performance was going to be, pleasantly suprised!  Well, thank goodness for film, errr digital motion pictures, because we were able to record this one-time only performance.

In conclusion, overall there is only one way to sum this band and performance up: No matter how many would debate what’s real in life, or not real of what we might expect in death, we all simply reached climax that Monday night, ladies and gentleman: The Edsel Company.

 -Paul Unger (Contributor)

See, this 13minutes of magic caught on camera ‘here’ in the back of the Bunker Brewhouse in Virginia Beach last Monday night, June 12, 2023:

See video here! Just click play.