Jean Marchetti was a musician who, like many musicians, fell on hard times.

Suffering ill health and with arthritis in her hands, she could no longer play her guitar, and she found herself living in rented accommodation in London.

By chance, that’s when David Myers (roughly 50% of our favourite [don’t tell the others] band The 1957 Tail-Fin Fiasco) happened to meet her.

Inspired by her story, he wrote a song about her, which led to some other songs, and then a whole solo album First Light Dynamite under a new identity, The Brothers El Camino.

The ‘official’ publicity reads: “The Brothers El Camino grew up in Essex, England through a time when music and football were the only routes out of a town that had never produced a great band or cultured left foot.

“Thirty years on from their final gig and last touchline ban, the time feels right to put the band back together and take their classic Americana sound out on the road“.

But unofficially, and more helpfully, David told me: “Meeting Jean was the catalyst. That was the first song I wrote for the album, and I think I just want to try and write 10 interesting songs that would work with just me and the piano.”

Well, he certainly succeeded in that. You can judge for yourself by downloading the full album from Last Piastre Records here.

“We recorded me live doing the piano parts and vocals in my dining room to capture a live performance,” he explained. “Then Mal [the other roughly 50% of The 1957 Tail-Fin Fiasco] added guitars, percussion and backing vocals in the studio.”

Jean’s song is beautiful and moving – a stand-out track in a super collection, but there’s another sad twist: Jean died before she could hear it, and it seems she left no relatives to hear it either.

But she is now immortalised in words and music and is reaching a wider audience than she might have ever imagined. Just last weekend [November 2-3, 2024], while David was performing at his local venue, Colchester Arts Centre [pictured], the song was getting air play thousands of miles away on Laurel Canyon Radio in Los Angeles.

There’s a really lovely video to go with Jean’s song. You can watch it here.

In the spirtit of The 1957 Tail-Fin Fiasco, cheers to Jean! Cheers to David! And cheers to us all!

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