As some of you know (and many of you probably don’t) I am the bass player in a band with a few of my friends. Our band is Modern Dissent and we have been together for a almost 2 years now.
Our lead guitarists and long time friend Bob Delateur approached me in the spring of 2007 and said it had been on his heart to start a band. He is married with 3 kids and he realized if he wanted to give a band a go this would probably be his last chance to do so. I have played bass off and on for about 20 years and was in a band back in the early 90’s and was wanting to do something more also so I said yes. We talked to some other friends of ours Corey Millican (singer) and Paul Weber (drummer) and they were thinking the same thing as well so we decided to give it a go.
We got together a few times to play to see if there was anything to this and we all clicked and worked well together so we wrote a few more songs and went from there. We played a few shows and decided to record an album. The recording was done in our drummers basement so it wasn’t quite studio quality but we think it turned out pretty good. While we were recording our guitarist came up with so many cool second guitar parts we needed to find another guitarist. Luckily our drummer Paul’s son is an outstanding guitarist (and he is only 16) so we brought him in as well. Last year we played about 8 shows or so for crowds ranging from a few dozen to a few hundred. We don’t get to play as much as we would like to but we still all have a great time together.
Altogether we have close to 20 songs we have written. Our guitarist does the majority of the writing but our singer Corey has also written a couple. I even wrote one that ended up sounding pretty good and Seth our second guitarist has a couple as well. We are currently lining up shows for this coming year, recording some more songs, and trying to build a fanbase of around 1000-1500 by the end of the year.
Here is a video with some clips of some different live shows we have done in the past year:
Our mission statement as a band is “Modern Dissent purposes to use musical expression to encourage people from all background to think hard about Jesus Christ with the hope that they would follow and worship Him”. Yep, I am a Christian but more on that in future posts.
You can hear some samples of our songs at http://www.moderndissent.com or go to iTunes and search for Modern Dissent and buy our album.
For you musicians out there here is the gear I use:
Fender American Deluxe Precision V – Awesome 5 string bass that I bought 3 or 4 years ago and was only made for a couple years
Ampeg SVT II Pro – Sweet all tube amp. This thing is LOUD. I can barely turn it up before it rattles the windows in my house.
Bergantino NV610 cabinet – One of the best bass speaker cabs you can buy. 6 10″ speakers.
Fulltone Bassdrive Overdrive pedal
Vintage 1970s Clone Theory chorus pedal
Peterson Strobo Stomp 2 Tuner
I have some other stuff I use from time to time also but that is the main setup.
Want to know more about our band? Leave a comment and ask me a question.
Your Clone Theory looks like a toaster!