DREDG bay area legends Written by Victoria Felicity Photography by Ajay Fay
Dino Campanella (pianist and drummer)
Mark Engles (guitarist)
Gavin Hayes (vocalist)
Drew Roulette (bassist)
You will frequently hear the name Dredg mentioned by many contemporary Bay Area artists as they list their creative influences. Dredg is a true bay area band—a group of conceptual artists whose mission is to create an experience for their audience. Gavin, Dino, Mark and Drew sit and share stories of adolescent want and rehash how their main desire was to create honest music, which lead them through some experiences that will forever continue to shape their lives and their friendship. What brought you all together? Drew: Similar interests, you know. School—we all met each other at different places. I met Mark on my baseball team, I met Gavin in art class, I met Dino in my Spanish class. We just all had similar interests. Gavin: Metal t-shirts and math classes. Dino: It was a small town where we grew up and we would hear things like, “Oh, there is this guy who is really good at guitar.” Gavin was known as the “shredder.” We were just kids who wanted to play music. How did you see your individual influences shaping your music? Mark: I think we all noticed that in 1996-97, everyone was jumping on a bandwagon and even though we were really good at all the popular stuff, we didn’t want to get lumped into it all. So, we started thinking outside of that. Dino: Conceptually, Pink Floyd was a huge influence. Dark Side of the Moon. That inspired us to look at bringing a concept to an entire album versus just songsong-song. So basically, we were these metal kids who wanted to take an artistic approach. Mark: I think a lot of
it was that we were under a lot of pressure because we saw that so many of the local bands were doing the same thing. We would walk in the room and we didn’t want to be just another heavy club band in San Jose, and we weren’t. What was your first breakthrough moment? Gavin: Wednesday night at the Cactus Club. Mark: Yep, I would have to say it was playing our first Cactus Club show. We weren’t at a teen center. It was a real night club and it just felt good. Dino: Yeah, and we were playing on a stage where some of our favorite bands had played the night before and I think we just had this great connection. We are that close. Mark: Yeah, then after that, it was making our first full-length album and being able to travel outside of the Bay Area for the first time. Getting emails, having people approach us asking us to play. Hopping in our cars as 1819 year olds and going to different cities to play shows; Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, and LA. It turned into a weekend thing. We would book wherever we got a show. Drew: Yeah, the weekend just ended a year ago.
64
