Feast Issue 5.5

DREDG

Bay Area Legends

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 18- 19 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.

How did you all go about creating your music? Mark: It started in 1994. We set aside summers to get together to write and record. Every summer we would record and I guess the last summer before it became serious we realized that we didn’t have to go to school. We could just keep traveling and writing. Drew: We were looking a lot to our creative influences and we just wanted to focus on the music. It’s not really about us. It’s about what we are creating. Din: Yeah, we avoided press photos for a while. For Interscope, we wanted to be faceless.

What roles did each person play in making the band successful? Mark: I think Dino at first was on top of all the Internet stuff. Dino: Yeah, but I remember asking Drew if he could handle the emails because we were getting so many and I would deal with calling people for shows, and that’s the last I read an email. Mark: Drew and Gavin were the most artistic of the group. Gavin is the people person. Me...I have no idea. Drew: Mark was our moral compass for a while. Making sure everything got done. Mark: We all had our niche...even when we were butting heads, it was okay because deep down we all really got along and we could relax in moments knowing that everyone was going to work in the way they worked. We all just worked really well together. We have all fought with each other.

Where did the name and logo come from? Gavin: We needed to come up with it for a talent show. It was between Woven and Dredg… Drew: It was seriously just a list of words on a paper and that one looked cool at the time. Mark: It was short, simple, and phonetically sounded like our music at

the time. Geologically I like the idea—clearing a path for water. Not much deep meaning to it. But I think once a band really establishes themselves you really forget about how shitty the name is. Drew: It’s [the logo] a Chinese character; it translates to chameleon or “to change.”

What are your thoughts on how music has evolved? Dino: We grew up in an era where the connection was so important between musicians. There was energy between the bands and that’s because they were in a room creating that energy together, and that’s what we tried to do when we were younger. And so now you get these electronic musicians who didn’t write songs connecting at all and you put them on stage and they give a performance that is garbage sometimes. It’s just not the same at all. What makes a good record is when you can sense a great energy, when you can tell people sit in a room and create.

What’s next? Mark: I think we have all talked about how we can see another record, but we just need that catalyst.

How do you feel knowing that lots of local bands see you as their inspiration? Drew: It is awesome because we can relate. We are grateful that we all made it here and we were able to do what we did. Dino: We have been very blessed and there has been no shortage of great experiences. Mark: I think people respect how we went about making our music. We were pretty humble and went on the road and tried to just make honest music. Thank you for continuing to talk about us.

dredg.com

facebook: dredg twitter: @dredg

Dino Campanella (piano and drums)

Mark Engles (guitar)

Gavin Hayes (vocals)

Drew Roulette (bass)

Written by Victoria Felicity

Photography by Ajay Fay