Today we’d like to introduce you to Dylan Disaster.
Hi Dylan, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I like to think that music has been with me since before I was even born. My mother’s younger brother played the guitar, my mother was and is a lover of rock n’ roll, and my father was and is a Dead Head through and through.
I do think I was interested in music at an early age though, there is even a few photos of me “jamming” with my father’s friends when I was 3 or 4 years old.
Later, down the road, around my freshman year of high school, I suddenly became obsessed with music, I honestly don’t even know where it came from or how it happened, but it was all-consuming. My friends and I discovered Nirvana, which opened the doors for punk rock to come in. Once I had a hold of punk rock, it was pretty much all over for me.
I started taking guitar classes in school, I even cut most of my other classes to take extra guitar classes. My parents got me my first electric guitar/amp combo pack for Christmas of my freshman year, they gave me the guitar but said I had to wait until Christmas for the amp, I was undeterred; I played that thing every single day, amp, or no amp.
I started writing songs with my friends before any of us really knew how to do that or before any of us really had any instruments. Once that Christmas rolled around and I got my amp, I played guitar every day after school until my father told me to stop, or it was bedtime.
I took some lessons from one of my mother’s friends and from one of my father’s friends too, but I learned most of my skill set by imitating my idols.
Through high school (and a few years after graduation) bands came and went. In 2005 I moved to California to “chase the dream”. I started a band in L.A. called Sounds Like Disaster, but we only lasted about a year or so. Once we broke up, I adopted my band name “Dylan Disaster” and decided to casually pursue a solo career.
In 2007 I bounced around the country a bit until I landed in Portland, where I wound up buying a 40 ft long school bus (that we named “Madd Betty”) with my brother and a friend. We traveled and lived in Betty for a year or so until we wound up in Austin in the fall of 08.
I wrote a song called “Betty and Her Boys” this past year and one of the lines in the song reads “By the time it was fall we were out in Austin, it felt like home, so we decided to stay”, and this holds true for me. When I arrived in Austin, I felt like I found the place I was looking for throughout my travels over the previous years. Here, I started to pursue my solo career a little more actively.
In 2010 I formed a band called ‘Revenants’ with a friend of mine, Allen, who also went by the name of Hobomouth at the time. Revenants was the band I always hoped to start, and once we started, we came out swinging. We were both fierce and melodic at the same time, intricate but also simple, we were honest and unafraid. There is some great footage of our album release that took place at Mohawk in December 2010, you can find it by searching “Revenants: Freedom Music” on YouTube.
Shortly thereafter, Allen had to leave the band and I was forced to take center stage as the frontman/lead vocalist. Up until this point, I had focused on my guitar playing primarily and wrote lyrics and vocal melodies for other people to sing. My solo project was never truly in the foreground enough for me to perfect the craft of being the frontman, not yet anyway, but if I wanted Revenants to continue, I had to figure it out.
Revenants went on for another year or so before we changed our name to Buried Cities. As Buried Cities, we released our first full-length album in 2013, with me as the lead vocalist. This record sparked my love for making records and paved the way for me to learn how to become a better vocalist and songwriter.
By the end of 2014 things were to pick up drastically for me in the way of music. I decided to record my first solo record in December of that year, I recorded an album as the drummer for a band called Street Lions at the same time, I was asked to fill in on bass for a European tour (this was to be my first real tour) with a band called Nowherebound in January 2015, and I started a new band with my good friend Marc Alan; called Knockin’ Bones.
January 2015 came and I set sail with Nowherebound. After the success of that tour, I was asked to become a permeant member of the band, I happily obliged. Nowherebound consists of former members of local bands Born To Lose and New Disaster, both bands of which I was a fan of to begin with. Nowherebound had taken me under their wing and showed me what it really meant to be in a band, how to write songs, and ultimately how to be a better human being. I am eternally grateful for the experiences that Nowherebound gave to me.
Over the next few years, between 2015 and 2019, I recorded three full-length albums and one side of a split 12″ with Nowherebound, Knockin’ Bones released an EP, Buried Cities released their second full-length record, Buried Cities and Knockin’ Bones released a 12″ split vinyl together, and I recorded my second full-length record which was to be my most ambitious release to date: it was titled ‘Remission”.
Also, during these four years, I was touring constantly. Nowherebound opened a door to Europe for me and I walked right on through it. In those years, I went to Europe with Nowherebound 4 times, Buried Cities toured Europe twice, Knockin’ Bones toured Europe once, and I also did three solo acoustic tours over there. Simultaneously, Knockin’ Bones had done two stateside tours and I had done 2 Midwest acoustic tours to boot. I also played Rebellion Festival in Blackpool England as well as Mighty Sounds Festival in Czech Republic during that time.
By August 2019, however, when I released ‘Remission’, I was no longer playing in Buried Cities, Knockin, Bones or Street Lions, and I was about to do my part in what would be my last album with Nowherebound, ‘Mourning Glory’. At this time, my solo project had finally taken center stage and it was demanding all my attention. I was working with a full band that I named “The Revelry”. With the release and success of ‘Remission’, Dylan Disaster and The Revelry was gaining traction, so I set sail overseas for another solo acoustic tour in the fall of 2019 to lay some groundwork with the new record so that I could bring The Revelry with me sometime in the following year.
In 2020, The Revelry and I were on track to tour Japan as we had signed a tour contract with a booking agency in Tokyo, but alas, there would be no tours in 2020.
The pandemic slowed my roll quite a bit, as it did for most people, but for me it meant shifting focus from touring and constantly pushing my music towards writing and creating music with people I enjoy creating music with. Over the course of the last two years, we’ve gone through some lineup changes, but all the while, I’ve been writing. The Revelry has a solid group of musicians in the ranks now and 80 percent of a new record written. We’ve got plans to track this next record in the fall of 2022, and hopefully we’ll make that Japan thing happens in 2023.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Oh, definitely not a smooth road, but I don’t think it should be all smooth sailing, the bumps in the road build character and create opportunities for growth, and I am nothing if not a creature of evolution. There’s this delicate balance in life of pushing hard enough to get what you want and holding back enough so that you aren’t forcing things that don’t fit right, and while doing your best to find that balance, you’re very likely to be derailed at some point.
For me, most of those moments of losing balance come while dealing with feelings of inadequacy. No matter how much I might accomplish or have accomplished, there would remain this lingering feeling of “not enough”. I think that feeling would come from the struggle between creating music for the love of creating music and creating music to make a living. Music and the creation of has always felt best when it’s calm, patient, honest and is derived from a desire to create rather than an urgent need to make it work so that I can eat my next meal, pay my rent, or get to the next level. Trying to pay rent with music has always been conflicting, I’ve tried, believe me, but that route always made me feel like I was forcing something, and if I’d force something that didn’t fit, that thing (or I) would inevitably break.
In the past I’ve been very willing to risk everything I had to make the next record or go on the next tour, but at some point, that way of living became unsustainable (physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, and spiritually), and I needed to change that. This is something I learned during the pandemic. It used to be enough to have a part-time job so long as I could go on tour later that spring, but once tour was taken away and all I had left was the part-time job, I found myself very unhappy, and thus I realized that there is probably a better way to be making records, and better way to be living in general.
From this revelation, I’ve started my own business with my younger brother. On March 12th, 2022, we’ll be opening a food trailer and selling authentic New York Italian ices under the banner of East Koast Ices, and we’ll be posted up out front at the legendary Hole In The Wall on the drag in the heart of UT campus.
The idea of starting my own business while simultaneously working on music sounds like a liberating and enjoyable experience that I have not yet had. It feels as though I’ll be able to make my own way in this world and create music for the love of creating music without the push and pull of basic survival.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m a songwriter first, I used to be a guitar player first but that changed when I needed to learn to be a better singer, as I mentioned earlier.
What am I known for? Musically, probably my catchy ass sing-a-long choruses! And maybe my quick right hand.
The thing I’m most proud of currently is the last record I put out, ‘Remission’. I wrote that record during and after a long stretch of depression. I wrote that record to heal myself, I wrote it with the intention of writing something for myself that was completely uncompromised. I bankrupted myself twice, wound up quitting all of my other bands and sold my car to make that record, it was my driving force when I was struggling with depression, it was everything to me and I refused to let it be anything less than what I wanted it to be.
Because of how personal and honest that record was and how driven I was to bring it into the world, I think it really resonated with people. I succeeded in creating the thing that I wanted to create, and it really hit home with a lot of people, and throughout my entire music “career”, that’s really all I ever wanted.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
We’re all a mystery, aren’t we? I’ve lived a pretty full life and have experienced a lot of things that I think most people don’t get to experience, mostly out of my desire for “more”. I could tell you that people might find it surprising to learn that I lived in a school bus, spent a month in Japan for my 30th birthday, struggled with depression, broke my leg when I was two years old, I’m sober, been in a motorcycle accident, I find value in meditation and Buddhist practices (I do not consider myself a Buddhist though), that I’m afraid of heights and public speaking, or that I enjoy swimming; but I’d rather remain mysterious.
Contact Info:
- Email: dylandisastermusic@gmail.com
- Website: www.dylandisaster.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dylandisaster
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DylanDisaster
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ddisastermusic
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeAI-VtRjIny5XRrmQ2Sjhw
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/east-koast-ices-austin
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/dylandisaster
Image Credits
Dylan Disaster and The Revelry logo by Jeremy Parker at PRL Creative, Dylan Disaster logo by Christopher Klinck at Rerto Grade studios, East Koast Ices logo by Jason Karn. Dylan Disaster and The Revelry photo by Jim Mckay.
