Over the years the press has used various descriptors of your music including country-rock, blues, progabilly, prog-rock, experimental rock and art. How do you describe the sound of Dreadnaught?
Well, I guess “nuts” is as good a term as any. It is definitely hard to pin down our sound because we frequently do very different things — listen to our 2004 album “Musica En Flagrante” and you’d think we’re an instrumental group with avant-garde tendencies, but check us out at a show and you’ll hear elements of rock and roll, jazz and blues, with vocals prominently featured. Last week I was in the Czech Republic producing orchestral recording sessions and one of the pieces I did was a Dreadnaught composition arranged for symphonic ensemble — there are no borders or edges of the road for us, we’re committed to experimenting and creating new music and new sounds at the expense of being easily described.
Ten years of holding together a band must have shown quite a change throughout the local music scene. What have been the most pivotal moments for local music within the scene?
I think that the emergence of the internet as a tool to be used by musicians and bands partially showed Portsmouth/Portland area artists that there are a whole lot of other important, engaging, interesting scenes out there that deserve investigation. A side-effect of this, after an initial downswing in the state of the music “industry” (as opposed to culture) as a whole that had repercussions on the local level, has been the re-emergence of a sense of importance and primacy of local and regional music and artists.
How did you get hooked up with Writers on a New England Stage at the Music Hall?
NHPR approached me about providing some energetic, quirky, New England-esque music for the series (which was the brainchild of the Music Hall and its excellent executive director Patricia Lynch), and I jumped at the chance. The series has played a large part in the restoration of the seacoast’s prominence as a first-rate venue for world-class talents. The Music Hall stage has seen countless famous and talented individuals, though there is something particularly special about hearing an author like John Updike or Dan Brown describe in their own words, and in an intimate setting, the intricacies of their work. It is definitely worth a trip to Portsmouth to enjoy one of these shows.
How did Dreadnaught come to be? And how have you managed to keep the band together for so long?
We formed at UNH back in 1996, started playing shows at clubs right away, and quickly entered the studio to begin recording our first album. The sheer force of relentless activity, constant playing and writing and touring and recording, has kept us going. We’ve always had a great time doing what we do, and there isn’t anything better than those moments on stage or in the studio when we hear the actualization of music that previously only existed in our heads … that’s fun stuff.
What can we expect from the band over the next 10 years?
I shudder to think. Further movement toward the integration of rock, classical and jazz is where we’re heading — though whatever the music ends up sounding like, if nothing else I’m sure it will be impossible to pigeonhole.