The Dead Records

When the playwright George Bernard Shaw first said “youth is wasted on the young” around 100 years ago, he wasn’t thinking about rock n’ roll. Rock n’ roll didn’t exist 100 years ago. 

When Paul Westerberg first sang “I need a goddamn job” in January of 1982, he wasn’t talking about steady work at a factory or his uncle’s office. He was talking about rock n’ roll, which did exist. And now, almost 30 years later, Westerberg is still working his job as a full-time musician. He’s lucky. And, while Shaw is long dead, his quote about youth remains a staple amongst aging rock n’ roll types.

Enter The Dead Records, a quintet of young musicians looking for jobs while not wasting a second of their youth. They have a new EP coming out and a slew of shows lined up for the summer. They’re from North Manchester but currently spend their days and nights in Fort Wayne, working, rocking, going to school.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when these guys showed up at my door. I’d heard their debut , 2009’s And Now We Dance, and seen photos of them in action. I’d read C. Ray Harvey’s review of said record and had been told by a handful of people that they’re great on stage. A more punk-friendly version of Manchester Orchestra. Kinda.

Still, I had no idea what was coming.

Within 10 minutes of living room chatter I was imagining these four very distinct personalities working perfectly for a film or TV script. First we have Sean Richardson, the 21 year old drummer in sandals who keeps busy. He’s tall and chatty, full of life and ready for anything. He talks in a husky voice and makes no bones about how important this band is to him.

Then we have Chad Briner, who I’ve seen play multiple sets with his other band, the excellent Mr. Doctor Professor. Briner, 24, looks like the poster boy for a mid-90s college radio scene. He could have either spent hours trying to look like an Adventureland extra or just thrown on whatever his girlfriend bought him from the nearest thrift shop. Hard to tell. He builds amps for a living, talking about High Fidelity in everyday conversation and speaking only when he has the perfect thing to say.

Next up is instantly likeable Will Magley, who I remember from his days in Morose. He’s as jovial and positive as any 21 year old blonde bassist on earth. He tells me that he hates school, doesn’t have a job or money and just loves to play music.

And, finally, we have frontman/guitarist Aaron Taylor, who keeps quiet at first. In fact, he hardly says a word until he realizes we have a shared friend, Firehouse honcho Jabin Burnworth. After making this connection Taylor lights up with pure Southern charm. He writes dark songs - odd considering how pure and honest he seems in conversation.

The Dead Records look, act and sound exactly how you’d hope a young rock n’ roll band would look, act and sound. And, as I learned, they talk the jive, too.

“We’ve known each other forever. Since I was in fourth grade or something,” Richardson tells me. “Three of us are from Manchester and Chad is from right outside Manchester, so we’ve all known each other for a while.”

The story of how The Dead Records came to be is both simple and complex. Briner and Taylor at some point played in punk bands together. Taylor played in other bands here and there, sometimes with Richardson, before deciding to team up full time with the enthusiastic drummer.

“The band I was in before The Dead Records broke up, so I started writing pretty much our whole first album on an acoustic guitar,” Taylor told me. “Sean and I decided one day to play those songs. So we put drums to ‘em and made them electric. Then we wrote three or four more together and started rolling.”

From there, Richardson, who had already booked a show at The Brass Rail, asked Magley to bring his bass over and jam. After trying out a number of potential bassists, Richardson and Taylor asked Magley to join The Dead Records.

“I was still playing in Morose when Aaron and Sean invited me over to play with them,“ Magley said. “So I played with The Dead Records and decided that it was the band I wanted to be in.”

The three then recorded the abovementioned debut record and started playing their first shows. Soon enough they began talking about adding a second guitarist.

“Sean and I were talking one night, asking each other ‘how do we get better?’ I don’t claim to be a great  guitar player. I’m self taught. So we wanted to get better,” Taylor explained. “We decided to ask Chad - this before he joined - if he’d want to come write with us. I knew we needed another guitar player, so we tried out like three players and none of them worked. So, when Chad moved back, we asked him to play with us.”

“I always wanted to be in a band with Chad,” Richardson added. “Back then we thought we’d run off of that first CD for two or three years. But we got so much better, especially once Chad joined. After he joined, we knew we had to do another album.”

“I was living in Chicago for four or five years,” Briner said. “Taylor would come over and talk about the band. When I moved back we started talking about me joining, but I didn’t have enough time in my schedule. Eventually I started jamming with these guys and it turned out to be pretty f%$#ign awesome.”

Briner joined the band, who were already hard at work on a new batch of songs.

“Our idea was to write a whole bunch of songs over a month, with Chad. So we had the stuff I’d been working on plus the stuff Chad brought. It was so refreshing,” Taylor said. “We had something like 10 songs that we narrowed down to six for the new CD. We wanted it to be better and we definitely did make it better.”

“The singing on the new album is so much better. It’s phenomenal. One influence I didn’t mention is Manchester Orchestra. Their new CD is one of the best albums I’ve ever heard in my life,” a now excited Richardson said. “The vocals on that album are so much better than on their first. So I was telling Aaron about that, and his vocals just got so much better for the new songs.”

“A lot of that juts comes with time. And these songs are more personal and mean a lot more to me. The first CD was full of lyrics about a relationship that I was already two years out of,” Taylor said. “These new songs are songs I think I’ll be able to relate to when I’m 80.”

“And we’re still writing. We don’t even have this new CD out yet and we already have new stuff that’s way better,” Richardson said. “The chemistry with Chad just keeps getting better and better, so I think we’ll maybe do another EP this fall.”

We talk about influences for a moment. Richardson explains how his initial love for Thursday led him to a concert. At this concert he settled on a life goal: play music for a living. Back in those days Taylor had much different goals.

“Right now I just work and play music. And I play golf. Hang out. Drink beer,” Taylor explained. “ But I have the course record at Indian Hills. Before I was planning to play music I was going to be a pro golfer. That’s what I wanted to do out of high school. I was going to get my PGA card and go after that. But once I started playing with Sean that all kind of went down the toilet.”

“I can be pretty persuasive,” interrupts Richardson.

“Yeah. I once went to Sean and told him that I’d just shot the best round of my life, and he was like ‘look, you suck. You’re never gonna make it as a pro golfer,’” Taylor laughs.

“Yeah, I mean, this is all I care about,” a suddenly serious Richardson adds. “One way or another, I’m gonna make it as a musician.”

Briner, sitting across the room with a smile, chimes in: “If you weren’t such a persuasive motherfucker, I wouldn’t be in this band.”

Richardson, clearly, doesn’t mind playing the role of the workhorse.

“I like all the work that goes into this band. Everything I do for this band is an experience,” he says, still deadly serious. “Even if we don’t make it, someday I’ll have all these sweet stories about trying to make it.”

Taylor then explains to me that, to The Dead Records, “making it” simply means being able to support yourself by playing a guitar.

“It means not having to work stupid jobs to get by,” Richardson adds.

The kids are alright. They get it. They don’t want beach houses and they understand that this is a hard field to find success in.

“When we first moved to Fort Wayne we couldn’t get any bands to talk to us. We were clueless and didn’t even know one other band. It took us months to book just one show in Fort Wayne,” Taylor explains. “So when we were first meeting these other bands, they didn’t know who we were and we were really having trouble figuring out how to get things going. But now we have a lot of experience. We’ve been in the studio, we’ve toured.”

From there the conversation turns more serious. What does it mean to be in a young and serious band with a guy like Richardson, who plans to “make it” no matter what?

Albums. Tours. T-Shirts. Everything. Out of town shows, especially.

“We’ll do 20 or so out of town shows in June, then maybe another 15 or 20 in July,” Richardson said. “I don’t know if we’ll have to quit our jobs or not. My boss and my co-workers are really into our band, so I think it’ll work out for me.”

“I just talked to my boss about this last night. He wasn’t too happy with it, but he understands,” Taylor said. “He knows that this is what I want to do. I don’t know what to tell him because he’s thinking he might have to hire someone else because we’ve been through this before with tours.

“It’s hard to be in a serious band that hasn’t made it yet. It’s not just jobs, it’s girlfriends and apartments. All you want to do is play music but you have to work it in to all these other things. So it’s all about sacrifices if you really want to do it right.”

“You see your friends getting on with their careers and their families and you’re still kind of doing what you were doing in high school. Playing in bands,” Richardson added. “But now our friends and families are taking us more seriously. It’s been over a year and we have another CD coming out and we’re still playing shows and have a tour coming up. But it’s still hard to hear our friends talk about ‘getting jobs making 40K.’ What do we brag about? Maybe making $10 playing a show and getting some free beer?”

Sounds good to me. For now, The Dead Records are focused on their new EP, which you can pick up on Friday, May 7 at their CD release show at the Brass Rail in downtown Fort Wayne. Toldeo’s Extra Extra will open and the $5 cover charge also scores you a copy of the new CD.

Can’t hardly wait.

Written by G. William Locke