dammerson vaughan, like so many electronic musicians of this era, came of age as
a rock musician. In college at Chico, CA, dammerson decided it would be cool to
be in a rock band, play gigs, tour in vans and meet girls. He was right. It was
cool.
Talented but untrained, dammerson taught himself to play the bass guitar by
playing along to Bruce Thomas's bass lines on early Elvis Costello records. This
proved to be a highly effective method because within months he was proficient
enough to audition for and join the popular local band, The Downsiders. The
Downsiders went on to record several albums for Black Park and Mammoth Records,
though dammerson had left to pursue his own vision of self-recording.
dammerson bought one of the earliest TASCAM semi-pro multitrack recorders and
began teaching himself to manage signal flow, lay down tracks, overdubs and
build songs playing all of the parts himself. In 1990 Devil in the Woods Records
released a cassette-only album of his original material under the name The
Opaque. This release was favorably reviewed both locally in the Chico News and
Review and nationally in Option Magazine.
dammerson missed playing live and joined two other Chico bands, Goodbye Johnny
(Richard Buckner's first band) and These Days, who became a premier local band
with a loyal following. These Days was shopping around a polished 4-song demo
and came very close to signing a recording contract before lead guitarist John
McKinley's erratic behavior caused the band to disband.
By the late 90's dammerson had moved to Seattle and in 1999 with the advent of
Pro Tools entry-level 32 track digital system the digi 001 and the introduction
of the Mac G4, dammerson made the move from analog multitrack to digital
recording and never looked back. dammerson built a home studio and began
mastering records for local independent artists while himself mastering the art
of digital composition techniques and new software such as Ableton Live,
Propellerheads Reason and eMagic Logic.
dammerson's compositions are primarily instrumental, moody and evocative and
perfect for film/video application. His vision was to begin placing songs in TV
shows and independent films. He eventually placed several pieces in industrial
videos by UK director Grant Pollard, formerly of BBC TV.
Currently dammerson licenses songs for use by independent video producers to use
royalty-free and continues to look for collaborations with film directors.
|