BUST HQ is one of those places that’s crawling with all kinds of new music. As I’m sort of a strange person with pretty particular taste, I don’t often listen to a lot of it, but today I was forwarded the music of Arron Dean, and loved it.
Raised on a small farm in an area called Knoppieslaagte outside of Johannesburg, amid the country’s political upheaval, Arron followed his muse stateside to play jazz in Boston. Disheartened by the general apathy people have to the genre, Dean started again from scratch in New York, reorienting himself with a punk-rock band quickly began packing clubs and partying their way across the Lower East Side. Meanwhile, he earned his keep working myriad jobs, from running a youth hostel to mopping recording-studio floors in exchange for the chance to write music for advertisements. But after a few years the audiences at shows dwindled and opportunities waned as the band drank away their potential. The band met their inauspicious end when half of the band members were fired from the bar where they all worked. Deciding it was time for a change of scenery, they made plans to relocate to Minneapolis, where our story begins again. “When we got to Minnesota I grabbed my acoustic guitar and started writing the most sincere music I’d ever written. I wrote about everyone I missed and everyone I loved. It was what I needed at that moment.”
Arron Dean reminds me of the sort of indie-rock singer-songwriter genre in the early 00’s; he could definitely hold his own with the likes of Conor Oberst. It’s melodic and sweet, and, if you listen closely, sometimes sad, but still pleasant to listen to when you’re just hanging out (or, say, blogging at BUST HQ!) Definitely give him a listen.