Brian Dewan on Myspace
Brian Dewan is an artist whose vision takes form equally well in many media, including art, music, audio-visual performances, decorative painting, furniture design, poetry and musical instrument design. He has produced two albums of songs and concertized extensively as a solo artist, as well as having performed in various collaborations and as a sideman. He lives in upstate New York.
Music
His own music roughly breaks into two categories, vocal music and electronic music. His vocal music is of a sort that tends to reference folk music, hymns, century-old popular music and rock music. His two full length albums, "Brian Dewan Tells the Story" (1993, Bar None Records) and "The Operating Theatre" (1998, Instinct Records) find him in this mode. His songs often contemplate the nature of submission to authority, and often take the form of a tale. They are by turns humoristic and contemplative. In live performance, he most often accompanies his singing with an electric zither of his own invention, outfitted with eight humbucker pickups and 88 strings, sometimes piped through a leslie cabinet or guitar effects pedals. He also plays a variety of other instruments, including autoharp, organ and accordion. His electronic music, either solo or in collaboration with his cousin, Leon Dewan, tends to be more sprawling and free-form, often evoking the raw sounds of early electronic music of a modernist bent. Other artists and projects he has worked with include They Might Be Giants, Blue Man Group, Sesame Street, Flaming Fire, Jed Davis, Loser's Lounge and The Musical Stones of Skiddaw. He is a member of the Raymond Scott Orchestrette, a group dedicated to reinterpreting Scott's compositions, and appeared on their 2002 album Pushbutton Parfait. He also sings and performs with the Roosevelt Island Singers.
