Today we’d like to introduce you to Dorian Sharpless
Hi Dorian, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
SPDES is a band that myself (Dorian Sharpless, vocals/guitar), Kellen McDowell (vocals/bass), and Andy Eubanks (Drums) write, perform, and release music for. We started the band our senior year of high school (October of 2022). The three of us are childhood friends who have been writing and releasing music for years together under many different aliases, but we took about a year off because of COVID in 2020/2021. it was a hard time for us because we weren’t really allowed to practice together. Honestly i’m not sure if we’d be in a band to this day if we didn’t have a class called “Rock band” together in our junior year. It was pretty much just a class where we formed a band, practiced/wrote songs and performed them in front of the class and occasionally at lunch or during a battle of the bands. That class got the ball rolling again for us and taught us a lot about the setup and sound check techniques that most big acts use. After we finished our first year of this class, Kel and I talked about the idea of making a two piece indie project together outside of school and he liked the idea. I thought of a few band names that i honestly don’t really remember. I think one was “Right Place Wrong Time” and another was “The Tractioneers”, but we ended up with the name SPDES. There wasn’t really any meaning behind any of these names, we just wanted something that sounded cool and memorable, but wouldn’t sound like we were trying too hard to be different. SPDES definitely rolled off the tongue better than any of the previous names we came up with, felt more memorable, and was something new but sounded instantly classic. like “The Strokes” or something. After we formed the group everything else honestly came real quickly, from us asking Andy and our former guitarist, Will Taylor (who stepped away recently to focus on himself), playing shows, and releasing music. Now we’ve played a bunch of shows in the San Diego/LA area and have a full length album out as well as a couple of singles.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The road we’ve taken to get where we are now was definitely not smooth at all. A lot of the struggles we had came from us and our mental health. It was really hard to write music for a bit and we seemingly all just couldn’t find the motivation to rehearse together. We’ve definitely overcame that now though. We found a sound we mutually all agree is something we all like and we’ve actually started writing our next EP called “Tonic” and are planning on recording it this coming winter.
Other than mental stuff, the main struggles and roadblock were (and partially are still) booking shows, getting a good sounding mix, and recording. Though we have the motivation to record now, there’s still a lot we need to learn when it comes to actually mastering and tracking certain parts of a new song, we like the challenge though it makes it more interesting.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Our personal careers aren’t anything special. Andy works at an escape room and goes to college full time, Kel works at Raising Canes and also goes to college full time, and I (Dorian) work full time in a warehouse. I’d say that as a band, we’re most proud of our ability to make our schedules work. Since we all have so much going on in our lives and consistently are busy, it can get a little rough to find time to actually practice and record together, but this is something that’s gotten a lot easier over time to deal with, and we actually consistently rehearse every week and rarely really cancel. We have had to turn down some shows in the past though due to work and school, so the challenge has definitely gotten significantly easier.
I’d say our strive to make our dreams happen sets us apart from the rest of the crowd. We’re all young and concerned about our futures, we don’t know what’s behind the next door we’re going to open and it’s absolutely scary. But despite all of that, we still show up at 3 every single thursday and we rehearse. We practice together as a band no matter what struggles are down the road because we truly love doing this. I don’t think any of us can live in a world where we don’t get to play music together, and I think our bond is what sets us apart the most from others in the scene.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
What makes me happy is playing guitar and playing games. After a long day there’s nothing like playing some music or playing a game, I think the others would agree with that. My personal favorite game right now is probably “Call of Duty Zombies”, i’ve been playing that one since i was a kid and it just never gets old.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://spdes.us/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spdesofficial
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@SPDEZ
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2MIprMFVrZ1oRo491Cef27
Image Credits
@Circa.png on instagram
