LouFest 2014: Dylan McDonald & the Avians
What are you most excited to see in St. Louis?
“Well, given that the show is in Forest Park, we hope to go to the zoo.” - Daniel DeMonico
What animal do you want to see most?
“Do they have gorillas? I dig gorillas.” - Daniel DeMonico
Dylan McDonald & the Avians call upon the ’60s and ’70s rock forefathers to form what the band calls organic rock.
But, do not be mistaken, because this brand of classic rock 'n' roll isn’t a genre restriction—it is a feel. It’s a feel that McDonald and the guys can’t really describe, except that when they’re up on that stage, and McDonald’s voice sounds even better than it did in the studio, and the song “Another 9 Billion Years” is exploding over an entire throbbing crowd of people, and the band is yelling out its mantras to each other throughout the show, and all the rehearsal in the world—which they’ve pretty much done—couldn’t possibility have prepared them for the spontaneous magic spewing from their instruments right now—that’s the feeling of classic rock.
For a band with such timeless inspiration, its members are relatively young, ranging from 22 to 31. But the whole staying hip thing really doesn’t concern them. They happen to be playing this type of music in the modern age, but they kind of hope that audiences will take a step back in time with them to feel what they are feeling. McDonald says it’s important, in the age of top-40 lyrical emptiness, for this generation in particular to hear what Dylan McDonald & the Avians has to offer.
If you think you’ve seen the band before, however, you might want to keep checking in, because nothing with this group of guys ever stays the same.
“Even when a song is already written, and we’ve played it a thousand times, that’s just one incarnation of the song,” McDonald says. “These projects are always creatively evolving. Anything can change, really.”
The Avians consist of Daniel DeMonico on guitar, Josh Cobb on drums, Alex Geddes on bass and Will Brown on keys. McDonald just happens to be the son of five-time Grammy winner Michael McDonald and Grammy-nominated recording artist Amy Holland McDonald. The band dropped its first album in 2013, and its second project, Fueled by Dreams of the Future, was digitally released this summer, but the members still view this as a pretty new band. “We are still finding our collective creative process,” DeMonico says. “So we just rehearse and rehearse … a lot.”
Despite the band’s practice of intense rehearsal, there are things that they just have to wing—such as the possible addition of a horn section at LouFest.
Another idea the band is toying with is television licensing, but like with anything else, the members have old school taste. They laugh to each other as they talk about their lack of interest in modern television, given this new venture. Although, Geddes does admit that their music would make for an awesome soundtrack to the Walking Dead, the only show he does watch. That is, besides Spongebob.
