Stone Dresden came together in 1991, and became the first post-high school band for 4 kids from the Eastside. We all grew up within walking distance of each other, but it was the guitar/bass duo of Chad McCollum and Shawn Psachos who were childhood friends and the core of this new group.
Two friends from Love Brother Nine, Tim Stakkestad and Tony Fulgham, helped bring us all together. Tony knew vocalist Pat Tanner was looking for a band, while Tim knew Shawn & Chad were looking for a drummer. At some point, the four of us ended up in the same room. After a few jams, Stone Dresden came to life!
The band name and cover artwork is related to the Dresden, Germany firebombing in 1945 just before the end of World War II. I believe this was a period of time that Pat studied and was captivated by. I still have a Kurt Vonnegut speech from May 1990 in my Stone Dresden keepsakes where he spoke about his experience living through the Dresden bombing. Friend David Campbell drew the cover artwork.
After playing the local scene for several months, we headed to London Bridge Studios in 1992 to record a demo to help us get more shows, have a cassette to sell and to try to get our music and name throughout the area. We recorded 3 songs in one session with Clark Branum.
In 1993, Chad, Shawn and myself split ways with Pat as we wanted to change up the style of music and songs we were writing and envisioned a different vocalist in our mind to round out a new lineup. After going through a series of jams with a wide variety of singers and starts/stops on new groups, we found our messiah in Carl Smith. That new group, born out of Stone Dresden, became Black Moses.
Still, those Stone Dresden years were some of my favorites as we were still young kids, not even 21 when we started, writing music, jamming, playing shows and just trying to figure this life thing out on our own.
Thirty years later, Shawn gave me the original DAT production master from our demo, and I was able to get Jack Endino to bring these songs back to life. After transferring these to digital, Jack was able to remaster these for digital and CD release. You can tell we’re a young band in these songs, but you can also hear our passion along with some pretty cool grooves and musical ideas. Enjoy!