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In high school, I sang bass in all the typical choirs and musicals and played trumpet in band and marching band. My mom taught me to appreciate good music and my friend Mark taught me how to hate bad music.
While waiting in line to audition for my college's elite singing group, I was peer pressured into also auditioning for the nascent men's a cappella group, the SMC Men. I made it into both groups and then a third, which meant that I was singing 5 nights a week. I sang around Austria, Germany, Italy, and at the Kennedy Center. I became President of the 'C Men and then its music director. Our greatest challenge was coaxing people into focusing during rehearsals enough to learn the music passably. Our greatest success was consistently demolishing our auditorium's maximum capacity and putting on shows that were always entertaining, if not culturally enriching.
After graduation, a former 'C Men and I missed singing and started The Humbuckers in Washington, DC. We were a semi-pro, five-man vocal band and we gigged constantly, making about $30K over three years. We spent $12K of that money on our album, Never Said Thanks. I assembled a low-budget, PC-based home recording studio so we could track three of ten songs at "Dirty Laundry Studios" (my laundry room). We recorded the rest in a studio and, to our pleasant shock and flattery, our album was named as a Top Pick of 2001. Our greatest success was enjoying performing as much as we did despite a grueling schedule. Our greatest challenge was keeping guys in the group and auditioning to find replacements. The group broke up amicably in June, 2002.
Days later, I was accepted as a RARB reviewer. In 2003, I spent six months running rehearsal and live performance sound for Cartoon Johnny, a DC-based vocal band. Then I up and moved to Boulder, Colorado.
I started a new group, Chatterbox. Co-ed and mostly twentysomething, the group was comprised of former collegiate and semipro singers who wanted back into the aca-rock scene. The group had a great time arranging songs and rehearsing them. Our greatest challenge was trying to schedule gigs. Chatterbox sang four gigs and a few house parties over two years then split up amicably in March, 2006. Our greatest success was having fun in rehearsal.
During the day, I'm having fun promoting cycling, triathlon, and running training and history books for VeloPress, a unit of a publishing company that produces VeloNews, Triathlete, Inside Triathlon, and the Rock 'n' Roll marathons and half-marathons. During the weekends, my wife Erin and I are having a great time raising our two-year old kid and hiking, backpacking, running, biking, and skiing in Colorado.
Dave Trendler115 total reviews
