Album Notes

I was a hyper baby. I would bang my head against the crib to fall asleep. When I was a kid, I was even more hyper and to pass time until my eventual slumber, I would sing to myself, sometimes making up songs. That felt a lot better than the head banging. As a teenager, I watched in awe as my sister fronted a few bands that played in clubs, and college parties and functions. I knew that this was something I had to try. In college, I picked up the guitar and went for voice lessons and started writing songs about my high school disappointments. This was much to the dismay of my girlfriend at the time who protested, "I don't want a boyfriend who plays music...IN A BAR!" At least that breakup left me with a lot more time and angst for songwriting.

I wrote a bunch of songs, then rented a rehearsal space and got some friends together to learn the songs. Like true band newbies, we rehearsed way too much. We played the same fifteen songs over and over for about six months until our keyboard player asked, "Uh, just how long are we gonna rehearse these same old songs?" This was just the kick in the rear I needed. I booked our first show at the Hotel Utah in San Francisco.

We called the band Random Dudes. I was at a friend's house and he had all these pictures of men pinned to a dorky bulletin board in his kitchen. So I asked him, "Arnold, do you actually know these guys, or are they just random dudes?" All Arny said was, "Random Dudes? Hey, Eric, that'd be a cool name for your band." I thought about it and all the different players that had drifted in and out of the band and decided "Random Dudes" it is.

We gigged two to three times a month for about a decade and had a great time. Then, as I started raising a family, I moved out of our live/work rehearsal studio in the Oakland badlands. I thought it would be a good idea if my children were awakened my their mother's touch rather than the sound of automatic weapons fire out on the streets. Predictably, that is when my musical activities slowed to a standstill for a few years.

Now, I do music as a singer/songwriter rather than the leader of the Random Dudes. The band does not exist anymore, but I still have this desire to write, record, and perform songs.

For more, please see http://www.ericdelore.com