In Loving Memory first came under my radar when I was playing drums in my early high school band Trotsky (later renamed theheartof...) I can't remember exactly where I heard them first but they were the tip of the iceberg for me in my descent into exploring the des moines/sioux falls scene in the late 90's/early 2000's, which also led me to Dispensing Of False Halos, another one of Brian's bands which formed after the demise of In Loving Memory. Whatever I could get my hands on from that scene meant the world to me and to this day, I still think that era and scene of music is the most creative to ever come out. The two areas were powerhouses for bands that would lay some of the groundwork for the "screamo revival" we saw in the late 2000's/early 2010's and no doubt have shaped my songwriting in my projects to a huge degree.
In Loving Memory is sometimes described as "emoviolence" and usually I detest small subgenre names such as that. But "emoviolence" in my opinion, perfect sums up the sound of In Loving Memory. Emotional lyrics, screamed over the top of violent instruments by two vocalists, with soft parts in all in between.
My biggest reason for getting back onto social media (what little presence I do have) is to interview some of the people who made music that impacted me when I was younger. Recently, I acquired ILM's "As Years Pass..." CD (after a very lengthy searching period) and I thought this would be a good time to catch up about Brian's time in the two aforementioned bands while also seeing what he's up to now. Lucky for me, he seemed eager to chat about his time spent in the Des Moines screamo scene and couldn't have been a better person to interview. Read on!
NJ: I’m always curious about someone’s background, since everyone’s tends to be vastly different. The idea for this blog came from my friend Eric and he usually starts his interviews off with this inquiry (doxsomething.blogspot.com for curious readers) so start off by talking about your childhood and family, where you grew up etc.
Brian: My family is pretty conservative. I grew up going to church and not being allowed to watch tv shows like the Simpsons. I wasn’t supposed to listen to music that wasn’t Christian music either. I remember hearing old nu metal bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Deftones and thinking it was the heaviest music on the planet.
I hated school and I was put in a Christian high school my freshmen year and met many lifelong friends and some dudes who I would start playing music with.
Spencer Williams transferred from the same suburb of Des Moines that I did and we wound up riding the bus together to school every day. He liked cooler music than I did and had ever heard. We would sit at the back of the bus and listen to Zao, Training for Utopia, Frodus.. lots of bands were Christian hardcore back then or were put out by Christian hardcore labels. We got into Snapcase and Strife and some of the big hardcore bands at the time.
Spencer knew Jordan Peterson from church I think, and Jordan had a brother-in-law, who was in this band called Fed By Ravens from Minneapolis, and this dude Steve Sneer lived with them, too. Steve was in an old hardcore band called the Kinship, and he wound up singing for Killsadie and These Arms Are Snakes eventually. Anyways, we started learning about underground hardcore and punk and metal shit from those dudes and me and Spencer and Jordan decided to start a band.
Anyways, born in and grew up in Des Moines Iowa and Johnston and Urbandale.. Des Moines suburbs.
NJ: What age did you start going to shows at? What bands had the most impact on you during that time?
Brian: So Jake Haselman is Jordan’s brother in law’s name, and his band, Fed by Ravens played a show with this band Jesuit (we didn’t know it at the time but Jesuit was Nate from Converge’s band that he played guitar and did vocals in) at the Safari club, which later became Hairy Mary’s, all of which are iconic Des Moines venues from back in the day. A lot of bars would have all ages shows back then, and the Safari was a gross bar that 14 year old boys did not belong in, but we managed to go and that was the first hardcore show I ever went to. I had seen lame Christian ska shows and some shit like that before but nothing as loud and raw and fuckin real as that. I had found the type of music that I was looking for! We loved hardcore and those dudes loved emo music, too. I remember seeing Appleseed Cast and Brandtson that year, also and both bands were like these sad driving rock bands and it changed the way I thought about what emo music was. I also remember having band practice and we were listening to At the Gates Slaughter of the Soul and talking about how they seemed so scary. we were all basically just vacuums for whatever music we could listen to.
I remember hearing Converge’s the Saddest Day and was obsessed. Converge was so wild with how they had big nasty breakdowns, metal parts, emo parts and the general overriding chaos to all of it. We rocked Refused the shape of Punk to Come, Cave-in beyond hypothermia.. just dove into whatever sick bands we could find. Some of the first jam sessions we had as a band were basically just us doing Disembodied breakdowns, so that dark evil hardcore was kind of a main influence early on. The internet didn’t exist really back then so music was such a word of mouth thing, you know? We caught wind of these screamy emo kinda hardcore bands that were coming out around the Midwest like Spirit of Versailles and the Vida Blue.
Lemme jump back to our band, though. Spencer was still on drums, Jordan on guitar, our buddy Joe Carrington was playing bass and I was just singing now and our band was called Day of Atonement. We were a Christian hardcore band and we had played a few shows at the basement of this pizza place and our friends basements and stuff. We somehow managed to become a favorite or maybe more like charity case of our friend Scott Schweinebart and his buddy Morty who booked little local shows at this coffee shop, Lost Souls and in a rented room at the Des Moines Botanical Center.
Day of Atonement’s finest moment was probably opening up for Incantation at the Safari club at the age of 15 or so 
Once we heard screamo music, though, we knew that this was the style we wanted to play, so we changed it up a little bit and at the same time decided to change the name.
We played a show that summer with Reversal of Man and Combatwoundedveteran and changed the name to In Loving Memory of... (we dropped the “of” almost immediately. Haha)
Once we heard screamo music, though, we knew that this was the style we wanted to play, so we changed it up a little bit and at the same time decided to change the name.
We played a show that summer with Reversal of Man and Combatwoundedveteran and changed the name to In Loving Memory of... (we dropped the “of” almost immediately. Haha)
NJ: Those are awesome bands to have as your first show experiences. I remember being that young and just being stoked on getting my hands on anything that came across my path as well. But like you, when I heard screamo I knew it was for me. Can you remember when you first heard screamo? What bands did "it" for you and spoke to you the most?
Also reading that back a couple of times, it seems like a lot of the raw energy captured on the recordings (and the one live show that exists on youtube) was the result of many genres coming together and being played by such young kids. Was this a common thing in the scene you were in, or were ILM regarded as the "young" band?
Brian: The biggest influences on us were really just other Midwest bands. Spirit of Versailles initially got us into the style then Tanner joined after parting ways with Spirit and joining our band soon after moving to Des Moines from Sioux Falls, SD where they were from. We also got to see Love Lost But Not Forgotten from St Louise a bunch of times. They were kind of like this wild violent type of screamo. They had two singers who would trash around really wildly and their shows were super chaotic. Their guitarist, Scott, lived in Des Moines for a little while also. There was a band called Eclipse of Eden from Sioux City that we saw a lot and they were awesome kind of like a little more hardcore kind of screamo band. Rusty, who sang for that band, had moved to Des Moines around the same time, as well.
Vida Blue, from Iowa City was this weird indie rock-y spastic kind of band. I wouldn’t really say they were a screamo band but they were in the same scene and we played a lot together with them. One of my favorite bands we got to play with once was Khayembii Communique from Minneapolis, and also Song of Zarathustra was from Sioux City before they moved to Minneapolis. It was kind of cool thinking back because we didn’t really hear other big bands in the genre until we had already kind of started to all do our own thing in the Midwest. I heard Saetia and Jerome’s Dream and Orchid later and then all kinds of stuff as the genre kind of got bigger
We were kind of like the young guys, I mean tanner joined and he was older than us and out of high school and shit, but when we went to Sioux Falls later with him to play shows, we were kind of like the older kids and we played with the Hareste and Edict Of Milan, who I believe you mentioned. Basically it was a really small and closely knit scene and nobody was really over 20 years old at the time. I remember when our buddy will moved to town and he had just moved to town and was the first friend we had that was over 21. Haha!
Brian: The biggest influences on us were really just other Midwest bands. Spirit of Versailles initially got us into the style then Tanner joined after parting ways with Spirit and joining our band soon after moving to Des Moines from Sioux Falls, SD where they were from. We also got to see Love Lost But Not Forgotten from St Louise a bunch of times. They were kind of like this wild violent type of screamo. They had two singers who would trash around really wildly and their shows were super chaotic. Their guitarist, Scott, lived in Des Moines for a little while also. There was a band called Eclipse of Eden from Sioux City that we saw a lot and they were awesome kind of like a little more hardcore kind of screamo band. Rusty, who sang for that band, had moved to Des Moines around the same time, as well.
Vida Blue, from Iowa City was this weird indie rock-y spastic kind of band. I wouldn’t really say they were a screamo band but they were in the same scene and we played a lot together with them. One of my favorite bands we got to play with once was Khayembii Communique from Minneapolis, and also Song of Zarathustra was from Sioux City before they moved to Minneapolis. It was kind of cool thinking back because we didn’t really hear other big bands in the genre until we had already kind of started to all do our own thing in the Midwest. I heard Saetia and Jerome’s Dream and Orchid later and then all kinds of stuff as the genre kind of got bigger
We were kind of like the young guys, I mean tanner joined and he was older than us and out of high school and shit, but when we went to Sioux Falls later with him to play shows, we were kind of like the older kids and we played with the Hareste and Edict Of Milan, who I believe you mentioned. Basically it was a really small and closely knit scene and nobody was really over 20 years old at the time. I remember when our buddy will moved to town and he had just moved to town and was the first friend we had that was over 21. Haha!
NJ: The most well-known release ILM ever did was the As Years Pass And Feel Like Seconds CD. Talk about what you can remember from the song writing process and the ideas that were in the practice space, as well as the recording process. Also, perhaps touch on the reason why there are 3 variants of the CD, including a mini cdr? (I've also seen a tape so maybe 4) I would also like to add that Edict of Milan is awesome. An old buddy of mine did the vinyl release of that! So cool you got to play with them.
Brian: Edict of Milan was cool! Dan who played drums for Examination of the... played drums in Edict and would do songs where he played keyboard and drums at the same time!
We had a few songs of our own that were the screamo type stuff we wanted to write before Tanner joined the band. When he joined, we reworked that stuff a little bit with second guitar, and those are pretty much the songs from the split cassette with Black Market Fetus, a Des Moines crust/thrash legend and some of our great friends. Jen joined around the same time as our second vocalist.
We played a ton of shows and honed our sound and then went to record at this recording studio in Sioux Falls where Spirit and Saqqara and Eclipse of Eden and some other bands had recorded. It was all of our first recording experience (except Tanner) so we were really excited. Everything was recorded live. For some reason I had to do my vocals in the room where the guy was recording I’m sure that was strange for him.
After we had it recorded we never really received much interest in it. We would just burn CDrs and made a layout for them and would sell them at shows. We didn’t wind up being around long enough to have money to press it or anything, so once Tanner quit to do Examination if the... full time, he wanted to press the ILM stuff on vinyl, so he did it on his label 605 records as a split with Exam.
At one point this guy Juan who did that Cross my heart with a Knife website I think wanted to do something to help us and he did like an attempt at remastering it, and printed the layout and made CDs of the full length but they really didn’t get much distribution. I also made another layout for it later and distributed a few copies on tour with Dispensing of False Halos, but ultimately, the most real release is the Discography Steven from Init Records did not too long ago, which has all 10 songs from the full length and the 4 songs from the split with Black Market Fetus.
As far as a mini cdr, I don’t remember it specifically but it doesn’t surprise me that they would be around. Everyone was doing those dumb tiny cdrs back then. Haha
NJ: I think I might actually know of Juan! The original Cross my heart with a knife (called cmhwak for short. real screamo ogs know the cmhwak board) is gone but there's cmhwak 2.0. Sadly it's not active at all lately. Also, that's interesting about Dan from Edict playing drums and keyboards at the same time. It's an idea i had playing in my high school screamo band. Nice to know someone else's band liked that idea
Moving on from In Loving Memory. What led to the idea of Dispensing of False Halos, and how were the ideas in that band different from ILM in terms of songwriting and your overall goals? I'd imagine it was perhaps a bit more mature since you weren't such a young kid.
Brian: DOFH started up with Jordan from ILM wanting to get back to writing more stuff. I remember he would try to write stuff after Tanner quit and nothing was really ILM material. He had gravitated toward a lot more hardcore when it came to writing. They started as Mourning Recluse with a little different lineup, then Rusty from Eclipse of Eden joined on vocals, offering a lot of touring experience, a van and a lot more know-how than the rest of the dudes. They lost their bass player and I took his spot and we got some shit together and went on tour. I think it was winter break of my senior year of high school.
The first dofh 7” was mostly stuff Jordan had had a big part in writing. It was a lot more melodic hardcore than what we ultimately wound up doing. We toured a couple times with Jordan and ultimately wound up parting ways before recording. Will was in Eclipse of Eden with Rusty and was wanting to move from Sioux City so we convinced him to join us. He did like one practice and we left on tour.
NJ: I can certainly tell that DOFH was more hardcore oriented with proper breakdowns. What were some things that you got out of DOFH that you didnt get out of ILM? In terms of experiences and artistic wise?
Brian:I loved singing for a band but really loved playing an instrument. Dofh was so great because I got to write music with some of my best friends and we were done with high school, so we just went on tour as much as possible. It was kind of a drag to not have ILM anymore but dofh felt more like we were doing something professional, at another level.
Dispensing toured non-stop. We played every state but Maine and New Hampshire. My memory gets foggy after the first little bit because it was such a whirlwind. Gas was cheap back then and we didn’t have shit to worry about money wise.. me joe and bill (drummer) lived at our parents houses still and so we would just work part time jobs when we were in town to make money to go on tour again. The band would make small amounts of money and we’d use it to buy better gear or more merch or whatever we needed.
It was really wild those days nobody had cell phones or anything so you’d just get a pre paid phone card to call your parents or girlfriend while we were on the road. I remember leaving for a 72 day tour with $200 and like 3 t shirts. We would not wear any socks or underwear or ever change our pants. Pretty ridiculous thinking back on it. Me n joe would buy slim fast so we didn’t have to eat anything and would warm up ramen noodles at gas stations. 😂
We wanted dofh to be tougher and more metal than we had done in previous bands. Our taste expanded a lot too. We were listening to Neurosis a lot and more metallic hardcore type of stuff. We got to play together so much that we got to create our own sound and I think it was fucking awesome. Our full length is mastered really weird and really deserves a re-master because the material on it is sick. Our split 7” with Calling Gina Clark is the best music I think I’ve ever played on.
NJ: After extensive DIY touring and winging it nonstop for so long, was there ever a point where you felt burned out? I sometimes hear from friends who toured for x months or even years straight that they got burned out on it, and don't do it anymore. It's also weird that you bring up that split because that was my first exposure to DOFH. I have the white vinyl at my mom's still. I'm curious as to what led to the eventual demise of DOFH? Was it the "burn out" that I had mentioned? Or other factors?
Brian: I never got burnt out on it personally. I think it started to wear some of the guys out, but ultimately Getting burnt out wasn’t what killed DOFH, it was really just a bunch of dumb shit. The whole story is personal and I don’t know how much all of the parties involved would want put out there, so I guess you could really say that our lives started to take different paths. Rusty and his wife in Des Moines got divorced and he moved to North Dakota, Joe was ready to go back to school with an eye toward his own future (he is a doctor now) Will I think had grown tired of perpetually being broke and working shit jobs, we had actually parted ways with Bill, who was a childhood friend of Joe and I’s, and we are lucky that we can still call him our friend. Fingers can be pointed, but ultimately Dispensing’s time had come.
NJ: After all that touring and the experiences you had, looking back you can probably say that it ran its course! Now after DOFH, I'm not sure if you played in any other bands so fill me in before the next question
Sometime after your band broke up you got married and now live in Florida and run a vegan deli, which to me is one of the coolest things you can do. I'm fortunate enough to have The Butchers Son right over the bridge in Berkeley CA and it's too good. How did you get into veganism, and what led you on a path to Florida and opening your own shop?
Brian:I’ve done some stuff here and there musically. DOFH broke up right around when I turned 21 in 2004. This is the same year my wife and I started dating. We lived really close to Hairy Marys which was a legendary venue. We hung out there a lot and made friends with all kinds of older Des Moines people. A lot of the dudes there played in some gnarly stoner metal bands and shit. Hunger Pains and Skin of Earth are the most notable. I played in a kind of super group with a bunch of these dudes. 2 basses, 3 guitars. That band was called Great Loss of Life. I played in a black metal band with this dude Jon who is a complete wild man. He made the drums and keyboards on a drum machine. That band was called Wolves of War.
My wife went to Iowa State, so we moved to Ames Iowa for her school. I had been bartending for a little while at this point and managed a British Pub type bar up there. When she graduated we decided we didn’t want to deal with winter anymore so she looked into grad school in warm places.
Dofh really helped us wind up in Florida. Our friend Ricky was in a band called Tyranny of Shaw in Miami. Dispensing played with them and this other band Adore Miridia a lot. We played in Florida a lot, really. Always coming down for festivals and spending weeks at a time down here. I fucking loved Florida and when we decided to move, I hollered at Ricky. He was living in Gainesville, which is where UF is, so we visited him and UF and wound up moving there in 2010. Ricky still is one of the most badass drummers I know and plays drums for a ton of band, most notably Torche. He is also in Caveman Cult and Shitstorm and is probably the most hard working dudes you could ever meet.
When we were in Gainesville I sang for a band called Bedwetter. The name of that band is pretty meh but they were fucking sick. I had to quit, though because they wanted to tour and I just can’t justify taking off time from work and not spending it on vacation with my wife.
Growing up in the scene and stuff when we were younger, you would always know people who were vegan and vegetarian and xxx and stuff. It is all a part of who we are growing up. My wife has been vegan and or vegetarian pretty much as long as we’ve been together, and being vegan in Iowa means you learn to cook or just eat French fries and shit all the time. We have been cooking and developing recipes and making vegan food forever and so when the time finally came to open a place, being vegan not only made the most sense to us, but makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint as well. St Pete has very few 100% vegan places and none of them really do comfort food like the style that we do. Check us out Golden Dinosaurs Vegan Deli
NJ:As a fellow Midwesterner, it always makes me happy to see another person escape it and do cool stuff like you're doing. It's actually pretty inspiring. It's also cool that your networking through hardcore led you to where you're at today.
I think that just about brings all of my curiosities to a close. Is there anything you wanted to add? What's in store for the future for you?
Brian:I don’t have much to add I’ve been long winded enough I’m sure. I don’t really have future plans that don’t involve working on the restaurant non stop. Having my own place has kind of brought me full circle. I think a lot about my younger days playing music and shit. We plastered the bathroom with old show flyers from most of the bands we’ve discussed. I listen to whatever I want all day every day and have really been getting into more music than ever lately. I still have a couple bass guitars but haven’t played in years. I have been itching to get them out, though, so I’d say my music career isn’t over yet
Tampa is a metal as fuck place and I’ve been going to more shows than ever since moving here as well. I’ve also made friends with a lot of adult XVX people which makes me feel young again. Veganism has a youthful aspect to it for me and having our own place is DIY as fuck so I’d say I’m living my best life.
LINKS:
Detailed history of In Loving Memory
Bedwetter98007/
Vegan Eats
Brian: Edict of Milan was cool! Dan who played drums for Examination of the... played drums in Edict and would do songs where he played keyboard and drums at the same time!
We had a few songs of our own that were the screamo type stuff we wanted to write before Tanner joined the band. When he joined, we reworked that stuff a little bit with second guitar, and those are pretty much the songs from the split cassette with Black Market Fetus, a Des Moines crust/thrash legend and some of our great friends. Jen joined around the same time as our second vocalist.
We played a ton of shows and honed our sound and then went to record at this recording studio in Sioux Falls where Spirit and Saqqara and Eclipse of Eden and some other bands had recorded. It was all of our first recording experience (except Tanner) so we were really excited. Everything was recorded live. For some reason I had to do my vocals in the room where the guy was recording
I’m sure that was strange for him.After we had it recorded we never really received much interest in it. We would just burn CDrs and made a layout for them and would sell them at shows. We didn’t wind up being around long enough to have money to press it or anything, so once Tanner quit to do Examination if the... full time, he wanted to press the ILM stuff on vinyl, so he did it on his label 605 records as a split with Exam.
At one point this guy Juan who did that Cross my heart with a Knife website I think wanted to do something to help us and he did like an attempt at remastering it, and printed the layout and made CDs of the full length but they really didn’t get much distribution. I also made another layout for it later and distributed a few copies on tour with Dispensing of False Halos, but ultimately, the most real release is the Discography Steven from Init Records did not too long ago, which has all 10 songs from the full length and the 4 songs from the split with Black Market Fetus.
As far as a mini cdr, I don’t remember it specifically but it doesn’t surprise me that they would be around. Everyone was doing those dumb tiny cdrs back then. Haha
NJ: I think I might actually know of Juan! The original Cross my heart with a knife (called cmhwak for short. real screamo ogs know the cmhwak board) is gone but there's cmhwak 2.0. Sadly it's not active at all lately. Also, that's interesting about Dan from Edict playing drums and keyboards at the same time. It's an idea i had playing in my high school screamo band. Nice to know someone else's band liked that idea
Moving on from In Loving Memory. What led to the idea of Dispensing of False Halos, and how were the ideas in that band different from ILM in terms of songwriting and your overall goals? I'd imagine it was perhaps a bit more mature since you weren't such a young kid.
Brian: DOFH started up with Jordan from ILM wanting to get back to writing more stuff. I remember he would try to write stuff after Tanner quit and nothing was really ILM material. He had gravitated toward a lot more hardcore when it came to writing. They started as Mourning Recluse with a little different lineup, then Rusty from Eclipse of Eden joined on vocals, offering a lot of touring experience, a van and a lot more know-how than the rest of the dudes. They lost their bass player and I took his spot and we got some shit together and went on tour. I think it was winter break of my senior year of high school.
The first dofh 7” was mostly stuff Jordan had had a big part in writing. It was a lot more melodic hardcore than what we ultimately wound up doing. We toured a couple times with Jordan and ultimately wound up parting ways before recording. Will was in Eclipse of Eden with Rusty and was wanting to move from Sioux City so we convinced him to join us. He did like one practice and we left on tour.
NJ: I can certainly tell that DOFH was more hardcore oriented with proper breakdowns. What were some things that you got out of DOFH that you didnt get out of ILM? In terms of experiences and artistic wise?
Brian:I loved singing for a band but really loved playing an instrument. Dofh was so great because I got to write music with some of my best friends and we were done with high school, so we just went on tour as much as possible. It was kind of a drag to not have ILM anymore but dofh felt more like we were doing something professional, at another level.
Dispensing toured non-stop. We played every state but Maine and New Hampshire. My memory gets foggy after the first little bit because it was such a whirlwind. Gas was cheap back then and we didn’t have shit to worry about money wise.. me joe and bill (drummer) lived at our parents houses still and so we would just work part time jobs when we were in town to make money to go on tour again. The band would make small amounts of money and we’d use it to buy better gear or more merch or whatever we needed.
It was really wild those days nobody had cell phones or anything so you’d just get a pre paid phone card to call your parents or girlfriend while we were on the road. I remember leaving for a 72 day tour with $200 and like 3 t shirts. We would not wear any socks or underwear or ever change our pants. Pretty ridiculous thinking back on it. Me n joe would buy slim fast so we didn’t have to eat anything and would warm up ramen noodles at gas stations. 😂
We wanted dofh to be tougher and more metal than we had done in previous bands. Our taste expanded a lot too. We were listening to Neurosis a lot and more metallic hardcore type of stuff. We got to play together so much that we got to create our own sound and I think it was fucking awesome. Our full length is mastered really weird and really deserves a re-master because the material on it is sick. Our split 7” with Calling Gina Clark is the best music I think I’ve ever played on.
NJ: After extensive DIY touring and winging it nonstop for so long, was there ever a point where you felt burned out? I sometimes hear from friends who toured for x months or even years straight that they got burned out on it, and don't do it anymore. It's also weird that you bring up that split because that was my first exposure to DOFH. I have the white vinyl at my mom's still. I'm curious as to what led to the eventual demise of DOFH? Was it the "burn out" that I had mentioned? Or other factors?
Brian: I never got burnt out on it personally. I think it started to wear some of the guys out, but ultimately Getting burnt out wasn’t what killed DOFH, it was really just a bunch of dumb shit. The whole story is personal and I don’t know how much all of the parties involved would want put out there, so I guess you could really say that our lives started to take different paths. Rusty and his wife in Des Moines got divorced and he moved to North Dakota, Joe was ready to go back to school with an eye toward his own future (he is a doctor now) Will I think had grown tired of perpetually being broke and working shit jobs, we had actually parted ways with Bill, who was a childhood friend of Joe and I’s, and we are lucky that we can still call him our friend. Fingers can be pointed, but ultimately Dispensing’s time had come.
NJ: After all that touring and the experiences you had, looking back you can probably say that it ran its course! Now after DOFH, I'm not sure if you played in any other bands so fill me in before the next question
Sometime after your band broke up you got married and now live in Florida and run a vegan deli, which to me is one of the coolest things you can do. I'm fortunate enough to have The Butchers Son right over the bridge in Berkeley CA and it's too good. How did you get into veganism, and what led you on a path to Florida and opening your own shop?Brian:I’ve done some stuff here and there musically. DOFH broke up right around when I turned 21 in 2004. This is the same year my wife and I started dating. We lived really close to Hairy Marys which was a legendary venue. We hung out there a lot and made friends with all kinds of older Des Moines people. A lot of the dudes there played in some gnarly stoner metal bands and shit. Hunger Pains and Skin of Earth are the most notable. I played in a kind of super group with a bunch of these dudes. 2 basses, 3 guitars. That band was called Great Loss of Life. I played in a black metal band with this dude Jon who is a complete wild man. He made the drums and keyboards on a drum machine. That band was called Wolves of War.
My wife went to Iowa State, so we moved to Ames Iowa for her school. I had been bartending for a little while at this point and managed a British Pub type bar up there. When she graduated we decided we didn’t want to deal with winter anymore so she looked into grad school in warm places.
Dofh really helped us wind up in Florida. Our friend Ricky was in a band called Tyranny of Shaw in Miami. Dispensing played with them and this other band Adore Miridia a lot. We played in Florida a lot, really. Always coming down for festivals and spending weeks at a time down here. I fucking loved Florida and when we decided to move, I hollered at Ricky. He was living in Gainesville, which is where UF is, so we visited him and UF and wound up moving there in 2010. Ricky still is one of the most badass drummers I know and plays drums for a ton of band, most notably Torche. He is also in Caveman Cult and Shitstorm and is probably the most hard working dudes you could ever meet.
When we were in Gainesville I sang for a band called Bedwetter. The name of that band is pretty meh but they were fucking sick. I had to quit, though because they wanted to tour and I just can’t justify taking off time from work and not spending it on vacation with my wife.
Growing up in the scene and stuff when we were younger, you would always know people who were vegan and vegetarian and xxx and stuff. It is all a part of who we are growing up. My wife has been vegan and or vegetarian pretty much as long as we’ve been together, and being vegan in Iowa means you learn to cook or just eat French fries and shit all the time. We have been cooking and developing recipes and making vegan food forever and so when the time finally came to open a place, being vegan not only made the most sense to us, but makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint as well. St Pete has very few 100% vegan places and none of them really do comfort food like the style that we do. Check us out Golden Dinosaurs Vegan Deli
NJ:As a fellow Midwesterner, it always makes me happy to see another person escape it and do cool stuff like you're doing. It's actually pretty inspiring. It's also cool that your networking through hardcore led you to where you're at today.
I think that just about brings all of my curiosities to a close. Is there anything you wanted to add? What's in store for the future for you?
Brian:I don’t have much to add I’ve been long winded enough I’m sure. I don’t really have future plans that don’t involve working on the restaurant non stop. Having my own place has kind of brought me full circle. I think a lot about my younger days playing music and shit. We plastered the bathroom with old show flyers from most of the bands we’ve discussed. I listen to whatever I want all day every day and have really been getting into more music than ever lately. I still have a couple bass guitars but haven’t played in years. I have been itching to get them out, though, so I’d say my music career isn’t over yet
Tampa is a metal as fuck place and I’ve been going to more shows than ever since moving here as well. I’ve also made friends with a lot of adult XVX people which makes me feel young again. Veganism has a youthful aspect to it for me and having our own place is DIY as fuck so I’d say I’m living my best life.
LINKS:
Detailed history of In Loving Memory
Bedwetter98007/
Vegan Eats
That was fun to read. we (sinking steps rising eyes) played with DOFH many times, a few in Orlando! Great memories.
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