Writing, playing, and recording music is a huge part of my life dominating almost all of my free time. So much that it has become almost like a second full time job for me. Just about every moment of the day I’m creating new music in my head just waiting to be recorded or taking care of the business end of things like managing, marketing, etc.. It’s something I thoroughly enjoy and hope to continue for a very long time. There’s nothing more rewarding then having someone really get something out of my music.

The Early Years

Using my paper route money and a lay-away plan that seemed to take forever to pay off, I bought my first guitar at the local music shop at the age of 11; a $400 Guild Explorer. In middle school my band was scheduled to play a song for the annual talent show. To our devastation, only 3 days before, our drummer was inflicted with the chicken pox, giving us no choice but to cancel our gig. Our band deteriorated from there, never fully recovering. Tough break for us.

During high school my influences included bands like Megadeth, Metallica, Kreator, Fates Warning, Slayer, etc., so my playing and writing style started to reflect these bands. A drummer friend of mine and I formed a band called Fourth Reich, to which the responsibilities of lyrics and music writing fell completely on me. Fourth Reich never took off, but it was a good learning experience and led me to discovering I had a talent for lyric writing. After high school the real world smacked me in the face, and aspiration of success in the music industry faded quickly. Practicing my guitar skills and writing music seemed less important than my general survival. My guitar would gather dust for several years following.

A93 Evolution

For a long time I had convinced myself that I no longer had time to dedicate to music. In 2003 I began to relearn what I had lost and started to play, write, and exorcise my musical creativity. My interest in music had shifted a bit over time and included the Industrial genre; bands like NIN, KMFDM, Skinny Puppy, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, Ministry and more. Mixing that industrial sound with that of my early metal influences was what I was interested in developing for myself.

With the aid of Apple’s brand new music recording application, GarageBand, I was able to achieve things that just weren’t possible to do in the past for me. Instead of having to rely on the skills and availability of other musicians to manifest my musical visions, I could now achieve all of it through the use of this truly powerful and innovative program. Frustrated that my projects were lacking vocals, I began to experimenting with my own voice. Not quite confident in my vocal skills and sound, all of my earlier vocal recordings were mixed very low and often buried behind effects and other instruments to hide my shortcomings. As my voice evolved, I became more confident in my ability and even developed a unique sound that has been described by some as fitting somewhere between Ozzy and Layne Staley.

My online personality, Agrippa93, which I originally used as my username on the online game called Mage Wars (geek), became the name of the music project and eventually the alias I would assume as a musician. Soon I was releasing songs like Open Wound, Fear (now Face of Fear), and Scorched Earth to the online community of independent musicians and getting positive reviews from my peers.

In the following years my style would develop into a unique and instantly recognizable sound, which would include heavy guitar riffs accompanied by driving electronic drums and programmed industrial sequences. My catalog of songs grew larger to include View From Here, Cold Steel, Untied, Priest of Thebes, A Profound Realization, Forgotten Will, and many others. More polished performances, recordings, and mixes came later and would be the last of my solo material ending an era for A93: Isolation, The Rain, Equilibrium, and No Happy Ending.

The Band

In 2007, to supplement my income, I worked a part time job for a restaurant, where I met 2 experienced guitarist, Myk and Carlos, who both had very similar tastes in music as my own.

I’m very protective of my projects and, at times, a bit of a control freak when it comes to my music. I was content with the direction I was taking Agrippa93, but I felt the music needed some fresh guitar ideas tapped from other musicians. In the summer of 2008, I offered to record some of Myk and Carlos’s ideas for their own projects in exchange for them contributing guitar work to some of my songs in progress. With this agreement, we began meeting in my studio once a week getting to work on both projects.

When the collaborative project City of Pyramids was complete, it was clear to me that we had a good working system which produced powerful results. Sacrificing some control over my music, I offered Myk and Carlos the opportunity to be contributing members making Agrippa93 a band. I dropped the “93″ from my personal persona keeping the already well established Agrippa93 band name intact. The band had been established and our goals for an album release were set.

Agrippa93 – 2008 Lineup:

Agrippa – Vocals, guitars, bass and bass programming, synths, sequences, keyboards, and drum programming.
Myk Dugan – Lead and rhythm guitars, and back up vocals.
Carlos Cabrero – Lead and rhythm guitars

By February 2009, our debut album, Beneath the Cypress Tree, had been completely recorded and was on deck for post production. With plans for delivering our music to a live audience the three of us spent all of our studio time rehearsing our set list, and began the search to fill the roles for bassist and drummer. Without warning, Carlos left the band to pursue another career, halting any plans we had to play live. Rehearsals ceased and it became depressing knowing that it would be such a huge task to now fill 3 vacant spots in the band. It seemed like we took a giant step backward after making so much progress over the last 10 months.

Scouring every possible source available, I searched to find the right musicians for A93. The search led me to Galen Bessette, a guitarist with skills in other instruments including bass and vocals, who also had a background in industrial and metal. Galen joined the band, which led us to resumed our rehearsals. During this time our album Beneath the Cypress Tree was released for digital distribution on Amazon, iTunes, Rhapsody, and many others.

On the recommendation from a friend, drummer Alex Richard and bassist Joe Deep soon joined us solidifying the lineup.

Agrippa93 – 2009 Lineup:

Agrippa – Vocals, synths, sequence programming, keyboards, and piano.
Myk Dugan – Lead and rhythm guitars, and back up vocals.
Galen Bessette – Lead and rhythm guitars.
Alex Richard – Drums.
Myk Dugan – Bass.

After months of rehearsal in the studio we finally hit the stage for the 1st time as a full 5 piece band at a venue I had set up under Sickle Pation Studio featuring 3 other bands for support. Still coming down from the high of our 1st show, that week we got radio play being featured on WCCC’s Homegrown. With another show lined up at the Webster Underground the following weekend we were riding the momentum and feeling on top of the world.

The Webster show turned out to be a great disappointment due to poor management of the event and poor stage sound from the engineer resulting in a less than perfect performance and a dwindling moral. That and growing animosity between some of the band members flaring up throughout the night lead to the crumbling of this A93 line up, which after the dust had settled, left only Alex and myself standing.

Rather than dwell in what could have been I saw this as an opportunity start things over with a new crew and develop a new sound for Agrippa93. Guitarist Scott Williams, a long time friend and someone who I had worked with on the A-Lab song Ashes, offered to take on the job and be a major writing force in the band. If you’ve ever heard him play or even just talk about music, you would  be a complete moron to turn down his offer. Scott just happened to be teaching Will, Alex’s brother and an already very competent guitarist, and suggested bringing him on board too.

The four of us are forging ahead and already turning out great music. The Agrippa93 sound is being redefined and the level of musicianship in the band has been raised high above previous incarnations. The only missing piece is a bassist, however that position will be filled shortly.

Agrippa93 – Current Lineup:

Agrippa – Vocals, synths, sequence programming, keyboards, and piano.
Scott Williams – Lead and rhythm guitars.
Will Richards – Lead and rhythm guitars.
Alex Richard – Drums.

Presently we are writing new songs and retooling old ones to gear up to play shows and  very excite to deliver our new sound to our audience. We are also working on our 2nd album with many songs already near complete and at this rate I predict a late spring 2010 release.

As the band Agrippa93, we don’t have a very large fan base right now, however, with time and more exposure we will reach more people who will appreciate our sound and love our music as much as we love creating it.

The Expanded Universe

There are great benefits to working in a band environment with each musician contributing their part to bring about the finished piece. It offers checks and balances, structure, and keeping things in the right direction. The trade off to sharing writing roles, of course, is losing some creative control to compromise. This is something that I experienced with A93 and it led me to branch off and embark on a solo project to allow myself full creative control. Back to the “Control Freak Agrippa”.

In addition to Agrippa93, I also work on my solo project called Agrippa’s Laboratory, where I can express my experimental ideas and concepts without boundaries, genre restrictions, or compromise. It also gives me the opportunity to work with other talented musicians, melding their styles with mine, for example the song Ashes of which I collaborated with phenomenally talented guitarist Scott Williams before he became a member of A93.

With A93’s shift of direction to a more serious future in album recording format and live performances, I gained focus and concrete goals toward a very rewarding and even marketable end product. The down side to that is that I could no longer immediately share my music with listeners without the consequences of possible future income loss. Agrippa’s Laboratory is an outlet for me to write, record, and produce my music and put it out there in circulation to land on listener’s ears as each song is finished, as I did prior to A93’s present goals. My “A-Lab” experiments have been very rewarding for me.

Sickle Pation Productions

After producing, engineering, and mastering the Agrippa93 album, I had gain a tremendous amount of experience developing my studio skills.Taking on so many roles in Agrippa93 such as producer, engineer, public relations, promoter, etc has helped broadened my knowledge of the music industry. Always looking for the next project to take on, I decided I wanted to expand my umbrella of developed services to producing other musicians, the 1st being Alex and Will’s other band Imperium Mortis for their demo CD. I’m hoping this will open the door for future opportunities and help solidify a career in music production.

The Here and Now

Now is a great time to be an independent musician, despite what record companies might say. The power of creativity and rights are shifting in favor of musicians, empowering them to take things into their own hands and be responsible for their own product, like I have done.

With modern technology and new media markets, the game is constantly morphing the music industry. Consumer affordable recording equipment lets artist create and produce music in their own home studios. It’s becoming a lot more desirable to be an independent musician than it is to be signed by a major record label. Musicians are having to take on the roles on manager, promoter, designer, engineer, etc. The chances of becoming the next super star band are slim, but you can make a reasonably modest annual income from music. Although we are no where near that point at this moment, it’s certainly something we’re striving for.

The key to success is enrolling others in supporting your ideas. Having people around that will support you and help you find your dreams is one of the most valuable assets for any indie musician. Like it or not, music is a product and it has to be marketed and the most powerful marketing tool for a starving band is word of mouth. It worked for Metallica.