Brian Dewan is an artist whose vision takes form equally well in many media, including art, music, audio-visual performances, decorative painting, furniture design, poetry and musical instrument design. He has produced two albums of songs and concertized extensively as a solo artist, as well as having performed in various collaborations and as a sideman. He lives in upstate New York.
Music
His own music roughly breaks into two categories, vocal music and electronic music. His vocal music is of a sort that tends to reference folk music, hymns, century-old popular music and rock music. His two full length albums, "Brian Dewan Tells the Story" (1993, Bar None Records) and "The Operating Theatre" (1998, Instinct Records) find him in this mode. His songs often contemplate the nature of submission to authority, and often take the form of a tale. They are by turns humoristic and contemplative. In live performance, he most often accompanies his singing with an electric zither of his own invention, outfitted with eight humbucker pickups and 88 strings, sometimes piped through a leslie cabinet or guitar effects pedals. He also plays a variety of other instruments, including autoharp, organ and accordion. His electronic music, either solo or in collaboration with his cousin, Leon Dewan, tends to be more sprawling and free-form, often evoking the raw sounds of early electronic music of a modernist bent.
Other artists and projects he has worked with include They Might Be Giants, Blue Man Group, Sesame Street, Flaming Fire, Jed Davis, Loser's Lounge and The Musical Stones of Skiddaw. He is a member of the Raymond Scott Orchestrette, a group dedicated to reinterpreting Scott's compositions, and appeared on their 2002 album Pushbutton Parfait. He also sings and performs with the Roosevelt Island Singers.
Visual and Multi-Media Art
Brian Dewan's series of "I Can See" filmstrips use the technology of the educational filmstrips from the mid-twentieth century as a point of departure for imaginative personal invention.
Each panel features one of Dewan's fanciful drawings, usually skillfully rendered in magic marker. The images are accompanied by elabortate soundtracks in which Dewan is heard, adopting a deadpan narrator's voice, and playing various musical instruments to create a different miniature soundtrack for each panel of the filmstrip. When it is time for the projectionist to advance the strip to the next panel, Dewan's voice is typically heard singing 'bong' in close imitation of the noise traditionally used for this purpose. The themes of the strips often seem as though they could have been taken from actual educational strips -- Grimms Fairy Tales, Civic Pride, a short history of the Organ, Bibical stories have all served as conceits for the filmstrips. The strips tend to take many free-associative liberties and are by turns satirical and surreal, often whimsical and sometimes touching on serious themes. "Before the White Man Came" seems as though it might be about colonialism or racism, but the 'White Man' of the filmstrip starts to seem more likely to be a folkloric evil spirit, with a charged and ambiguous relationship to racial stereotypes.
In 2003, Dewan created an installation at the Pierogi 2000 Gallery in Brooklyn which transformed the appearance of the gallery into that of an American classroom from an indeterminate bygone era, perhaps from the 1940s. He presented his filmstrips regularly during the course of the monthlong exhibition, to audience members seated in old schooldesks.
Dewan has created a series of what he terms "shrines," constructed of wood and other materials, such as light bulbs, clocks, photographs and bottles. Perhaps the best known shrine is the one appearing on the cover of They Might Be Giant's "Lincoln" album. The shrines range from about one to six feet tall and often evoke New England church architecture with their lean geometrical spires. While the word 'shrine' might connote a site created for devotion to a spiritual entity, Dewan's shrines seem to exist not as a conduit for worship, but as playful aesthetic objects.
Dewan created a number of shrines for New Year's Eve parties and performances, and those shrines often have some sort of illumination which could be turned on at midnight. At least one had a drink-dispenser built into it. The cabinetry he built for his recent series of electronic instruments, created in collaboration with his cousin, Leon Dewan, often continue some of the visual ideas behind the shrines. His New Year's Eve shrine ritual involves completing the shrine only moments before midnight.
Brian Dewan currently works with his cousin Leon Dewan under the name Dewanatron. Together they have designed, and built a series of synthethisers in custom cabinetry, often reminiscent of either New England churches or 1940's school house architecture. The instruments create sounds evocative of the early electronic music. The instruments were exhibited and concertized at the Pierogi 2000 gallery in Brooklyn in December 2005, and at Pierogi Liepig in Germany in April 2006.
He has created album art for others, such as the cover of David Byrne's "Uh-Oh", They Might Be Giant's "Lincoln" and a record by Neutral Milk Hotel.
Quite the tunecrafter you are...kind of a modern day Raymond Scott meets Simeon of Silver Apples with a dash of Brian Eno and Lothar of Lothar & The Hand People (and the guy from 10cc who also makes odd little electronic instruments) and puts all these contraptions into some crafty lyrical tunes...yep, you're doing what I should be doing...building them and playing them.
Hey Brian. I'll always remember chatting with you when you opened for TMBG at the University of Rhode Island back in the 90's. You were so surprised I knew your lyrics and wanted my CD autographed.
Be surprised no more, sir. You're a Renaissance man and undoubtedly a genius. You can scour and scrub my basement sink anytime.
P.S. I'd love to see a CD release of all your old demos - "Civil War", "Battle Hymn of the Republic", etc.
I love your music, Brian Dewan. If I ever get married, I want Feel The Brain to be played in the ceremony. It rocks. I evangelize you far and wide to the best of my ability. The campaign songs are excellent, maybe you should add those videos here?? Someday, please come out to California!
