Jesse has an eclectic ear for music, and enjoys many styles from folk, to jazz, to rock and hard rock/metal to progressive and more experimental forms of rock music. He grew up with such bands as Dillon, Donovan, Elton John, Three Dog Night, Al Di Meola, Yes, Zeppelin, and probably was the most influenced by and became an avid collector of Frank Zappa, and related music. He now enjoys more of a metal-toned palette, listening to bands in the Progressive and Metal areas: Opeth, Dream Theater, Enchant, Marillion, Porcupine Tree, and Mars Volta sphere.
Growing up in Arizona: the Verde Valley near Sedona, and in Flagstaff in the late 1960s, Jesse began his music journey playing drums and percussion in Junior High, and later he attending the Verde Valley and Mingus Union High Schools, where he continued to play drums informally at various gigs. Later, after school, he moved to Phoenix to pursue his artistic and construction career paths. His early music endeavors could be said to have culminated in the late 80s at an informal jam at Jamelia Farms in Virginia, where he met up with Paul Sears (killer drummer for the Muffins) and Stanley Whitaker (guitarist of Happy the Man).
Now a general contactor in Mountainair, NM Jesse spends his time helping his friends, and working his ass off, on his unlimited construction, civic, and art projects. He can usually be found in his studio on main St. Mountainair, where he has room to pursue his various Wood, Metal, Art, and Music proclivities. On really good days he can be found jamming with Dennis and the Dissidents: at the helm of his Yamaha drum-kit!
Dennis Fulfer
Dennis was born in Yokosuka, Japan and was raised in Imperial Beach, CA. He moved to New Mexico to get away from it all in 1994 and has lived in Mountainair ever since. He says, Getting away from all the mainstream lifestyles has really enabled me to grow into a unique individual ,musically as well as personally, in a way that is impossible in any urban or semi-urban environment. A person cant help but to be psychologically influenced by the things going on in their environment. By eliminating all mainstream influences (such as avoiding radio and TV) you free yourself of the homogenous burden of what everyone else is doing and your true self begins to come out. Places such as Mountainair is a great incubator for such a transformation! He also says, Being a marketing major, Ive experienced first hand through my training how to affect peoples behaviors through media and psychological persuasion. When you see whats going on from the inside, you can defend yourself from the outside.
Although Dennis made music since he was a wee lad, banging beats with his mothers chopsticks on rattan furniture while listening to ELO, Van Halen and AC/DC, Dennis officially began studying music at the age of 13. I wanted to be a drummer. We could never afford to buy drums when I was younger. A friend and I always talked about learning how to play and forming a band. He happened to get a bass for Christmas and in a rush to catch up, I got a guitar a few weeks later (guitars are much cheaper than drums.) My dad had a stack of guitar instruction books and Ive just hammered away through them. Ironically, choosing guitar was an act of desperation! I still have a passion for drums but feel I have the most expressive creativity on guitar. Dennis has played in various bands through his 21 years of playing. Punk, Hair Metal, Blues, Freeform Jazz, New Age, etc...Progressive Rock and Cognitive Dissidents is where he is happiest.
Dennis spends most of his time with his wife Kristy and son, Chuck. He received his Bachelors in Business Administration in Marketing in May of 2006. He works as a Realtor in Mountainair and serves as vice-chair on the Mountainair Planning Commission. Besides playing music, his interests include Photography, Woodworking, Web Designing, Landscape Designing, and learning new things.
Damien Peralta
A Natural Born Hell-Raiser, Damien.....
Jeff Stillion
Needs to give me his bio!
Timothy Wyllie
Timothy grew up in England and moved to America in his early twenties. After traveling and living all over the States and Canada, he settled in New York City, before moving to New Mexico in 1990. He was raised in a musical household, his mother playing both the classical Spanish guitar and the harpsichord. She also had a deep love, surprisingly strong for a respectable English lady, of American Southern Blues and the gypsy guitar of Django Reinhardt.
Borrowing his mothers Spanish guitar Timothy started learning to play at the age of 12. He struggled to master the three necessary chords and was soon playing with what was known in England as a skiffle group. Progressing to a modern jazz quartet in his twenties, he quickly realized his limitations as a musician and decided to focus on the visual arts. He formed and performed in The Version, a rock band active in Toronto in the early 70s, co-writing their many songs and finally producing an album that, although well-mastered on the first digital board in Canada, was never widely distributed. More recently, Timothys interest has lain in the unexpected ecstasies of spontaneous, extemporaneous, freeform jazz and he has been playing guitar for the pure joy of it with The Bozon Band, an occasional gathering of like-minded musicians, whether it be in New York, in London, in Australia, or, in Mountainair. He has also produced two CDs of spoken word pieces with the master-sampler, Jim Wilson, under the title 'The Path of the Rainbow Serpent'. Playing rhythm guitar now with Cognitive Dissidents is both challenging and exhilarating and is allowing Timothy to explore yet another musical approach.
An interspecies researcher, Timothy has published four books and is a frequent speaker at international conferences. A trained architect, he lives in a house of his own design in the High Desert foothills of the Manzano Mountains and is completing work on his fifth book, The Helianx Proposition, to be published, hopefully, in 2007.
