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Artist
Arron Dean
12+ albums
Cadillac SkyLost in the TreesAlan Pownallmegafaunjames apollo
about
Meet the musically and geographically nomadic Arron Dean. The South Africa-via-Brooklyn songsmith has kept several homes and musical identities in his lifetime, but only on the full-length MPLS does Dean showcase a unique and intimate sonic persona. Raised on a small farm in an area called Knoppieslaagte outside of Johannesburg, amid the country’s political upheaval, Arron followed his muse stateside to play jazz in Boston. Disheartened by the general apathy people have to the genre, Dean started again from scratch in New York, reorienting himself with a punk-rock band quickly began packing clubs and partying their way across the Lower East Side. Meanwhile, he earned his keep working myriad jobs, from running a youth hostel to mopping recording-studio floors in exchange for the chance to write music for advertisements. But after a few years the audiences at shows dwindled and opportunities waned as the band drank away their potential. The band met their inauspicious end when half of the band members were fired from the bar where they all worked. Deciding it was time for a change of scenery, they made plans to relocate to Minneapolis, where our story begins again. But only Dean and one other member managed to follow through, the others staying behind in part due the same drug and alcohol problems they hoped to outrun. He became bent on making a real change. “When we got to Minnesota I grabbed my acoustic guitar and started writing the most sincere music I’d ever written. I w
