If it’s okay with you guys, I’d like to share some of my favorite Dean stories and pictures on this page. Some stories from before The Project started but mostly I wish to chronicle The Tales of The Dean Project.

The Dean Project operated from two locations. Charlottetown, PEI and Toronto, Ontario. I had moved to Toronto from Charlottetown in 2008 and Dean would bounce between the two cities until 2013, when the you-know-what happened. This would prove to be a very demanding set-up for any writing and touring creative entity. Especially one that had a commitment to playing the drums on a 3-foot-tall plastic nutcracker. However, we weren’t going to let anything stand between us and the grimy stages and dive bars from all over this great nation. In retrospect, all the effort we put into playing for no pay was what gave us that sense of a pay-off. Like, “We fucking did it. They said we couldn’t but we did!”. Even playing a local open mic was a big deal to us, because it always felt like getting-the-band-back-together. It always had that spark. We were ALWAYS excited. Every show would keep us awake, talking and smoking on the balcony until the sun came up. Those talks are what we valued most. It’s where to devised our schemes. It’s where we could be 100% ourselves without fear of outside infiltration. We liked to keep our philosophies to ourselves. We had a Dean Project way. That way would not have happen without those frequent and cherished balcony chats.

The point of this post is to come clean. Because during our “run” that was NEVER the story. The truth was the plague. If anyone knew anything real, the mystique would have be blown. We always had an angle. Always. When Dean would inevitably move back to PEI what could we say? Surely the truth would be too boring. So, insert angle here.

I want to tell you some of my favorite truth-bends here. [Comment if you remember/fell for them. Also, I forget most of them, so feel free to ask about anything specific if it pops up]

Of course when Dean went home, I kept all the live bookings and would tell audiences he broke his leg or that he was in drug rehab. His leg was always okay. He was just at home, being lazy. The real Dean wouldn’t touch a drug, even a Tylenol, if you paid him. (I sort of felt bad for the people that sent him get-well cards.) There was another time I told people he left to learn the ancient craft of the luchadore. That one was less believable and in retrospect I’m surprised no one called us out.

Typically, I’m a very open and honest kinda guy who preaches the value of those morals. Dean… was not. What we did together was for the art. What we did together was for a mutual love of music and performance. I think the stark differences in our personalities is what helped finish the illusion we were out to create.

That illusion may be a thing of the past. But the name The Dean Project can live forever. It’s my job to ensure that it does. Hopefully telling these stories will keep Dean’s spirit present during this rocky portion of the journey.

Thanks, guys. Have a great weekend.

Dan