Dennis Driscoll

Northwest singer/songwriter Dennis Driscoll merges the plain-spoken earthiness of Woody Guthrie and the innocent exuberance of Buddy Holly from earlier eras with the confessional intimacy of Cat Power and the quirky complexity of Neutral Milk Hotel from more recent times, yielding a whimsical brand of folk-pop that resists simple labels. Born in the late 1970s, Driscoll spent his formative years in the coastal towns of Ilwaco, WA and Astoria, OR, where he started performing his own songs, creating cartoons, and hosting a program on the community station KMUN; that platform introduced him to figures such as Pete Seeger, Nick Drake, Jad Fair, and Yo La Tengo, all of whom shaped his distinctive approach.

In the late ’90s he began recording and performing with greater focus, and a 1998 appearance at a Knw-Yr-Own showcase in Olympia, WA resulted in his first release, Is It Love?, captured across sessions in Ilwaco, Astoria, and Olympia’s Dub Narcotic Studio under the Microphones’ Phil Elvrum; Knw-Yr-Own issued the full-length cassette in July of that year, featuring contributions from Elvrum, Joseph Bradshaw, Aerick Mackintosh, Rachael Douglas, and Josiah Todd, and demand quickly outstripped supply. A few years later, after his third album appeared, Little Pad reissued the material on CD with bonus tracks.

Talent Show put out his second full-length, the 70-minute, 31-song Hello Dennis Driscoll, in 1999; Driscoll and Phan Nguyen handled production on recordings made between August 1998 and June 1999 in Olympia, where he was then attending college, with Bradshaw, engineer Brooks Martin, Dub Narcotic Sound System’s Heather Dunn, and Chris Sutton (one half of the funk-oriented duo C.O.C.O.) among the many local participants. In addition to standard guitar, bass, and drums, the album incorporated melodica, trumpet, ukulele, violin, and cello. That year “I Like It” appeared on Yo Yo Recordings’ Projector compilation, and the following year “Valentine” surfaced on Love Tape Love’s Hootenholler cassette; Driscoll also performed alongside artists including Little Wings (Kyle Field) and Laura Veirs.

Between 2001 and 2002 his songs continued to surface on independent compilations such as Knw-Yr-Own’s Remote Wing (“Silly Girl”), Eighty North Records’ Lullaby Lullaby (“Saturday Morning,” “Lullaby, Lullaby”), Talent Show’s Olympia (“Secret Admirer,” “Maureen Halloween”), Red Square Recording’s Invited to Dinner (“Fall in Love”), Heavenly Pop Hits’ Hit Music Only (“Tell Me Why”), Cody Records’ Not Songs, But Anthems (“Daisy May”), and Little Pad’s Secret Home Party 7” (“Maureen Farrell”). He contributed vocals to the Microphones’ “I Can’t Believe You Actually Died” (Coming in Second) and toured with DNSS and Mecca Normal. Later that year K Records released his wistful third album, Voices in the Fog, produced by the label’s Calvin Johnson (also of DNSS); Mirah, DJ K.O. from IQU, and DNSS members Dunn and Sutton joined other Olympia musicians on the sessions, while comic artist and musician Dame Darcy (Meatcake) supplied the striking black-and-white cover illustration. That summer Driscoll toured domestically and internationally behind the K debut, received his bachelor’s degree from Evergreen, and founded the label You Can Have It All.