The Dives

We know this is usually the place for “formal” bios, but we’re here to make friends, so we’re going to tell you who we really are…and we’re not going to sugar coat it.

We started in 2016 as a 4 piece blues-based rock band. We hit the ground running with a 4 song EP and an amazing opportunity to tour North America and the UK. We played in front of tens of thousands (seriously) people in the UK. We played the 02 Arena in London, the SSE Hydro in Glasgow and BarclayCard Arena in Birmingham. The Aquarian featured us on their cover and raved (that’s right, we said it – they raved) “Songs are everything. And The Dives have them.” It was amazing!!! And it was obviously a great learning experience. Small stages to intimate crowds and arena stages to masses. It was a dream year.

And then at the end of 2017, our founding member decided to move back to the West Coast to pursue a new musical route. If we’re honest (and we’re all friends here so why shouldn’t we be?), we were a really good band with a lot of promise – BUT he was the reason we got most of our opportunities. He’s the very talented son of a very famous musician, as we all know, it’s a lot easier to get attention quickly when people discovered that lineage.

Suddenly, we were at a standstill. Not only were we personally missing our friend and brother but, professionally, we lost our lead singer and rhythm guitarist. Going from a 4 piece band to a 3 piece band with a new vocalist, we’d sound like a cover band performing our own music. So we started writing again. We struggled to create the same sound. We were certain the fans we had acquired wouldn’t accept us with a different sound (we were insecure about branching out of our comfort zone.) Obviously that didn’t work. Very simply, we were writing differently. Ahhh – suddenly it hit us – we were writing differently because we started respecting the elements we now had in place. And we organically found our new sound.

And now, as a trio and without the talking point of lineage, our new sound provided us the opportunity to open for The Plain White Tees and The Wallflowers and we secured a NYC club residency where we were able to hone our live performance – and then it hit (picture the snowstorm in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer but with a pandemic instead of snow and no Rudolph to save the day). Like every actor and musician as well as audiences, we’re suffering the locked venue doors. But, also like so many entertainers, we put the time to good use. It not only gave us time to record our new music which will be released in 2021 but made us pivot and stop to rethink everything we were doing because, traditionally, “that’s the way it’s done”.

Creating our music has only been one part of what’s gotten us through this challenging time. We’ve also had a chance to connect with people – though “chance” is not really accurate. During this time, we’ve been hungry for connection and, like so many, we’ve actually reached out to make those connections. We’ve made new friends, found new artists, seen and heard examples of the great strength, creativity and humanity people have discovered in themselves and others as we all struggle to overcome the difficulties brought upon us in 2020.

Hit us up and tell us your story!

#talktous #desperatelylonely #missingyourfaces