journey
where I’m at
My name is Dave Von Bieker, and right now I am playing music because I have to. Not in a bad way – it’s just that every time I try and turn it off or ignore it, it haunts me and hunts me until it wins. So I give up. I play music, I write music, and I like it. I hope you do too.
I am a follower of Christ who writes music, and my faith leaks into my writing, inspires my writing, and often drives my writing forward. It is God who made me creative. God who gives me song and rhyme. I try and pay Him back a bit for that.
I hope my music entertains, changes and challenges all who hear. I hope it somehow feeds your soul too. A little piece of me, broken off and passed around.
Enjoy.
where I’ve been
I’ve always loved music. I remember buying my first tape – Michael Jackson’s “Bad” from Zellers for about $8. And I never looked back.
My earliest songs were embarrasing forays into rap music with my cousins. I am one of the 12 people who actually had this keyboard called the “rapmaster” or something like that. About 15 keys and a little scratchpad on there. It was enough to get me hooked.
My musical meanderings really began in high school – buying my first “series A” electric guitar at a pawn shop for $180. Still have it. Still love it. I got frustrated with theory and just wanted to be able to play along with the music I loved.
God bless the power chord. It allowed me to sound like crap – but good enough to play along. And I played along a lot. Over time, I developd other chords (“real” chords!) but, I still come back to my first love often enough. And I still have trouble with anything “augmented”, “diminished” and the like. It didn’t seem worth it to play Greensleeves at 20 BPM, so lessons were a fairly short adventure for me.
I have played in a few bands – most notably and successfully Audience of One, with my good friend Justin. Justin and I continued to dabble for a few years after, and to write together. We performed under the name Gerald, and the intensely creative “Justin and Dave”. I look at that as a white flag in the “all band names suck” battle.