About Wes

I have been encouraged (pressured, even) to tell a bit of my own story lately.

Well, here goes:

I was born in Washington DC and grew up in nearby southern Maryland in a little town named Accokeek. It was also, by the way, the original home of “Rumble” guitarist Link Wray. My parents were active folk musicians so my earliest memories are of groups of singers filling our homes with song late into the night. When I woke up in the morning a few would still be there ready to sing more songs over coffee.

My dad had a folk music radio program and was the first president of The Folklore Society of Greater Washington. During the summers we travelled to folk gatherings and festivals on the east coast and Canada where the music seldom stopped and could go all night long. I felt certain even before I picked up an instrument that this is how one lived. I got to hear music from the British Isles, Africa, the middle east, the Balkans… well: everywhere… and I soaked it all up like a thirsty sponge. But, man o man,  I loved the blues the best.

My parents would sing traditional songs while I and my two sisters worked the marionettes , rod puppets and other stunning visual creations my mom would make to bring the stories in the songs to life. My mother’s work was recognized with invites to perform at puppetry festivals (yup, they exist) and a personal invite to meet Jim Henson and tour his New York studio after a show we did in NYC.

Sweet as all this was I was a teenager and my personal taste was becoming more rockNroll all the time. I was soon in bands in the DC area playing rock with Steadfast and Over the Edge and noisy free improv with The Bilbo Space Orchestra and The Trolls.

Moving north to Albany NY I played acoustic/folk with Aardvarx and T.W. Crickett & Co., rock with Rastus and reggae with The Ravers.

One day I was sitting and playing guitars with a friend on the steps of a brownstone on State St. when Min Siegel walked by coming up the hill from her job at the NY State Assembly. A writer, photographer and chef she was beautiful, hot, unbelievably intelligent and as tough as growing up on Manhattan’s  Lower East Side had made her. I immediately fell for her like a ton of bricks. This was the girl I’d been looking for. Eventually my romantic persistence won her over (or “wore her down” as she would later joke) and we moved in together.

Later on we moved west to Northern Nevada to join our college friend Neil who was working in Reno.

In Nevada I played rockNroll with my band Wes & the Warheads.

This was also an extremely prolific writing period for me and the Warheads played a mix of my stuff, old R&B, rockabilly, blues, roots rock, country, pretty much whatever we wanted and could get away with during the marathon shows (6 sets – 10pm-4am) that the cowboy/indian/miner packed roadhouses demanded in those days.

I was also the host and interviewer on a television show RUBBER BANDITS (not the hip-hop pranksters from Limerick) that focused on the local music scene.

When our close friend Neil contracted AIDS Min’s relentless study of healing and nutrition began in earnest. With diet and carefully researched treatment and working closely with his doctors she was able to help keep him healthy and active for many years until leukemia finally took him out.

We moved to Los Angeles where Min produced two independent films and wrote a half dozen unproduced screenplays. We also wrote a set of songs together that we released on mp3.com (in it’s early indie days)  as ANOTHER ROLL OF THE DICE.

A final line up of Wes & the Warheads (there were numerous changes in the lineup of players over the years) performed this new music briefly before splitting up at a show where we opened for Primus.

I drifted back into line drawing and “underground” comix for a while.

Min followed her heart into healing. Already a vegetarian for many years ( becoming one myself was a requirement at the very start of our relationship) Min marshalled her immense knowledge of nutrition, oriental medicine, energy healing and other disciplines and melded that with her love of fine food and her incredible ability to cook (she was the best chef I’ve ever known) successfully improving the health and lives of many people.

Unfortunately for Min her own good health masked from us the knowledge of a cancerous pancreatic “tail mass” that was secretly growing inside her.

An insidious killer with the ability to hide itself until it’s too late to treat, once the cancer appeared it began to destroy her body rapidly. After her diagnosis I quit all work outside our home and spent virtually every moment together with her. We travelled to New York and Northern California in search of any effective alternative treatment (the AMA guys in Beverly Hills  basically told her to go home and die) but there was nothing that could help. She suffered an agonized six months in intense pain.

The final indignity turned out to be the stroke that isolated her magnificent mind by leaving her unable to communicate. Another pain wracked month would pass before she died at home in my arms, just the two of us, as was her wish.

I’ve picked up my guitar again, I’ll be damned if I can think of another thing that I can even do anymore.

I wrote these new songs because I had to, I perform them because I need to, and it is my hope that they will be of some use to you.

When I was getting myself back out into the clubs and checking out bands this last couple years I met Kelly and Scott separately,  but I knew immediately that together they’d be the best rhythm section in Los Angeles…

… so I wrote the songs for the DRAMA album specifically for this group.

I have seen some excellent bands on the Southern California scene recently, and mine is one of them.

- WES DILDINE