Dragondeer Showcases New Sound on Sophomore Album

Eric Halborg, the lead singer and guitarist of Denver band Dragondeer, is a writing machine.

Listening to him explain his process for developing the lyrics he’d eventually sprinkle throughout the band's sophomore album, Across the Waves, paints a picture of a manic creative who converted his home studio into a word factory, complete with makeshift wallpaper spun from the pages of his 1973 Facit typewriter — a beautiful portable instrument made in Sweden.

Halborg and his band took advantage of the pandemic pause and spent a lot of time sitting and stewing over the record’s language and sound during what he calls “late-night cauldron-stirring” sessions. He surrounded himself with more and more snippets of writing while listening to demos and pounding out whatever crossed his mind.

“I was just banging out ideas to the rhythms of those songs on the typewriter and going back and cherry-picking things I liked and crafting it from there,” he adds.

The title track, for example, is delivered in falsetto, which Halborg never considered using before. But once it came time to lay down the vocal tracks, the muses dictated it be sung that way, he explains.

“You never sang that song before, so you’re running ten takes of vocals of these new words and crafting it as you were going,” he says of the process. “You never know when an idea could hit, and it could be four in the morning, after the tenth time you sang it a particular way, and you stumble upon something that feels right to you and the right delivery of the lyrical content.”

Not being a “slave to a session” allowed him to “come to a sweet spot” lyrically, he adds.

“I think as a band we’ve been very open to letting the muse speak through us in that way,” Halborg continues. “I think that keeps it exciting.”

The result is an eclectic collection of blues, funk, soul and psychedelic rock jams that sees Dragondeer further solidifying a sound a decade in the making — one that's rooted in good times and a shared vision of universal love.

“It’s a brotherhood. This whole process has helped us define our identity now, but we’re all the more accepting of our strengths and weaknesses and figuring out how we can all better ourselves like a collective unit,” drummer Carl Sorenson says. "It’s fun to just experiment with new ideas and bring new ideas to the table. It feels like the sky is the limit.”

After completing a run with Eddie Roberts & the Lucky Strokes to wrap up the band’s busiest month to date, Dragondeer is set to unleash Across the Waves during a record-release show at Cervantes’ Other Side on Saturday, October 7. While the record came out on September 15, vinyl copies will be available at the concert. Extra Gold, Boot Gun and DJ Matt Cassidy are also on the bill.

“Where we’re at as band is stronger than ever,” says guitarist/lap steel player and vocalist Cole Rudy. “We're playing better live shows and operating as a musical engine at a higher level than we have found ourselves doing before.

“At the end of the day, it all comes back to the music for us,” Rudy continues. “Right now, we’re all feeling it so much. We all have a pretty good taste in our mouths of what we want to see happen and where we want to point the ship.”

Working with Roberts, who is best known for his guitar work in English group the New Mastersounds, at his Denver studio Color Red Music, Dragondeer also had the chance to collaborate with several local musicians, including percussionist Will Trask, keys player Casey Russell and multi-instrumentalist Jordan Linit. Roberts even made a guest appearance on the closing song, “Manifest.”

“I think his tonal palette and styles definitely seep into the band and for the better, in my world,” Halborg says of working with Roberts. “To be injected into his world has brought us into that sphere of musicians. It’s been great and inspirational to us.”

The band also credits engineer Dylan Brown for helping craft Across the Waves over the past few years, and former bassist Casey Sidwell for his work on the record. (Dragondeer’s regular touring bassist, Hunter Roberts, is now a full-time member.)

“All thanks to that input, it couldn’t have been just the four of us that it is now,” Sorenson says.

Dragondeer’s ability to seamlessly shift between genres, from the rock-oriented “Bad Routines” to the Afro-beat-influenced “Manifest,” seems effortless.

“This record was a huge turning point for us sound-wise. We developed almost entirely new sound on the last record through the process of making this record,” says Rudy, who wrote and sang the lyrics on “Grow Some Love.” He also co-authored “Don’t Miss Your Chance” with Halborg, which was a first for Dragondeer.

As Halborg puts it, all the late nights and crumpled-up piles of paper that went into constructing Across the Waves ultimately manifested musical messages of a “new way of living.” Songs such as “New Dawn Get Down” address the importance of building supportive communities organically after COVID, and “The Says Who” is “purely about freedom of self-expression.”

“Hopefully that dominoes to a place of evolution and strength,” he concludes.

Dragondeer, 7 p.m. Saturday, October 7, Cervantes' Other Side, 2637 Welton Street. Tickets are $17.