Growing up in the snow-laden mountains of Colorado, Dave Flowers spent much of his school years indoors - playing keyboards with his headphones on, modifying components of his makeshift recording studio, and carefully planning his escape from his parents house in the foothills. When the opportunity arrived, he packed up his electronics and headed out to pursue a career in music. Eventually, the long and winding highway led him to a special place in the Northwest United States; Seattle.
Seattle is known as a hot spot for musical and artistic creativity, which was the perfect environment to foster his independent music label. He built a new recording studio on a limited budget and made a promise to himself to work on his recordings and art everyday. Using piano, synthesizers, drums, guitar, bass, trumpet, and anything else he can get his hands on, he is able to create a wide variety of recordings spanning many different genres and styles. His process varies, but often, he will record drums and bass parts first, then layer the rest of the instruments over the top of the base tracks. The result is that his releases sound like a full band, when in fact, it's often just him alone in the studio.
Between his own solo projects and projects recorded with other artists, Dave Flowers has recorded and produced over 150 albums. On his solo efforts, almost every instrument is being played, recorded and engineered himself. When not working on his own albums, he is producing, engineering and playing on other artists releases. When asked if he would still sign a record deal with a major label, he simply says "a lot of musicians want to be rock stars. I don't care about that stuff. I just want to be free to make music the way I feel it and nothing less."
Because he is not signed to a major label, he has freedom to write and produce anything that he desires, without the commercial restrictions that most signed artists must contend with. It is due to this that his library of works is so diverse. Most major labels would never allow an artist to release so many projects commercially crossing so many genres and styles, let alone give a single artist complete creative control over each project - including song arrangements, engineering choices, and cover art.
Highlights of his discography so far: 'Deflowered' - a jazz, funk, pop-rock album that contains a lot of fun and upbeat songs in the vein of the seventies, 'Organically Grown' - a modern recording made the old fashioned way - using analog tape and without the convenience and perfection of computer sequencing, and 'Entropy', an EP containing the hit single 'Not Afraid Of Dying'.
Regarding the cover artwork: as each album was completed, an appropriate piece of visual art was created for it. For those who haven't yet noticed, there is an ongoing theme present in every cover - a flower. As a complete works, Dave Flowers' discography can be thought of as a lifetime-long art project, a musical diary documenting the life and shifting perspectives of a learning musician circa this time period (thus the catalog numbering using the word 'phase'). Many of the releases also pair with a companion release of remixes and alternate versions of the tracks.
Dave Flowers currently lives in Seattle. He continues to record multiple projects at once in his own studio (the Flower Pot Recording Studio), play music with his friends and help them produce records, help people buy and sell houses as a real estate broker, program computers, play with cats, worship cats, dabble in bizarre things and hobbies, cook food, game, observe, sleep... etc.
Genre: Pop, Rock, Electronic, and Eclectic
Influences: Prince, Steely Dan, Beatles, Tahiti 80, Phoenix