MC Frontalot
Godfather of Nerdcore
MC Frontalot is the stage name of Damian Hess, a musician and author currently based in the Boston area. He studied English and electronic music at Wesleyan University, graduating in 1996.
From 1993 to 2003, Damian rapped, sang, and acted onstage with the San Francisco Bay Area’s premiere rock opera company,
Emerald Rain Productions. He moved to the east coast in 2004 when his pop/rock musical Young Zombies in Love (co-authored with Frontalot keyboardist Gaby Alter) was featured at the New York International Fringe Festival (top songwriting award ’04).
In late 1999, Damian pioneered the subgenre of rap music called Nerdcore Hip-hop, a once harmless movement that has metastasized into an internet phenomenon. Nerdcore’s live-audience draw grows yearly, with acts such as Frontalot, MC Chris, MC Lars, and Optimus Rhyme filling increasingly larger venues on national tours. Damian’s independently produced MC Frontalot tracks have earned a devoted audience and his first retail album Nerdcore Rising (released Aug 2005) is in its third printing and has been featured on the front page of the iTunes site. He is the official rapper of Penny Arcade (nets most popular comic with 3.5 million daily readers) and headlines at their annual convention to an audience of several thousand.
MC Frontalot has been featured in XXL Magazine, The Guardian (UK), and Wired News Online, on NPRs Day to Day, CBCs Definitely Not the Opera, WNYCs Brian Lehrer Show, and Pacifica Radios Technology Bytes. He has appeared in Wired Magazine (Sept 06), on Whatever (Channel 4, UK) and Barrio 19 (MTV Europe), and in the book Other People’s Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America by Jason Tanz (Bloomsbury Press, Feb 07). His first contribution to Sesame Street is a song about a toilet paper factory, featured on the DVD Elmos Potty Time (Aug 06).
He towers over small hedges and ferns at a mighty 6’1″.
Gaby Alter
Keyboardist
Gaby is a songwriter based in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of a number of rock musicals, including “Young Zombies in Love” with MC Frontalot, and “29”. His songs have appeared on NPR, at Lincoln Center, and a host of other totally uncool places that will earn him no cred with you whatsoever.
Brandon Patton
Bassist
Brandon, in addition to performing in MC Frontalot as Blak Lotus, has also recorded two solo records and is releasing his third at the end of 2007. In 2004 he released the album “Should Confusion,” which was a finalist in the Independent Music Awards “Album of the Year” category, and he was subsequently a finalist in the Newport Folk Festival’s “New Talent Showcase,” and winner of the Temecula Film and Music Festival’s Best Music Artist Award. He also performs in Jukebox Stories,”Young Zombies in Love,” and “Poon“. Due to the unavoidable distractions of his music career, his DCI Composite rating, however, is a paltry 1670, making him the 511th-best magic the gathering player in the New York metro area, and 27,454th world-wide.
Sturgis Cunningham
Drummer
Sturgis is a professional drummer, born and raised in south western New Hampshire. Having spent the better part of a decade in the Pioneer Valley, Sturgis’ list of recordings and projects range from singer songwriter to funk, R&B, soul, hip hop and the like. Sturgis is currently working in and around New England and New York playing with many talented artists in many styles.
