The Truman brothers, guitarist Matt and vocalist Ian, founding members of the Oxford-based band Dead Season, played to the largest crowd of their seven-year career at Oxxfest on July 31.
The Oxxfest crowd, estimated at 9000-12,000, nearly doubled Dead Season’s previous high of 6000. The band has toured the east coast and shared stages with the likes of Korn, Buckcherry and Disturbed, but the record-breaking performance was only an 80-minute drive from home.
Although the “Carnival of Madness” bands – national bestselling acts like Puddle of Mudd and Shinedown – got top billing, an informal survey of the Oxxfest crowd revealed Dead Season as an equal or more powerful draw for many fans.
In an Aug. 4 phone interview with The Lincoln County News, Matt Truman spoke about the band’s experience at Oxxfest, about the trials of a Maine band on the cusp of a national breakthrough, and about Dead Season’s plans for the months ahead.
Oxxfest wasn’t Dead Season’s first performance in Wiscasset. About two years ago, Truman said, the band played a show for radio station WTOS – 105.1 at the Wiscasset Community Center. They’ve also played the Montsweag Roadhouse, just over the town line in Woolwich, and will return to the Roadhouse Oct. 8.
“We were kind of bummed when [Oxxfest] got moved,” Truman said. The inaugural festival took place in Oxford, Maine, the band’s hometown. Despite the initial disappointment, Truman and the rest of the band – Ian, bassist Steve Church and drummer Andy Hackett – found plenty to like about Oxxfest.
“It was a blur,” Matt Truman said. From arrival until the fans began to flood out of the gates in the evening, the band spent most of the day signing autographs, posing for photographs and meeting fans.
“The day flew by,” Matt Truman said. “It was nonstop… our fans really came out and supported us.”
“I thought it was a great facility,” he said of the raceway.
Since the Truman brothers formed the band in 2003, Dead Season has enjoyed local success, winning the annual battle of the bands competition on WTOS, the “mountain of pure rock,” for three consecutive years and receiving heavy airplay on Portland modern rock station WCYY.
So far, however, mainstream, national success has eluded the band, despite meetings with major labels and a high-profile opening gig for Disturbed in Glen Falls, New York. The band won the gig with another battle of the bands victory. Arriving late at the venue, the band had to rush onto the stage with minimal preparation. “We ripped it up,” Truman said.
Shortly after the gig, the band released their third full length album, “Life Death,” which sat atop the Billboard Heatseekers chart for the northeast for several weeks.
Meetings with various record labels have proved fruitless to date, due in part to the band’s hesitance to accept categorization. “You have to fit into a certain category,” Truman said. Labels tell the band they’re “in between hard rock and metal,” he said.
In the meantime, CDs – the band has sold 16,000 since the release of their first EP in 2004 – are available at Bull Moose locations throughout Maine and online at www.bullmoose.com.
Without the backing of a major label, it’s difficult for the band to tour outside the state, Truman said, because many club owners want bands to guarantee an audience of a certain size.
In the meantime, the members of Dead Season continue to work day jobs, do all the band’s legwork, including booking and merchandise design, and, of course, tour and write new material. “We have to do something of everything all the time,” Truman said.
Right now, the band continues to tour locally in support of “Life Death.” New material is in the works, too, and Truman said the band might return to the studio “later this winter.”
“We keep putting out better and better music,” Truman said. Fans relate to Dead Season because the band has “real meaning behind our music,” he said. “We’re really honest with our music.”
Truman expressed his gratitude to all the fans at Oxxfest, as well as the town and everyone who organized the event. “It was amazing,” he said. “It makes us feel good to get that kind of response from our Maine people.”
For more information about Dead Season, including booking information, visit www.deadseason.com or find Dead Season on Facebook.
