Nathan Wade Music

HISTORY

“Behold: the story of Nathan Wade & The Dark Pioneers, complete with photographs in high resolution, contact information in standard resolution, and a small serving of praise…”

(l-r: Sam Collins, Nathan Wade, Brian Alter)

Nathan Wade & The Dark Pioneers are Seattle’s purveyors of apocalyptic Americana, hitching the rusted scraps of American roots music to a battered pick-up truck and dragging it across a broken 21st Century landscape. It’s a cinematic trip down a desolate highway as the dashboard rattles apart and the truck radio blasts songs of murder, drug abuse, and Biblical arcana.

When it came time to roll the odometer back to zero, Nathan Wade lit a fire to his solo career with new band mates and bad influences Brian Alter (drums) and Sam Collins (acoustic bass & keys). After a little prompting from his musical brethren, Wade plugged in an electric guitar for the first time in years and his songs immediately strayed from the acoustic folk sound of his past and took a turn for the heavy. Christening themselves the Dark Pioneers, the new trio came roaring out of the blaze they’d just started and set out on a treacherous new stretch of road.

The Chroma Session EP captures some of the band’s grittier, blues-lightning in a bottle with help from guest Pioneers Lincoln Barr (Red Jacket Mine) on electric guitar and Michael Spaly (Creeping Time, The Harborrats) on violin. Produced, recorded, and mixed at Seattle’s Chroma Sound Studio by Bradley Zeffren (North Twin, Jeff Fielder, Kristen Ward), the band radically reinvents the acoustic recordings of Wade’s debut, The Dead Leaves Sing, while firing off a double-barreled shot of new music. Serving as a taste of what’s to come, The Chroma Session EP stands as a bullet-riddled mile marker on the road to musical armageddon, a future the band is driving into at high speed; in the rear-view mirror, a blood-red sun settles in the dust they’ve left behind.

Recommended if you like: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Chris Whitley, Night Of The Hunter, gasoline fumes, Cormac McCarthy novels, Led Zeppelin III, dark alleys, the Book of Revelation.

Read the long version of the band’s history.


Booking / Contact Information

booking[at]nathanwademusic[dot]com
phone: 206.854.9815
Sonicbids Electronic Press Kit

Promotional Images by Patrick Wright


Remnants and Kind Regards…

“Americana…hard boiled, blues drenched and served with grits on the side.”
-Americana UK

“An accomplished guitarist and an extraordinary songwriter…Nathan Wade defies categorization.”
-Washington Blues Society

“Wade’s music could properly be described as dark. And not just dark, but profoundly, poetically, Biblically dark.”
- Cascadia Weekly

“Nathan Wade is a strong and engaging singer, continually showing he has one more layer to reveal.”
-The Muse’s Muse