We spoke with Ben Howard influenced solo country bumpkin Dexter Henry Millest this week. Introducing... Dexter Henry Millest.
1. Who is Dexter Henry Millest?
I am an 18 year old country bumpkin from the rolling hills of Herefordshire, kicking around making music and annoying the village neighbours. Occasionally I drift in a few pals to help with a fuller live sound like a drummer and guitar tech.
2. How would you describe your sound?
I guess the core of the sound comes from these guitar-scapes that everything else sits on top of. From there, there's usually some heartfelt double tracked vocals, and maybe a dabble of electronic drums. The whole point is to get some big emotions across from the tracks using these immense sounds.
3. Who are your biggest musical influences and inspirations?
Way back when the whole singer-songwriter scene was blowing up I found a dude called Ben Howard, he's kind of a big deal now I guess. Those earlier songs of his got me into song writing to start with and got me thinking in stupid guitar tunings. For a while I was fairly narrow minded in terms of writing these open tuning folk songs until people like Marika Hackman cropped up. She really pushed the idea of creating stories and scenes in her writing and I definitely borrowed some of that artistic license, and brought in some electronic drums, some more powerful vocals. Since then, I've always cited those two as the big influencers, but there's a whole host of bands I listen to and peers like Henry Green and Long Limbs that are doing some killer stuff at the moment. Seeing people you know do well is probably the biggest motivation you can have.
4. Where do you see yourselves in five years time?
In five years time, unlike in that classic Noah and the Whale song, I wont be walking round a zoo. I can guarantee that I will be making and doing music in some way, shape or form. Be it as Dexter Henry Millest or part of another band, its always been the goal to get to that stage where you can live comfortably as a pro musician. I know the world and his dog want to do that, but for me its just being able to do what you enjoy for a living. The past year has been about setting up a network of people and getting stuff out there, so now all the initial infrastructure is done, the hard work can start and hopefully we can take DHM further into support shows and headline some gigs on the way!
5. What's next for Dexter Henry Millest?
We have some genuinely exciting things coming up, which is a pleasant surprise. We did a BBC Introducing Session which is broadcast on 1st August and available on iPlayer n whatnot. I am also doing Stroud Fringe Festival which is a fantastic festival that gives folk like me a great platform to perform on. But best of all, I am doing Underground Festival, Gloucester, in association with DIY Mag. I've been to that festival for years and caught people like Peace and George Ezra playing to a room of 50 people where no-one knew who they were. Hopefully I can do what George has managed to do, that would be nice. In terms of non-planned stuff, we are hoping to get a few more backroom staff involved soon to help out, and maybe get a proper single out on a label at the end of the year!
6. Where can we find out/hear more from you?
Being a self-managed band, it seems like we've ended up on every social network under the sun, so here goes: Facebook is the best place to drop a like and keep up to date with whats going on, Soundcloud is the place to be to listen to some more of our sounds, Bandcamp is the one for if you want to actually buy some merch, we have a demo EP out there, Tumblr kind of serves as our website and finally, YouTube where you can see what we sound like live.