When an artist goes through something life changing, or threatening, or finds themselves in difficult situations, it often lights a fire of creativity. Which could be said for Donny Dykowsky. After having to be in a hospital for a year, the moment he got some strength back, he would go on to create Chesterwhite.
Chesterwhite featured Donny of the anti-folk act Blueox, on vocals/guitar/keys; (by the way, Blueox are an act we highly recommend checking out) Freddy Pastore (The Long Shadows) on bass, Seth Moutal (Tracy Bonham) on drums, and Dave Dunn on electric guitar. The band had released their debut album, played some spots as a part of the Warped Tour, and played various shows throughout NY.
In 2020 we saw many projects come from the pandemic. A lot of new bands were created, new albums/EP’s, were written, and plans for a world with no shows became a reality in the form of live streaming. In the case of Dykowsky, what’s old became new again as he stumbled upon some hidden gems in unreleased music from Chesterwhite, which is now going to be released on September 23rd as the St. Davids EP.
‘Comedy Divine’ kicks off with a pleasant acoustic tone with some soothing style. During the song’s second half, the rock influences come in hard with its ragged guitar riffs and impassioned vocals. Something in particular that I love about this track is just how seamlessly that transition flows, but is unexpected. On the first listen of this song, it catches you totally off guard, and seems to come out of nowhere. Comedy Divine makes for quite the ear catching opening track, as both the vocals and riffs truly stand out.
‘Heroine’ opens with a groovy bass and a thundering drumline. Musically this track walks between the world of psychedelic rock, and hard acoustic folk fusion. The song sets you in to a hallucinatory mind-bending vibe and it refuses to relinquish that grasp, but it all comes simmer once the song slowly fuses out.
The opening acoustic riff for ‘Sweet Young Lunatics’ for some reason keeps taking me back, and reminding me of composers such as Matt Uelmen. For most of you out there, that’s going to be an extremely obscure and a deep cuts comparison, epically to geeks, and it’s also one heck of a compliment. As with the previous tracks, powerful riffs and again, gripping emotional vocals. It’s definitely been a consistent EP, and for me it ticks all the important boxes depending on my listening modes.
One of the largest stand outs about this EP that I haven’t mentioned, has been the production. When you have such powerful vocals, fused with some bombastic riffs, oftentimes somethings can get lost in the listening experience, but when these two Titanic elements collide, that’s simply not the case here. I would imagine it has to be great for Dykowsky just stumbling upon these songs. It seems they’ve aged like a fine wine, and just goes to show once again, that music is timeless.
All proceeds from the EP will being going to St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital.