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Brann Dailor


Member

1992-1999 Lethargy - drums  
1999- Mastodon - drums, vocals  
1999 Today Is The Day - drums  

Personal information

Born on: 19.03.1975

Brann Dailor is a drummer, best known as a member of Mastodon, a progressive metal band based in Atlanta, Georgia. Dailor was also a founding member of mathcore band Lethargy, and played with grindcore bands Discordance Axis and Today is the Day.

Music and influences

In a meet and greet during October 2009, Dailor stated that he had been playing drums since he was 3 or 4. His fill-heavy drumming style is influenced by jazz and prog-rock. Dailor has stated in interviews that his favorite albums are Stevie Wonder's Innervisions and Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. His drumming has been more and more acclaimed as Mastodon has become better known, and he performed at the Modern Drummer Festival 2006. Before forming Mastodon, Dailor and fellow Mastodon member Bill Kelliher were members of the Rochester-based band Lethargy, and they played on the album In the Eyes of God by Today Is the Day. In particular, Dailor's performance on In the Eyes of God has received great recognition and praise in the underground scene for his extremely technical, fill-heavy drumming. In addition he was also a founding member of the Rochester/Atlanta based band Gaylord; and played a few shows with the grindcore band Discordance Axis, filling in for renowned drummer Dave Witte.

Dailor has an obsession with Randy Rhoads (late lead guitarist with Ozzy Osbourne) because he was born on the day (different year) that Randy Rhoads died, as noted in an interview on Uranium. Dailor chose the same color scheme as Rhoads' guitar for his signature drum kit - black with white polka dots - and his bass drum sports a picture of Rhoads.

Personal life

Dailor was born into a musical family. His grandparents were members of a 1950's bluegrass band based in Tennessee; his mother and stepfather played in a Rush cover band.

"My parents were hippies, but they were Frank Zappa hippies, you know? They were putting Miles Davis' Bitches Brew on my headphones when I was two years old. I grew up listening to The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, Close to the Edge by Yes, King Crimson's Red. All that stuff was jamming at my house at full volume all the time when I was a baby, along with Coltrane's Love Supreme, Stevie Wonder -- Innervisions -- stuff like that. Constantly."

His sister Skye committed suicide at age 14. After her death, Dailor spent time in a mental hospital and fell heavily into drugs. Her death served as an inspiration for Mastodon's fourth studio album, Crack the Skye. Although the album's story line involves the adventures of a paraplegic boy in Tsarist Russia, Dailor told Metal Hammer that many of the songs are fantasy narratives involving him saving his sister from death.

"My sister Skye's suicide is something I've been dealing with for 20 years. I wanted to lift her up and put her name out there forever. It was the most deeply emotional moment of my life, and always with suicide there's a lot of guilt that comes with it. The whole story is my metaphor for if I'd been able to come in and pick her up and save her from that situation...everybody experiences loss. At some point in your life you will lose someone near and dear to you and I'm lucky enough to have some kind of artistic platform to immortalise it, to have some kind of tribute. We owe it as artists to come from the deepest place possible; that's art."

On limited edition box sets of Crack the Skye, a photo of Dailor's sister can be seen through a tunnel lithogram in the album art.