An Interview With DED Just Before Their Show At The Palace Theatre Last Week

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Before they opened the night at The Palace Theatre last weekend, Twin Cities Media (TCM) got to sit down with vocalist Joe Cotela (JC) and guitarist David Ludlow (DL) to chat about some of the band’s milestones and what is in store for the band in the future. 

TCM: DED is a pretty new band but you have created some nice buzz in the music scene. What should those that haven’t heard of you expect at a DED show?

JC: A lot of energy, aggression, you could guess that if you’ve heard the music…a lot of jumping around singing along. All the stuff that I personally want from a show. 

DL: Our audiences usually get pretty rowdy.

TCM: it’s your second time in Minnesota, the first on a run supporting Korn and now In This Moment.  How does it feel to be on tour with bands of this caliber? What’s it like to play big stages across the country? 

DL: Really lucky, really grateful. It’s awesome, it’s incredible exposure.

JC: It’s cool to watch them and to learn form them and just bro down with people that you respect; it’s really cool. 

DL: Yeah, its the dream.

JC: It’s surreal…we’ve seen so many cool venues and theaters like this, like The Eagle’s Ballroom in Milwaukee, and then we did all those festivals and those were huge. We didn’t expect to do it but we’ve all been in other bands and we’ve played a lot of shows, [but] these are the biggest ones we’ve ever played in our lives and we’re ready and prepared to do it. 

TCM: What is one venue that you haven’t played that is on your bucket list? 

DL: The O2 in London, I hear about it constantly I want to know what the inside looks like. 

JC: Maybe the Staples Center? 

DL: Madison Square Garden

JC: Madison Square Garden that’s it, that’s the one. 

TCM: Your debut album (Mis-An-Thrope) dropped about seven months ago – how does it feel to approach the one year mark? 

JC: I think its really cool but its where we start thinking about writing another album.

DL: It’s a mind shift, your focus changes [from] cool we’re just doing this, everything is great to alright now we gotta change and really work on new future stuff…I think it’s fun though and we’re up to the challenge. 

TCM: Is there any new DED material in the works?

DL: Always. 

JC: I think the last time we got home for a little break for Christmas, we just both naturally started writing. [I] started playing my acoustic guitar which I hadn’t done in forever, and then he was all of a sudden like “Hey I recorded this thing,” sends it over, and we both did it at the same exact time and it was really strange. We had talked about it that whole year like man I don’t feel like writing any songs right now at all cause we had written so much for the album, and we were really busy…it was an organic thing where we started feeling creative again.

TCM: Weren’t there somewhere around 50 songs for the first album?

JC: Yeah, something like that.

DL: I still have plans to release some of those. 

JC: I was gonna say we might revamp a couple of them cause we still love a lot of it. 

TCM: 2017 was a whirlwind year for the band, what does 2018 have in store for you? 

JC we’re doing a West Coast run with In This Moment and The Word Alive, who are good friends of ours.

DL: Las Rageous 

JC: Las Rageous, we’re doing Rock Fest in Wisconsin, we’re booking some shows overseas too.  We just announced Download France.  We’re going to be doing a handful of shows overseas, and then there’s a bunch of stuff in the works that we can’t announce.

TCM: What is your Favorite place to play and why? 

JC: My favorite place to play was Shiprocked in the middle of the ocean. The Bahamas were pretty neat, you go out and chill it was a really cool lineup of bands and it was awesome.

DL: I’d say my favorite place that we’ve played so far is Louisville when we did Louder Than Life. You always talk when you’re a kid you want to see crowds as far as your eye can see, and that was one of the biggest ones that I had ever played, I had such a fun time playing that show.

 

TCM: How did the band get the name DED?

DL: we just write music naturally and we just started working on this vibe and then I texted him and was like do you like the name DED? It could be short for dedicated, [and] we wondered what other people would think DED meant. After awhile it just felt right. 

TCM: One last question for you: how would you describe your band’s aesthetic/performance in one word?

DL: postive violence…oh that’s two words 

JC: I’ll say positive, you say violence, positive 

DL: violence

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