By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Dean “Dean-O” Rochester’s music is rooted in home and hearth going back to when he was about 7 and he first strummed a guitar.
The guitar was his brother’s. “My older brother burned his feet in a bad kitchen fire,” Rochester recalled. To keep him occupied, he said, “Mom and Dad went to a garage sale and bought him a starter guitar. He and I fought over everything. When he wasn’t playing it I was.”
At 13 he wrote his first song, “The Quilt.’ His mother is a quilter. “It’s a song about a quilt told from the vantage point of the quilt.” The song aged well and was on Rochester’s first recording released in 2019. “I’ve gotten a lot of nice reactions to it. The quilting guild really likes that song – bringing the quilt to life.”
Rochester has just released his second album, aptly titled, “Friends and Family Round.”
It was recorded and mixed at Rochester’s home studio with his friends in the Liberty Hi Project – Kevin Moore, Chris Ferguson and Sarah Mayle.
The 13-song set has songs inspired by his eldest child and only daughter, Laura, both when she was young, “Laura’s Song” and for her wedding, “My Princess Becomes His Queen.”
And it closes with a song about his granddaughter, “You’re the One.”
Another, “Put a Face on This Man,” is a tribute to an old family friend.
Rochester paints a portrait of the sunset out his front porch “Just Look Out the Window Tonight,” the kind of moment he urges listeners to savor in “Distractions,” about how social media can keep people from enjoying life.
“It’s about family,” he said. “It’s written with friends about family. It’s kind of a photo album songbook.”
The styles range from folk, pop rock, and some jaunty swing.
The words, though, are most important. ““I’m all about the lyrics,” Rochester said. “I grew up listening to Harry Chapin, so if a song doesn’t tell a story, I’m not interested.”
While the music grows in the Black Swamp, it has reached further afield thanks to internet radio stations. Recently he was driving back from Cleveland and listening to a station from Roxbury, New York, when he heard a familiar guitar riff. It was the introduction to “We Never Met,” the opening track on the new CD.
Th song is about making connections over the air waves between singers and listeners. How can a writer who has never met someone create a song that makes such an intimate connection to them?
It was also a station in Los Angeles that submitted some of his songs to a competition sponsored by the legendary Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The song, “Time,” won, and Rochester got to record it at the Ryman and play on the historic stage. He recalls tourists visiting at the time, looking at him wondering who is that performer.
Rochester, who grew up in the Tiffin area, came to Bowling Green about 20 years ago to get his master’s degree in computer programming. He now works for the Wood County Hospital.
Over the years he’s learned to play a number of instruments, string, accordion, brass, which he overdubs as needed when producing a record. He also sang barbershop as a member of the Stateline Chorus, and just out of high school toured with a choir that shared the bill with the Vienna Choir Boys.
In Bowling Green he plays with fellow songwriter Tim Tegge as one of the Black Swamp Boys. He’s recently checked off items on his bucket list. That includes playing at Howard’s Club H where , when he was in college, all the cool bands played. “At 57, I’m one of the cool bands.”
Also with Tegge, he played the Black Swamp Arts Festival this September. The new CD is also on sale at Finders.
The music scene in Bowling Green has a nice feel to it, he said. Central to the songwriter culture is the Hump Day Revue at Stone’s Throw, which was just revived this week after a short hiatus.
“It’s like a home away from home,” Rochester said. “We woodshed. … It’s a club that has its own energy to it – you sit in and fit in.”
On Wednesday (Nov. 24) for the traditional Thanksgiving Eve show, he plans to bring a handful of CDs and have an informal release party.
As someone who writes constantly, collaborating with the others in the Liberty Hi Project, he’s also well on his way to having enough material for a third album. That’s planned for 2022.
