Biog

Rasp Thorne - Vocals, Keys,

Guitar Duncan DeMorgan - Bass

Pete Moriarty - Guitar, Keys

Hugh Zog – Lap steel, Guitar

Joni Deehan - Drums

 

Rasp Thorne left his native Montana when he was 16 to live in Eastern Germany before exploring Europe, America, and Mexico. Finding himself in New Orleans at 20, he enrolled at University to study Drama and Literature but dropped out after three months to perform poetry and spoken word while hanging himself on the streets in the French Quarter. After a year in Louisiana he made one more trek across America to Los Angeles, Seattle and Montana before moving to Brooklyn.

 

In New York Rasp quickly fell in with the downtown poetry and art scene along with various warehouse collectives in Brooklyn. He wrote and performed three one-man shows at Manhattan Theatre Source and produced and performed monthly shows at The Bowery Poetry Club, Goodbye Blue Mondays and Zebulon. Bored of the trappings of solo work he founded a highly distorted gothic country band, Ryder Pales, which added a cacophonous music to his poetry and tales. Ryder Pales released one studio album, gigged relentlessly in NYC and toured the UK in 2008 playing Glastonbury Festival and The Luminaire in London with Son of Dave. Shortly after, Rasp made the decision to leave NYC and move to London. Ryder Pales disbanded.

 

The seeds of what was to become Rasp Thorne & the Briars were sown at a G.G. Elvis gig when the chance meeting of Thorne and DeMorgan over a shared love of suave crooners and chaotic punk led to the notion of a band. A few gatherings later, Pete Moriarty showed up with an upside down left handed electric guitar and the line up was completed by Hugh Zog (lap steel and guitar) and Joni Deehan on drums.

 

Songs of cryptic crocodiles, shotgun-sucking porn stars and dystopian wax cults began to form and Rasp Thorne & the Briars unleashed their unruly concoction of carnival dirges, gothic country, and chaotic punk on London’s flamboyant club scene. Nights such as Gypsy Hotel, Torture Garden and Stranger Than Paradise embraced the band’s decadently deranged live performances and the band successfully curated their own night at Shunt amidst the structure of the theatrical show ‘Money’.

 

With strong connections to the theatre and performance art world, Rasp Thorne & the Briars were commissioned to write the music and perform in the run of Carnesky Productions’ ‘Dystopian Wonders’ a live-art theatre and circus show at The Roundhouse (Camden) which went on to tour to The Lowry (Manchester) and The Crucible (Sheffield).

Rasp Thorne & the Briars are a band not easily pigeonholed. Their approach to music is idiosyncratic yet immediate, their material is theatrical, murky, and literate and their live shows are ranting distorted sermons of rock and roll chaos. Their debut EP ‘Debutante Warnings’ is available for download on 18th April 2011 on Chagrin Records.

Rasp Thorne & the Briars are currently working on their debut album scheduled for release in Autumn 2011.