Brian Tavener

In 2007, I got hired by Blue Man Group, and spent some of the craziest months of my life training to be a Blue Man.  Since then, I have performed bald and blue in over five different countries and over 100 US cities...and currently, in the Boston troupe, where I originally started out.  In the meantime, my own musical projects have always dominated my time away from the blue paint.  In 2008, I recorded my first full-length solo album 'duende', with none other than Taylor Roberts playing role of engineer in his own Raleigh NC home studio. In 2009, I formed The And Company with close friends Alle Santiago (now Polanzak), and Mally Smith.  We self-released an EP and a live album 'Poppy's World', before recording our first and only full-length album 'Look Up' in 2010, released in 2011 under my own record label Carrot Policeman Records.  In 2012 I went on tour with Blue Man Group and started writing and conceptualizing a new album.  After almost three years of being on and off the road, all of the writings and recordings have culminated in my latest project, 'SpaceTime'.  Currently I find myself gravitating towards the banjo, but I still like to make noise with whatever I can get my hands on.  Thanks for listening, or in this case, reading. More projects coming soon...

Born in the mountain oasis of Asheville, North Carolina...

I've loved music and performance from as early as I can remember.  I used to bang away on the living room piano to the Sound of Music 8-track in my Black Mountain NC home.  My older brother and I used to film our own music videos...I can't decide if the best one was Ace of Base 'All That She Wants' or Weird Al's 'Livin' in the Fridge'. In high school, I somehow serendipitously crossed paths with who would become my life-long best friends...they were the ones that transformed my hobby for playing music into a musical career. No Outlet was our high school band name. I played bass. (Jill, I still have your Zoom506 pedal...I promise I didn't mean to steal it, and if you're reading this, you have all the right in the world to reclaim it, along with some sort of interest for the 15odd years I've "borrowed" it.) In college at North Carolina State University, I met Taylor Roberts and Mark Nippert, and we formed a band.  We started as 'Taylor Roberts Music' (TRM) and then eventually changed our name to 'glorydive', but we were still being introduced at venues as names such as 'Robert Thomas Trio', so it didn't really matter what our band name was.  TRM/glorydive/My British Cousins recorded two full-length albums and one EP between 2004 and 2007.  In this band, I played my own hand-drum kit, dancing around like a monkey beating on anything in sight...it was grand.