DUDE-aTOMic! aims for fame

By Sebastian Fryer

Arts Editor

Dude walks by The Strutt, carrying a box of CDs by his band, DUDE-aTOMic!

A passerby stops and looks at Dude.  He then asks if he’d seen him at the local record store earlier that day.

Indeed, he did – but then again, Dude is quite hard to miss.  Sporting glamorous shades, a uniquely-shaped beard and a T-shirt with DUDE-aTOMic!’s logo (an atom with orbiting particles), Dude is recognized by multiple patrons of the coffee shop venue.  To almost every person he passes, he stops, says hello, and asks how they’re doing.

Dude appears to be somewhat of a Kalamazoo celebrity – and he couldn’t be happier about it.

You can call him ‘Dude’

The single-named Dude – he refuses to give out his first name – is one-half of the local electronic pop duo, DUDE-aTOMic! His partner in music, Tom Clark, is “reclusive,” and often refuses to speak to the press or public.  Dude serves as the “mouthpiece” for DUDE-aTOMic!

A self-described “male Lady Gaga,” Dude has an eye for the glamorous and outrageous.  His self-designed outfit that he wears at his concerts – a sequined silver jumpsuit with the band’s atomic logo – represents his outgoing attitude and party-time music.

“Everywhere I go, I try to make friends,” Dude said.

The sound of the past

Dude’s musical career began at an early age, when he started taking piano lessons.

“The truth is that I wrote my first song when I was seven-years-old and it was very complex,” he said. “It was a really complex piano song.”

Dude met Clark while he was in high school.

“I heard him playing the piano, and I was like, ‘Wow, this guy is really good.,” Dude said.

However, the duo didn’t pair up until after high school, when they wrote their first song together.

Years later, they’re still writing music together.

Clark and Dude took on many personas and band names before DUDE-aTOMic!, including Cruise Control, Superhero, and Sir Tom and the Dude.  The two-person band also adopted the band name “Nirvana” before the grunge trio made it big.

After a live performance didn’t go the way the duo had planned, they almost “gave up the dream,” according to Dude.

“We put it on the backburner big-time,” Dude said. “We took all of our equipment to a music store here in town that sells used music instruments.”

Dude then set out to travel the world, while Clark stayed in Kalamazoo to develop a furniture business, Retro.

“We stayed in touch, every few years, we talked,” Dude said.

Clark and Dude made promises that they would get back together and record, and after time, they did.

The duo adopted the name of “DUDE-aTOMic!” and recorded their first album with Kevin Brown of Brown & Brown Recording.

Brown passed away before the band could record a second album with him.

“I miss Kevin so much,” Dude said. “He knew what he was doing and he wasn’t used to people like us.”

For the next two albums, the band worked with Ben “Big China” Lau at Strutt Studios.

DUDE-aTOMic! just released their third album, “The Sound of the Future.” When Clark and Dude found themselves with too much material for just one album, they decided to make it a double-album.

The sound of the present

Dude lists DUDE-aTOMic!’s influences as including Prince, Daft Punk, Timbaland, and Lady Gaga, but with a somewhat different recording process.

Clark will usually write an instrumental, and then Dude will match with lyrics and vocals.

However, their entire recording is done live.

“What you hear on… all three albums is me singing a lead vocal that’s being recorded at the same time his music is being recorded,” Dude said.

“Even when [Clark] loops [beats], he’s looping it live.”

The band has drawn some comparisons to Lady Gaga.

“So many people have said that we sound and look like a male duo version of Lady Gaga, and that’s a great compliment to me,” Dude said.

Dude is known for sporting extravagant costumes in live performances, and his newest costume is a tight, sleeveless jumpsuit made of silver, shiny Lycra. The costume also features a hood trimmed with orange faux fur, and sports the band’s atomic symbol logo in purple velvet.

“It really looks like a cross between George Clinton… and something like [David Bowie’s] Ziggy Stardust,” Dude said.

The sound of the future

Currently, the band is finishing up “DUDE-aTOMic! Future Radio,” an album of radio edits of songs mostly from “The Sound of the Future.”  A remix album, on which Dude and Lau are collaborating, is also in the works.

The duo also has a new album on their plate, tentatively titled “The White Trash Prince and the High Class Pauper.”

“I’m geeked, I can’t wait to hear what [Clark] writes,” Dude said.

DUDE-aTOMic! is also working on a music video with Jeremy Neal, artistic director of Western Michigan University Registered Student Organization Hip Hop ConnXion Michigan. The group has already choreographed most of the video.

Neal said that working with the band was an easy task.

“It’s not a lot of hard work because we both know what we want,” Neal said.

An album of radio edits, a remix album, a new album and a music video isn’t all that Dude has in mind for the future of the band.

“We’re going to have a number-one hit song – maybe from this album, maybe from the next one – and I predict that we will be sitting in the audience of the Grammy Awards [in] 2011 as nominees for Best New Artist,” he said.

“I don’t see why there’s any reason why it won’t happen.”

Dude makes it clear that he’s put a lot of effort into his musical career, and wears a ring on his hand – not because he’s married, but to symbolize that he is “married to his music.”

More information on DUDE-aTOMic! may be found on their website, www.dude-atomic.com The band also has a MySpace and Facebook page.

DUDE-aTOMic!’s albums, “Re:Soul’D,” “M.N./P.T.,” and “The Sound of the Future,” are available on iTunes, as well as at the Corner Record Shop and Green Light Music and Video in Kalamazoo.

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Posted by heraldstaff on Apr 22 2010. Filed under A & E. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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