Life of Dillon is a UK band, which makes acoustic-laced, dance-driven pop that captures the free spirit of a globe-traveling drifter, Dillon, who the trio met while visiting Brazil in 2014. He had no home, no destination, he didnt chase dreams, he lived them instead. He's a free spirit who travels the world, loved surfing, kicking back and enjoying what life has to offer. explains David Keiffer, who founded Life of Dillon with childhood friend Joe Griffith and his brother Robert Griffith in 2014. After crossing paths, the trio returned to their home in London and began writing and recording songs that were inspired by their time in Brazil and the lifestyle that Dillon led.
The songs for their debut EP Prologue and album to follow were written, performed, and produced entirely by the band in the house where Joe, Robert, and David have lived together in north London for the past 2 years (the same house whose ceiling once collapsed from the vibrations of their late night sessions and amped up playing). Throughout their songs, Life of Dillon take on a role as storytellers, using their lyrics to pass on pieces of inspiration gleaned from their own personal experiences as well as their time spent with Dillon. With its massive beats, lush acoustic strumming and soaring, soulful vocals, lead single Overload brilliantly channels the thrill of breaking free from 9-to-5 living.
For Life of Dillon, dreams of musical triumph started when each member was a little kid. Born in Brazil to a Nigerian mother and British father, Joe and Robert joined the church choir as children but soon quit to create their own kind of music. During several years spent in Nigeria later in their childhood, Robert taught himself to make beats, while Joe tried his hand at songwriting. Meanwhile, in a small southeast England town called Deal, David grew up in an exceptionally musical family (his mother played piano and wrote her own compositions, while his father constructed guitars, banjos, violins, and other assorted instruments). At a young age, David would pick up the instruments lying around the house and teach himself to play. While attending a secondary school in Kent and playing drums in a punk band, David first met Joe and promptly left the group so that the two could start writing songs together.
Soon after the duo began collaborating and playing gigs in local pubs, David and Joe got involved in the music Robert was creating with L Marshall. Working out of the studio that Robert had built in the attic of their familys house, David, Joe and Robert made their earliest attempts at tying their R&B, hip-hop, pop, and folk influences together into a cohesive sound. There was no structureour parents werent around, so we were just having fun making all this different music, says Joe. Robert had taken up studies in computer science at a nearby college, but ended up devoting most of his time to his production work.
As Robert began working with a host of artists and producing out of his attic studio, Joe and David forged ahead with their own music and habitually crashed Roberts sessions to pitch their songs to the up and coming artists that were passing through the house. After graduating college in 2012, the two dedicated themselves to music full time but struggled to break through. Revitalized by their experience in meeting Dillon, Robert, Joe, and David decided to form their own band, threw themselves into making songs as Life of Dillon.
Life of Dillon thrive on pushing themselves and each other into new creative territory with their music. It takes a long time to build a musical relationship that makes sense, and for us its like second nature at this point, says David. We know how much space to give each other and how to let everyone do their own thing, and how to make it all eventually come together into something that we all love. Not only a product of that group chemistry, the music also helped to unite the three as a team. One of the things that means the most to us is we did this all ourselves, says Joe. Weve been in this house since we were kids making whatever music we want, however we want. We just never stopped doing what we love to do.