With curly hair, glasses and few social skills, Dean Lombard’s teenage rebellion may have been limited to smoking cigarettes and playing Dungeons and Dragons had his guitar-playing friend Michael Zuegn not roped him into playing elementary bass on a demo tape. Dean quickly caught the music bug and, after switching instruments, the duo recruited a lead guitarist and drummer to form Cut Lunch. Their slightly uncomfortable blend of punk and rock‘n‘roll garnered few fans but was both the perfect incubator and an effective springboard that saw them play together and separately in several cover bands over the next decade including Sons of Roger and others whose names are lost in the mists of time.
Concurrently with these cover band forays Dean was also a dedicated busker and barroom performer between 1985 and 1992, both solo and in duos with numerous partners in crime including Michelle Fisher, Perry Barile and Phill Kolev. In 1995 Dean formed folk-pop outfit Wild Honey with Kate Eve and Phil Hudson (joined later by Michael Stephenson). While Dean was a prolific songwriter – and Cut Lunch had played a few of his songs – Wild Honey was his first band that played original material primarily. The enthusiasm of Wild Honey‘s small but devoted following for Dean‘s, Kate‘s and Phil‘s songs allayed their uncertainties and sentenced them all to life as musicians and songwriters.
Following Wild Honey‘s demise in 1998, Dean and Kate formed the shortlived Black Sheep with former Shadowlands drummer Dave Waterworth. By 1999 Dean was bandless and tried vainly to satisfy his musical appetite by busking, singing telegrams and guesting (on guitar, harmonica and vocals) on solo recordings by Kate Eve and Kate Judith (his career as a session musician clearly constrained by not knowing more than two Kates).
Toward the end of 2000 Dean formed pop-rock outfit Separation Street with Victoria Bramall (guitar/vocals), Joe Saitta (sax), Isabelle Kenny (bass) and Grant Watkins (drums). Numerous personnel changes (Jason Cutler replacing Isabelle; John Watson replacing Grant; Damaris Baker replacing Victoria and in turn being replaced by Simon W Stockdale; nobody (yet) replacing Joe; Rivkah Nissim appearing and disappearing in the blink of an eye…), aborted and finally completed albums, and name changes (Dogma‘s Breakfast, Half) followed, but The Phosphenes have stood the test of time, leaping into and disappearing from the Melbourne music scene according to the whims and disorganisation of their members.
Concurrently with The Phosphenes, Dean has played with a number of bands including Cousin Dad, Cowboy X, and The Falling Sky, as well as guesting with The Fish John West Reject and the Reservoir Frogs. He is also a little known solo performer thanks to a performance schedule as erratic as The Phosphenes‘. He is, however, a regular at the Darebin Songwriters Guild and frequently drives the mixing desk for Roarhouse.
When none of the above is happening, he misuses his social work qualification as a social policy advocate for a community organisation.
© Dean Lombard 2011