You Oughta Know: Dinosaur Bones

Dinosaur Bones' singer-guitarist Ben Fox and keyboardist Dave Wickland are proof that quitters can win.

Wickland received an engineering degree from the University of Guelph before abandoning that career path to make music while his old friend Fox, who was "a very good student," left Montreal's Concordia University before completing his English/poli-sci degree because of a burning desire to start a band and live the dream.

Neither have regrets about the things they are, in theory, giving up.

"I didn't get into a whole bunch of music schools -- like, all of them -- that I applied for," says Wickland, discussing why he initially chose engineering as a discipline. "I've always been the type of person that wants a big challenge, which is totally fitting for what Dinosaur Bones is doing now. It's very DIY, everything is from the ground up."

And build they have.


Dinosaur Bones' first release, a four-song self-titled EP in 2008, introduced the masses to the band's "broody indie rock for real people." Later this year the Toronto five-piece will release their debut full-length, which was produced by Jon Drew (Arkells, F---ed Up, Tokyo Police Club).

"This has been my dream for a long time, and I wanted to put all myself into it for a while and see how it goes," continues Wickland. "The only real other thing is just that when I graduated all the people in my program went off and just built suburbia, and that kind of upset me."

Fox isn't recommending people drop out of school like he did, but he's also absolutely sure that he did the right thing considering what he wanted.

"I moved to Montreal, met great people, loved the program I was in, loved the school, loved the city, but there was a void, there was a void that couldn't be filled without Dave and without [bassist] Branko [Scekic] and without these guys [guitarist Joel Clifton, drummer Lucas Fredette] in the city," he says. "I was writing songs out there but I knew that the vehicle that I needed to get [them] into the world was sitting at home in Toronto. I couldn't ignore that. That absolutely dominated my thoughts for a long time and I eventually just had to make a decision and jump."

"It's better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than halfway up one that you don't," he adds. "A few of my friends in similar situations in university stuck it out, and two more years went by and they graduated and they went off into this field that they were wishy-washy about while their dreams kind of fell by the wayside.

"I wouldn't be able to stomach that. I couldn't live my life with that void."