Greg Dulli - Biography

Biography

Greg Dulli was born and brought up in Hamilton, Ohio. Although he was raised a Roman Catholic, he is now agnostic. Dulli first came to public attention in the late 1980s with The Afghan Whigs when he joined D.C. transplant bassist John Curley and Louisville, Kentucky, guitarist Rick McCollum. The band fused punk rock and R&B. Dulli's career in production was halted as The Afghan Whigs began playing more gigs, drawing bigger and bigger crowds. The band was soon brought to the attention of Sub Pop Records in Seattle. They were the first non-Northwestern U.S. band to record for the Sub Pop label. The Whigs amicably split in 2001.

In 1994, Dulli was a lead vocalist in the Backbeat Band, an alternative-rock supergroup that recorded the soundtrack to The Beatles biopic, Backbeat. Other members of the Backbeat Band were Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Don Fleming (Gumball), Mike Mills (R.E.M.), Dave Grohl (Nirvana, later Foo Fighters), and Dave Pirner (Soul Asylum). Dulli was the only musician that appeared on the Foo Fighters first record aside from Dave Grohl. Dulli was watching Grohl record the songs. Grohl eventually asked him if he wanted to play and handed him a guitar. He added a guitar part to the song "X-Static".

In 1997, Dulli (with Ted Demme and director Mark Pellington) bought the movie rights to a book by Ann Imbrie called Spoken in Darkness, but the film was never made.

In December 1998, Dulli was hospitalized suffering a skull fracture at the hands of a bouncer following an altercation at the Liberty Lunch Club in Austin, TX.

In 1999, Dulli was invited to participate on a tribute album for Moby Grape founding member Skip Spence, who was dying of lung cancer. Dulli appears on the album More Oar: A Tribute To The Skip Spence Album (Birdman Records, 1999). The album was released shortly after Spence's death, though Spence had listened to a pre-release version of the album shortly before his death.

Dulli provides vocals for the song "Somebody Needs You" off of The Lo-Fidelity Allstars 2002 album "Don't Be Afraid of Love"

In 2006, Dulli produced Ballads for Little Hyenas by the Italian rock band, Afterhours.

Dulli is now the lead singer and main songwriter of the band The Twilight Singers who released their fifth album titled Dynamite Steps in February 2011. He is also working with Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age, Mark Lanegan Band) on their side project, The Gutter Twins. Lanegan also appears on The Twilight Singers EP, A Stitch In Time.

Dulli always marks the booklets to his records with sentences in nicely-clumsy Italian.

October 2007 saw Dulli, along with Jeff Klein, Shawn Smith, Petra Haden and Barb Antonio, play two acoustic shows at the Triple Door in Seattle, for the A Drink for the Kids fundraising effort by The Vera Project. The shows were recorded and released in October 2008 as a digital download on Greg's own label, Infernal Recordings.

In 2009, Dulli was invited to participate in a tribute album to the late Doug Sahm, and contributed his version of "You Was For Real" to Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm (Vanguard Records).

Greg Dulli also contributed two tracks to the 7 inch vinyl only series "Dangerous Highway: A Tribute To The Songs of Eddie Hinton" on "Shake It Records". Dulli covers the Eddie Hinton tracks "Hard Luck Guy" and "Cover Me" on "Vol.1".

In addition to his recording career, Dulli has also appeared in a number of films, including the independent short Salt Shaker, Ted Demme's Monument Ave. and Beautiful Girls (together with The Afghan Whigs), as well as Matt Bissonnette's Passenger Side.

In October 2010, for the first time in his career, Greg Dulli embarked on a solo tour which included songs from his whole career. The tour saw him perform twenty-nine shows in five different countries. The first night was in New Orleans at the bar "d.b.a". A live CD containing 19 songs from this night was later available on the tour in both signed and unsigned paper CD sleeves.

In December 2011 it was announced that The Afghan Whigs would reunite to play a few concerts.