A more conventional and potentially less offensive biography is available here.

This is a work in progress. Contents vary with varying levels of caffeination and/or moodswings. Last modified 12/00.

THE BASICS

Q: What The Hell is Wrong With You?
A: *Sigh* I'm not sure.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME

Q: Where exactly is Mississauga?
A: The proper question is probably "What is Mississauga"? It's a suburb just west of Toronto, Ontario. I believe it's the biggest suburb in Canada.

Q: Is it true that you're still living with your parents there?
A: Not "still". I moved out in college, lived on my own, and then with a girlfriend for 6 or 7 years until we broke up.

Q: How'd you blow that?
A: It's all explained on "Lovers Leap"

Q: What's that?
A: My second album, released in the year 2000 after considerable delay. My first album was the eponymous "Dan Bryk, Asshole", released in 1996. In between those I put out an EP called "Dan Bryk Rocks Nobody" on Eutectic/Ramona Records in 1998. There were a number of cassette-only releases prior to "Dan Bryk, Asshole" under a variety of different names, culminating in 1995's "Dan Bryk, Now!". Everything up to and including "Dan Bryk, Asshole" was released by "No! Discs" (not to be confused with Halifax' No! Records) which was essentially run out of my parents' basement.

Q: So you're still sponging off your parents?
A: Ever try to make money touring? Besides, my brother went and got married, so if I moved out they'd have an empty nest and they'd be at each other's throats without a referee.

Q: What is Flabby Road?
A: The name of my home studio. Right now it's my parents' basement. It's basically a Protools Digi 001 system with a lot of old analogue gear and percussion collected over the years. So far it's just been my demo studio, although I've produced a couple of other artists, such as the Bicycles.

Q: What instruments do you play?
A: Just keyboards. I've tried to play guitar... god knows I've tried. I recently got a Yamaha P80 to tour with, but I write mostly on a Heintzman upright my parents were hoping to get a concert pianist with. Joke's on them. I also have a Wurlitzer electric piano, a Yamaha Electone dual-manual organ with spinning-plate fake leslie, a compact Acetone on loan from the American Flag, a Silvertone console organ (magnus reed-style) and Voce Electric Piano and Micro B rack modules. I have also been known to play Omnichord, but I sold that and the Rhodes (featured prominently on "Dan Bryk Asshole") for rent money waaaay back when.

CAREER TRAJECTORY

Q: How come nobody buys your records?
A: Maybe they're not commercial enough.

Q: How come other people don't cover your songs more often?
A: Maybe because they've never heard them. Or maybe they're not commercial enough.

Q: How come I can't find your records in my local store?
A: If people asked for them, maybe they'd get stocked more often. But I've gotten emails from people who said they special ordered my CD, and the store didn't even bother to get an extra copy to put in the rack. I have to remember to make a sticker next time that reads "featuring members of Creed".

Q: Why don't people write articles about you?
A: Looked at a picture of me lately?

Q: How come I've never heard your music on the radio?
A: Looked at a picture of me lately? Well... that's not totally true. I do get a fair bit of college radio, CBC and NPR airplay, but still nothing like, say, Kinnie Starr. Maybe you're listening to "commercial" radio? (see "How come nobody buys your records", above)

Q: How come you haven't played [insert town here] ?
A: I'm working on it. Feel free to send a polite email to Ger at scratchie@scratchie.com letting him know where you would like to see me play. Be nice, Ger signs my cheques.

Q: Aren't you kind a pathetic fanboy groupie, running around backstage giving your CD's to rock stars who are so flattered by anyone taking their opinion seriously that they blabber your name in print and offer you record deals on their vanity labels?
A: Worked for Jonny Polonsky, didn't it?

Q: I've never heard or read anything about you until just now. Don't your record companies do anything?
A: Easy on the kids. They have to work ten times as hard ramming my wackness down everyone's throats than they would with some boy band or nü metal projekt. Besides, I'm fairly lucky that anyone gives a shit.

Q: You're been doing this for ten years now. When are you gonna get a real job?
A: Hi mom.

Q: I've noticed that there's a guy named Dan Bryk who is credited with design and layout of record sleeves and websites for tons of indie bands like Danny Michel, Plastic Bag, Renann, Lindy, John Southworth, Liane de Lotbiniere, The American Flag, The Pariahs, Howie Beck, Elevator, Wrist Error... any relation?
A: Sort of. Let me tell you a story. I used to be the art director at this CD company for a couple of years, until one day I asked for 3 weeks off to do a tour. Soon enough the boss hauled me into his office, sat me down, stared me straight in the eye and said "Dan, are you an art director... or a rock star?" That was my last "real job". I still do a wide variety of freelance design work, primarily for music clients. Email me for a quote.

Q: But you don't give yourself a credit for designing your own CD's?
A: Compare Lovers Leap with my solo shows. Don't you think I take credit for too much already?

OBESITY

Q: Why don't you lose some weight and then people would write about you and play your records on "commercial" radio?
A: But then what would I write about?

Q: You don't smoke, you don't do drugs, you claim not to drink. You say you only eat the Bean Entrees at Taco Bell. So what do you eat that keeps you so fat?
A: Those goddamned venti iced mochas. Otherwise it's all sushi and tempeh.

Q: What does BBW stand for?
A: It was a K-Mart store brand for large sizes. It might stand for big beautiful woman. No-one knows for sure, it's not exactly well-documented. I chickened out and gave it the subtitle...

Q: ...Chunky Girl. So you don't find like, Kate Moss attractive?
A: Eww. I'm sure she's a person with feelings like the rest of us. Though I do hate to agree with McDonald's on anything, "just say Large Size It!" It's not some huge life-defining obsession, I don't have a problem with skinny people beyond varying degrees of quiet resentment, I'm not in denial about the health risks involved in obesity. I guess I just felt that I wanted to say "hey, I find large women sexy." In a pop song. What was I thinking?

ISSUES

Q: You don't seem like such an awful person. Why do you have such a fixation on god, religlious guilt and self-loathing?
A: I served some time in a private pentacostal christian school after nearly being kicked out of public school for antisocial behaviour amongst other things (it was the era of a lot of amateur psychology and psycho-pharmacology in the school system). Rather than put the fear of the lord in me as intended, it cured me of practicing religion. Perhaps forever. But it sure screwed up sex. Perhaps forever.

Q: You drop hints on your records to being Catholic, yet you're working a musical genre almost entirely dominated by Jews. What's up with that?
A: I wonder about this. Maybe I'm a wannabe, because I generally get compared to people like Randy Newman, Ben Folds, Beck, Jonathan Richman, Burt Bacharach, Jill Sobule, Dean Friedman (well, only once...) and most of the songwriters I adore... Lee Feldman, David Forman, Kim Fox, Adam Schlesinger, Paul Simon, Steven Malkmus, Peter Himmelman, Bob Wiseman, Billy Joel. Then again, I was adopted with not a lot of info about my birth parents so who knows? Evan from the Flag thinks I'd convert if I could only find the right girl.

Q: And just who is the right girl?
A: *Sigh* I'm not sure.

Q: Do you think you might get more dates if your stuff wasn't so blatantly misogynist?
A: You really think so? I'd like to think I'm generally aligned with that amorphous thing called feminism. I went through a backlash period in college that I'm deeply embarrassed by, and I admit I like to play devil's advocate once in a while in my songs. I would also like to think that there is usually some logic and reason for the specifics of any given unpleasant situation in my songs, rather than a general spewing of misanthropy. I'm usually trying to make a point, but yeah, I guess that sometimes I'm working through some issues myself.

Q: Like your violent, homophobic revenge fantasy "Fingers"?
A: OKAY, LET'S GET THIS STRAIGHT. It made me really upset when "Lovers Leap" was pulled from a couple of college radio stations because the programmers arbitrarily decided it was homophobic and promoted violence towards gays. ONE: The character Fingers is based on a real guy who befriended me and then took advantage of that friendship to sexually abuse me. TWO: It's not a gay thing, it's a pedophile thing. Most same-sex child abusers still consider themselves heterosexual. You're betraying YOUR bias if you're equating pedophilia with homosexuality [MBLA sickos notwithstanding.] THREE: This always sounds dumb, but... some of my best friends are gay. Sexual orientation is not an issue with me, or as far as I know, the friends I hang out with. FOUR: I would never advocate violence against someone because of who they are or how they were born. But if I honestly knew I could prevent "Fingers" from fucking up another kid's life, I wouldn't think twice about killing him. Sorry.

AND FINALLY...

Q: Isn't this whole self-deprecation thing a con?
A: Hi Dad.

STILL HAVE AN UNANSWERED QUESTION?

I am willing to expand upon this FAQ with answers to any other questions you may have, within reason, although I am far more likely to include questions that retain the established tone of derisive sarcasm. I reserve the right to not publically acknowledge or answer any or all questions, if only because I might be too busy. "Just because he don't answer, doesn't mean he don't care." (Thanks GB!)

ASK DAN A QUESTION BY CLICKING HERE

Why, here comes our first inquisitor!

Dear Jose:

1. I was shocked and surprised to turn 30 this past September.

2. I am unlearned, although I had a year or two of classical piano lessons when I was 7 or 8 that ended in frustration because I was hyperactive and easily distracted. I took a half-dozen more piano theory lessons from a high school music teacher (i spent all my free time in the recording studio in the music department at school, and since he ran the department he noticed I didn't know what I was doing musically and offered to help. Take a bow, Mr. Boniface!) but I was not focused, and still have an aversion to practising that exists to this day, apparently.

I did attend the music history survey courses before I dropped out of my English/Fine Art degree at the University of Guelph, Ontario, and I received the only 100% final grade that was ever awarded in the 12 years they had offered a pop music survey course.

I have learned a bit more about the chords I'm playing, about bars and keys and other musician-speak, from Maury Lafoy and Kurt Swinghammer, who I've played with for the last couple of years, but I still can't jam with them to save my life. I am fortunate to work with players who share my sensibilities and appreciate what I do.

I obsessively listen to many different types of music, though, and hopefully that love comes through in what I do. I am admittedly more creative than I am disciplined, though I am learning as I travel along. Hope that's not too disappointing.

Nope. It's been Bryk for generations, and my dad thinks it was shortened from "Van Bryk" somewhere along the way. European miscegenation of the highest order.

I recorded my first bunch of tapes in high school under the name "D. Brykowski", mostly out of sheer perversity. (The best example of that was "The Freebasin' D. Brykowski", the cover art of which parodied a famous Dylan album.)

In college, at the height of diversity mania (ethnicity got you bonus points) I had a college radio show under that name. Unfortunately, CFRU was in the grip of a war over identity politics, and I recall using such an "ethnic" sounding name to thumb my nose at the nose-ring/manic panic brigade. Pretty white on my part, I know.