Dennis Donaghy

Dennis T. Donaghy (Chinese name Táng Lè Tiān (唐樂天); born June 11, 1976) is an American multi-instrumentalist and outsider songwriter-producer based in Reno, Nevada. He was a drummer in Severna Park, Dirt Bike Annie, Blanket Statementstein and White Shabbos. From 2004 to 2007, working alone in his studio, he wrote, performed, recorded and released about 30 songs spanning several music genres. He currently releases select versions through the Eleusion Temple imprint as Phædrx.

Music career
Donaghy was the bassist in New York reggae-rockers Blue Gelati. Their 1994 CD Lick Me includes a cover of the Police song "Driven To Tears" and has Donaghy on 6-string fretless bass on several tracks. In 1995 he was the drummer in Severna Park briefly before the band relocated to Seattle. The band featured Jack Dourakos, now better known as Chikara personality Gavin Loudspeaker on guitar and vocals alongside Jeannie Lee of Dirt Bike Annie on bass and vocals. During the sets the trio performed around Lower Manhattan they regularly covered the Iggy Pop vocal duet "Candy".

Late in 1995, Donaghy co-engineered, played drums and sang harmonies on the first Dirt Bike Annie record. It Ain't Easy Bein' Stupid was tracked on a TASCAM 388 in an apartment on the Lower East Side and its original packaging features artwork by Chris Ward, who would later emerge as rapper mc chris. The blue-vinyl 7" first came out on Richie Records in early 1996 and the four songs on it were re-released on the Dirtnap label in 2003. He also performed with Dirt Bike Annie at the punk mecca CBGB in 1996.

In the summer of 1996, he met the outsider musician Wesley Willis and members of his Fiasco band in New York. Willis later paid tribute to Severna Park in a song named after them on his 1996 album New York, New York. Each summer from 1998 to 2007 Donaghy played marching percussion such as quints or bass drum as a founding member of the Long Beach Seaside Marching Band.

Around 2004, Donaghy assisted in the creation of the Shabbos Holy Shabbos album at the request of Mike Wagner and his friend Mr. Shabbos. It was also recorded on a 388, and he co-engineered, played the drums and about half of the bass parts. The first White Shabbos shows were held at nearby venues including the New York Knitting Factory, with Paul Alpert on drums and Donaghy on bass and harmonies. He was even able to perform a second time at CBGB shortly before it closed for good, this time on bass. One of the final White Shabbos songs recorded with Donaghy on both drums and bass, the Chanukah song "Eight Lights", was broadcast on Israeli radio and never performed live by the band.

Late in 2005, he was invited to the first Blanket Statementstein rehearsal in New York City and became their first drummer. He played drums at their earliest shows but soon left to concentrate on writing and producing original song recordings.

Solo
Donaghy began composing original songs, and performing and producing full-band solo versions of them, during production of Shabbos Holy Shabbos. Finished solo works began appearing on mySpace in 2006 under the name metaOrphic, and a collection was registered with the US Copyright Office in 2007. His metaOrphic CD circulated and generated some interest from a Brooklyn producer who had previously worked with artists such as TV on the Radio and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs but an album never materialized.

In 2012, Donaghy recorded piano tracks for Turning Point with Frank MacKay, an interview program that airs on cable TV and satellite radio stations across the country. These sessions were produced by James DeZego at his Saje Studios in Shirley, NY, one of the show's official taping facilities.

In 2013, Donaghy began creating new music as Phædrx. His first release for Eleusion Temple was a live acoustic cover of the song Holy Mountain by the band Sleep, taped for YouTube on May 6, 2013.

Personal life
Donaghy was raised in Lido Beach, New York and earned his Bachelor's degree in Economics from New York University at 20. Since 2007, he has worked as both a classroom teacher and a data specialist managing a database of worldwide risk entities for major financial institutions. In 2007 he wrote an extensive graduate course paper on Radiohead which earned him admission to the European Graduate School in Switzerland in 2008. Donaghy speaks some Chinese and has also studied classical Latin, Urdu and Arabic. He is also a member of the Triple Nine Society.

On June 21, 2008, Donaghy married his longtime girlfriend about whom an early metaOrphic song was written. As of 2013, he develops original theory and related non-music discussions on his Fake Headrest site.

Discography
Tracks 1-4 only (the 1996 EP re-released)