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The Indiana Daily Student

arts

Dietrich Jon performs rock with violin

Members of Dietrich Jon, a local band from Bloomington, perform during the Culture Shock Music Festival hosted by WIUX on April 10, 2015.

Diederik van Wassenaer grew up in Amsterdam playing the violin and listening to classical music.

At 9 p.m. tonight, his rock ’n’ roll band, Dietrich Jon, will play a show at the Back Door on South College 
Avenue.

“I never really got along with other string players that much,” he said. “I got along with people that played punk.”

Van Wassenaer said he started Dietrich Jon as a solo project after he graduated from IU in 2013.

Since then, some band members have come and gone, he said, but the group has remained a five-piece for almost a year with van Wassenaer as its violin player, singer and guitarist.

“Everything we’ve come up with as a group, collectively, has been better than something I could come up with on my own,” he said.

Drummer Mark Edlin said he agreed the band works best as a unit.

Edlin and van Wassenaer said they first met when they both performed at the IU Soul Revue. The two started playing together in a bluegrass group called the Underhills that every current member of Dietrich Jon has played with at one time, 
they said.

Van Wassenaer said involvement in the Underhills and his personal interest in David Bowie have played a significant role in the sound of Dietrich Jon.

“There’s an element of glam, and there’s definitely a folk element or an Americana element,” van 
Wassenaer said.

The band’s Facebook page classifies them as “glamericana,” though both van Wassenaer and Edlin said they’re not quite sure what that means.

“I think I was just trying to be a smartass,” van 
Wassenaer said.

Edlin said the genre of Dietrich Jon has developed over time as band members add effects pedals to their guitars and listen to music from other bands.

Personally, he said, he gets a lot of inspiration from the rock group White Denim and metal-rockers 
Mastodon.

Edlin’s high school classmate and Dietrich Jon’s lead guitarist, Austin Davis, said he’s been really into Kendrick Lamar lately.

Meanwhile, van Wassenaer has been listening to lyrically driven rock artists like Courtney Barnett, he said.

“Everyone’s taste is 
different,” Edlin said.

Van Wassenaer has been trying to develop his songwriting lyrically by telling a story, but admits the hardest thing for him is lyrics.

The group has been working on their first full-length album, tracking in an art gallery-turned-recording studio beneath the Back Door.

The band plans to start a tour once the album comes out in the spring but will likely keep it within the Midwest, he said.

“My aspiration for this group is to be, at the core of it, a Bloomington band,” 
he said.

Van Wassenaer said the band really enjoys the vibrant arts community in Bloomington, especially because musicians are welcome to post fliers all over town without a problem.

“This is the place to be,” he said.

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