It's like Jethro Tull or Pink Floyd...there is no "Betty", although Vickie doesn't always correct folks who call her "Betty" in error. Technically, Betty Dylan are Dan and Vickie Dubelman, a singer/songwriter duo known to work with superb musicians both on the road and in the studio. They are also husband and wife, he a New Yorker, she from Bakersfield California, whose musical and personal world's collided in LA. Dan, known as "Dr. Dan", plays lead guitar, writes the lion's share of the music and lyrics, and performs vocals. Vickie plays rhythm guitar and performs vocals.
After receiving their first radio play and critical acclaim on their first release, Betty Dylan decided to make a full time pursuit of recording and playing their music throughout the United States. They have played at such legendary clubs as The Bottom Line in NYC and The Roxy in L.A. and have opened for many national acts such as Rodney Crowell, Hank III, Buddy & Julie Miller, Dan Hicks, Loudon Wainright, Drive By Truckers, The Blasters, Leon Russell, Bob Schneider and more. Dan and Vickie have played about 100 shows per year for the last three years all over the USA. The recent highlight was performing at Willie Nelson's 2004 Farm Aid show in Seattle.
Betty Dylan performs as a duo and as a full band. As a band, they are known for working with many of the musicians who have defined American music in the last 30 years. They now have 5 CD's out and are recording their sixth CD, "Don't I Know You From The Future?" with Johnny Cash's old bass player, Dave Roe and Craig Wright who played drums on Todd Snider's 'East Nashville Skyline' and Steve Earle's 'Copperhead Road'. Mike Webb, who is fast becoming the "Nick Lowe" of the East Nashville scene, is producing.
Betty Dylan live blocks away from where Loretta Lynn and Jack White made their Grammy-winning record in East Nashville. Not surprisingly, "Don't I Know You From The Future?," the new Betty Dylan CD, has that same flavor. The release is planned for May 2005.
Vickie Dubelman
(lead singer/rhythm guitar)
Vickie scouted for crawdads in the canals and hiked through cotton fields back when cotton fields covered most of Bakersfield, California. She fastened a blue tarp curtain to her porch, and taught her friends to sing harmony. These happy memories of putting on homemade shows are juxtaposed with memories of her parents' alcohol and drug abuse. Their "sixties" marriage included failed experiments with free love and open marriage eventually leading to a broken home.
In Carson City, Nevada, Vickie was 13 and discovered the theatre. She threw herself into it playing Alice in Lewis Carroll's classic. But Vickie's dad had to get out of town in a hurry, so he put her on a Greyhound in the middle of the night with a phone number in her pocket to her mother in L.A. where she continued to pursue theatre and music.
While working a day job in the childrenÕs entertainment field and living in Venice Beach, she started her own band, Venus Con Carne, which recorded a self-titled CD, performed in L.A. clubs, received some national radio-play and appeared on an episode of "Ellen" during its heyday.
Vickie has also recorded songs for children's programs, CDRoms and radio/tv jingles. Vickie and Dr. Dan met on their day jobs during production of the "Casper the Friendly Ghost" television series. They got married a year and a half later and, although they tried to keep their music and marriage separate, they soon found that they had to surrender to the obviousÉ.Betty Dylan was born.
"Dr. Dan" Dubelman
(Co-lead vocals, lead guitar)
Dan grew up on a movie set. At 5 years old, Dan won a Golden Lion at the Cannes Film Festival for his role in the "Sharing" commercial for Cracker Jacks, which also featured Jack Gilford and became the longest running commercial until the "Mikey Life Cereal" commercial came along decades later.
Dan began playing music as a teenager and by the time he got to Cornell he was playing more than he was studying. His college band, Lay Quiet Awhile (LQA), was the most sought after local party band known for long rocking jams and Dr. DanÕs caustic lyric ad-libs.
Meanwhile, in Pulitzer-Prize-Winner Alison Lurie's class, Dan began to write "American Trash", a novella. This piece earned him a scholarship and fellowship to John's Hopkins fiction program under John Barth. After receiving his MA, Dan then spent a semester studying acting at Oxford where he concentrated on Shakespeare and Chekov.
With school finished, he moved to New York where he started an independent record label and toured the U.S. with his own band, Dr. Dan's Music Show. Highlights included gigs at New York CityÕs Lonestar, The Village Gate and Wetlands where Lisa Loeb opened for them. He moved to Austin, Texas, for a while to write and record. He returned to New York but could not make ends meet, so he joined the Rolling Stones' review, "Sticky Fingers", playing Keith Richards and touring the deep South. By the summer of that year, he'd had enough. He moved to L.A. and put together another version of Dr. Dan's Music Show called Dr. Dan and the Perscriptions. The Perscriptions went on to play around L.A. and spent the whole summer of '97 playing on Venice Beach. He met Vickie shortly thereafter and married her.
Dan's second love is tennis. At 12, Dan was hanging out on the courts with Bobby Riggs and Pancho Segoura and competing in international tennis tournaments. He remains an avid tennis player.
