:: DEZ DICKERSON ::

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CD = $14.98 Cassette = $9.98 8x10 Photo = $5.00 ONEMAN - The brainchild of former Prince guitarist Dez Dickerson, Oneman will take you on an emotional jouney using a backdrop of some of the best in todays modern music. Pop it in and enjoy masterful craftsmanship as Dez shares the stage with some of music's most noted musicians including Phil Solem (The Rembrandts), Michael Bland (NPG) and Joel Hanson (PFR). Songs include: Hello Again, Love Somebody, For You For Me, Fall Into Me, Maybe Tonight, Peacehopejoy, East Coast / West Coast, Oneman, This Song, Like a Merry-Go-Round, Home, The Way I Feel and Real To Me. This is a recording that stands the test of time. Peacehopejoy The Way I Feel

:: INFO ::

Available now! Featuring former Prince guitarist Dez Dickerson, with special guests Phil Solem (the Rembrandts), Joel Hanson (PFR), Jody Davis (Newsboys), Michael Bland (Prince and the NPG), Believable Picnic and more!

About Dez

Dez Dickerson is a man whose dreams have come true. He has known success in the music industry. His career path includes being former lead guitarist for the Artist formerly known as "Prince", to Vice-President of A&R for StarSong Communications, and now President of his own company, Absolute Records. Because of the diversity he has seen in life, Dez has a message that crosses every generational and racial line -- a message that needs to be heard.

His parents, Maurice and Charlene Dickerson , raised three children. Dez, as the eldest child, remembers his father working two jobs to provide for the family in the early days, in order to move them out of the inner city to the suburb of Maplewood, just north of St. Paul, Minnesota.

"When I was 12, I asked my parents for a guitar . In order for them to buy it, many of my relatives from Minnesota to California chipped in. I remember waiting and waiting for it to arrive by mail. I couldn't wait to get it to start playing all the music I was listening to. When it finally arrived, I opened the case and was devastated to find the neck had been broken in shipping. I had to wait nearly a year for the replacement to come."

Dez Dickerson began his performing career at age 14 when, like so many young boys, he put together a band that practiced endlessly in his parent's basement. His mother remembers the house shaking and things falling off the walls from the volume. Yet, nothing stopped them for a moment from supporting Dez in pursuing his musical goals. Word got out that there was a young kid playing guitar like Jimi Hendrix. Winning a local talent contest got them signed to a booking agency while Dez was still in high school. Most weeks, Charlene was writing notes to school administrators to release him early on Fridays so he and his bandmates could travel to their performances. At age 18, after graduating from a technical school, Dez was playing music full-time, touring the Midwest for the next 9 years.

In 1978, an up and coming artist from Minneapolis named Prince asked Dez to join his band, which was to become one of the giant pop acts of the 80's. As a member of Prince's band Dez toured the U.S. and Europe, including opening for the Rolling Stones before 100,000 people in the LA Coliseum. They also appeared on American Bandstand, Saturday Night Live, Midnight Special, Solid Gold, and became mainstays on MTV with their video hits "1999" and "Little Red Corvette" (these videos still receive heavy airplay on MTV & VH1). He was reaching the goals he had set for himself many years earlier. As exhilarating and heady as this whirlwind of acclaim was, something was still missing in his life ...

In the midst of incredible success, Dez knew that he needed something more. Things that he had learned growing up in church began to stir in his heart. It was in December of 1980, when off the road for a Christmas break, that Dez had a profound conversion experience and became a Christian. "In a moment in time, the Lord showed me that He was real, that He loved me beyond any human understanding, and that it wasn't fame or fortune that I needed, but rather to surrender my life to Him."

Dez continued with Prince five years. Between tours, he began doing showcase gigs with his own band. After making a cameo appearance with his band in Prince's motion picture "Purple Rain", Dez ventured out as a solo artist. Touring throughout the U.S., he opened for Billy Idol as special guest on his 1984 Rebel Yell tour. In addition, Dez and his band headlined their own concerts in many major cities.

As a songwriter and studio musician, Dez worked with Narada Michael Walden (producer for Whitney Houston, Sheena Easton), Aretha Franklin, Vanity 6 and The Time. His songs appeared on the soundtracks of the motion pictures "Purple Rain" and National Lampoon's "Vacation."

While Dez seemed to be on the verge of carrying the success he had known with Prince into a solo career, it remained just beyond his reach. His one remaining aspiration, to have the opportunity to be heard as a solo recording artist, continued to elude him. " It was a strange and frustrating time," says Dez, " We had experienced amazing success touring as an unsigned act, doing major shows with major artists. I was being managed at the time by a high-powered New York company, and it seemed that everything was going our way. But every time we got into serious discussions with a label , something would happen to derail the deal."

Frustrated and disillusioned, Dez decided in 1986 to take a step back and re-evaluate his career and his life. He began to get more involved with other artists behind the scenes, developing his skills as a producer and entrepreneur, and focusing on his family and friends, as well as his own spiritual wholeness." Looking back, I thank God that things didn't go my way back then. What I needed at that time, more than anything, was to get my life together."

Though Dez was still in secular music, God was already beginning to pave the way for his transition into Christian music. "Providentially, my booking agent during the solo days was a committed Christian who booked major secular acts like the Police and the Go-Go's, but also booked Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith. God used him to introduce me to the world of CCM."

By 1988, he was producing albums and writing for artists in the Christian music industry. This all eventually led to his position as Vice-President of A&R for StarSong Communications in 1990. While there, he worked as executive producer with top artists The Newsboys, Mylon LeFevre, The Imperials, Bride, Whitecross, and many others.

In July of 1994, Dez stepped out to launch his own record label, Absolute Records. " I really felt that, having had such a broad spectrum of experience on both the creative and business sides of the industry, that perhaps I could bring a different perspective to the table. I really wanted to build a different kind of label, one that not only made great records and developed great artists, but one that helped it's artists and employees to become better people as well."

By the fall of 1996, Dez began to feel that things had come full circle, and that it was time to do that solo album at last. " The fire and the excitement came back. I really felt that I could make a record that could impact people. I believed that, after all I had been through, I really had something to say." The album , entitled "oneman," was completed in the summer of 1997, and represents, in a sense the culmination of one quest, and the beginning of another.

And what does the future hold for Dez Dickerson? "It took this long to come to a place of real balance in my life. I'm very pleased to be building Absolute and becoming active again as an artist. I'm thankful for the diversity of opportunity these things provide , but I'm even more thankful to be at peace with God. I look forward not just to continued achievement in the music business, but coming to a place where I can look back and know that my life had purpose and meaning , that I was able, by the grace of God, to give something of lasting value to others."