Death & Taxes (St. Louis, MO)


Genre: Hip Hop / Alternative / Indie


Bio:
Comprised of Dusty Wallets, DJ Who, and Ben Bounce.

Jason Karr a.k.a. "Spark1duh?" was born to two young parents, some might refer to as hippies. The love of music was strong in the household with his mother singing songs with me as a child, a radio always on the classic rock station somewhere in the house, and his grandmother playing country music on the acoustic guitar.



"Skateboarding was overtaken by the revival of East Coast style hip-hop, that was bringing more of a conscious vibe, with a jazz influence, and was totally speaking to me on a wave-length that the West Coast Rap, and Grunge Rock were not catering to any longer. "

"I bought "A Tribe Called Quest"- the Low End Theory, and "Wu-Tang Clan"- Enter the 36 Chambers, and from there, it was Nas, Biggie, Digable Planets, Jay-Z...... etc. The list goes on forever. I don't know what it was that drew me to it. I think it's the truthfulness. "That's the way it is, and it's like that." It took a while and a few lame attempts at rock/punk bands, before I realized that I was a horrible singer, and couldn't really do that cool Heavy Metal scream either, but I could really rap along to the songs I liked & even spit accapella verses of other rappers songs, rather well. So well, that I started to write some lame poems and raps of my own, and tried to spit them over instrumental beats from some record I had. I think it was "Capone & Noreaga"- Illegal Life/ Stick You."


Dj Who?, joined the group, and our old friend Ben Jost moved back from Miami after assistant engineering at the world famous, Hit Factory under Scott Storch, and became our new engineer/producer, and Ponyboy moved on to his new math/noise rock band "Yowie". I put out a few unofficial, samplers over the years, over 40 some odd songs, and played tons of shows at some of the nicest venues in St. Louis, untill I was offered a chance to go on tour with my friend Gene's rock band "Bullets & Octane". I was sceptical at first, but he assured me it would be fun, and well paid, so I said what the hell, and went out on the road for about 2 years on and off. We've played in predominately 500 capacity or smaller venues, in almost every state except Alaska, Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, & Rhode Island. I had tons of material written from being on the road in a van for so long, and when I got home, I recorded some of my best songs ever. I also started a side group called "The 12 to 6 Movement", with fellow emcees, Lesson of "40 til 5", and Time of "The Treez"


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