Dream Rovers

It all began in January 2007 in Tehran when “Erfan Rezayatbakhsh” (A.K.A. elf—singer and songwriter of the band—) started a new path in his music career by singing in English instead of Persian. On January of 2007, he formed a band with the name of ” Persian Rovers” with 2 of his friends “Samyar Mahmoudi” and “Miad Hataminia”. At that time they recorded 6 songs of 1970s by famous bands and singers such as “Don’t Play Your Rock’n'roll to Me” by “Smokie”, “Imagine” by “John Lenon”, “Mambo Italiano” by “Dean Martin”, “Hungry Eyes” by “Merle Haggard”, “16 Tons” by “Tennessee Ernnie Ford”, and “Dellilah” by “Tom Jones”.

Covering old songs went on untill March of 2007 .Afterwards They continued the music career but this time, they decided to work on the songs which had been written by Erfan instead of covering old songs.

Things were changed when Miad Hataminia left the band in that summer because of some problems he had with the band. He also could not take place in practice sessions since he was working on his own album ” gham Baad”. Having no place to record the songs—since Miad owned the studio they recorded their “Flashback” album in—Erfan spoke to one of the friends he had come to know in university “Majid Sadeghi” (A.K.A. Dijam). Dijam was active in the field of music during his university studies by writing Persian lyrics but he expanded his activities by starting to play bass guitar a year after his graduation from university in 2005. He also had played bass guitar in some rock bands. Dijam became one of the “Persian Rovers” as the bass player but due to his persistence and enthusiasm he became a main member of the band.

They started to work on their first song named “Tonight” (music and lyrics by Erfan) with cooperation of some of their friends when “Persian Rovers ” experienced another separation when Samyar left the band after finishing the arrangement of “Tonight”. Since Erfan was the only one left from the “Persian Rovers”, they decided to change the name of the band to “Dream Rovers”. This happened before they recorded their first song “February Snow” (music by Erfan, lyrics by Shel Silverstein) on February 2008. The band continued arranging songs since then such as “Stutter” ( lyrics and music by Erfan), “Too many nights alone” (music by Erfan, lyrics by Shel Silverstein), and “Gonna be” ( lyrics and music by Erfan).

Dijam was supposed to play bass guitar in a rock band where he got acquainted with “Ahmad Motevasel” who played electric guitar. This happened at the same time as the Dream Rovers decided to work on their new song “Cloudy Sky” (music by Erfan, lyrics by Erfan and Shel Silverstein)in January 2010. The Rovers that were suffering from lack of a good guitar player decided to talk to Ahmad for his cooperation. Therefore, Ahmad—who had taught himself how to play electric guitar—joined the band. Besides, after taking some advice from the great Iranian music producer “Orod Anzabipour” (featuring kahat Mayan metal music band) they decided to find a piano player for the song “Cloudy Sky”. Erfan, therefore, spoke to one of his friends who had experience in playing keyboard and piano for more than 16 years by the time he was only 19. This was the beginning of “Parham Doustdar"‘s cooperation with the band. He had participated in many live performances as a piano player before.

There are two factors that sets Dream Rovers apart from other bands.
1-we are playing country music in a country which has no background of the genre. There are no country music guitar teachers, singing teachers,producers, etc. Therefore, we have to produce our songs based on our own experience and comparison with American country music artists.
2-existence of different tastes in music among the band members has led us to have some creativity in our songs. like switching from country to rock in the middle of a song or even sometimes switching back to country again. like what happened in songs, "Cloudy Sky" and "Stutter". although the main genre and feeling remain country.