Mad Conductor bio

The Mad Conductor is a hip-hop band that originated as a studio project on St. Patrick's Day, 2005 between MC Devlin, front man of the recently defunct punk band, No-Ca$h, and studio engineer/musician Dan McKinney. Dan had operated his own recording studio since 1997, and had  played keys with garage rock staples The Original Sins (1987-1997), and The Band alumni’s Jim Weider (1999-2006).

A two song Mad Conductor demo tape burnt through the underground that summer and the duo quickly built a strong following across the United States and abroad with their strange brew of rocksteady, psychedelic funk and urban hip-hop. Originally appealing to MC Devlin’s No-Cash crack-rock fanbase, The Mad Conductor’s wildly different style soon attracted a  wider audience. Their original style sprang from from Dan McKinney's unique studio techniques and wide-ranging musical background, and MC Devlin's obtuse and densely metaphorical lyrics. The result is a fearless mashup of what’s hip-hop and what’s not, joyfully blurring the lines between punk, pop, hip-hop, and more.

All of the band’s endeavors have been organized by the band members themselves - booking shows, recording & producing the music, web sites, merchandise, etc. Not a single ad has appeared for the band, no press releases or promotional e-mails appeared, no social networking promo campaigns, no mainstream press reviews. Yet the band has garnered over a half million plays on MySpace, and continues to rack up strong sales through Itunes.

An EP entitled Mechanical Claw was released in May, 2006. A a five piece band was assembled the following spring. In year of 2006 and into 2007, the band went on to play hundreds of shows, touring relentlessly through the United States and across the pond to the UK, playing their inimitable style of live hip-hop music for appreciative fans on both continents.


In June 2007 the band self-released their first full-length CD, Renegade Space Rock, which sold thousands of copies to fans around the globe. The album took a sonic leap forward from Mechanical Claw with McKinney and MC Devlin dipping deep into their studio and lyrical toolboxes to build dense mixes that hit notes both lighthearted & strange, funny & creepy - sometimes all within the same song. Live studio sounds mixed with sampled drums and wire recording snippets, and instruments as diverse as accordion, piano, fuzz guitar, and Mason jars contribute to the mix. Dan and MC Devlin went on to win an award for the best original band in their region on the strength of the release.

Februrary 2008 saw the release of the digital-only single Members Only backed with B-side Soulless Experience. Members Only featured sounds and rhythms mined from the hard drives in Dan’s studio, with lyrical nods to Kurt Vonnegut. Soulless Experience features a musical tip of the hat to one McKinney’s favorite psychedelic cheese songs, Iron Butterfly’s Soul Experience.


In the winter of 2008, in the wake of nonstop touring and time in the studio, front man MC Devlin found himself needing a change of pace, and scenery. In order to find steady work and a warm climate in which to write a new record he relocated to the city of New Orleans to help rebuild the flood and hurricane ravaged communities.

In his time there he quickly met a network of talented musicians and began working on several projects including a live-band backed series of emcee battles and a new batch of southern-funk tinged Mad Conductor songs. He returned to Pennsylvania in the winter of 08/09 to record the new songs with Dan McKinney and The Band alumnus Randy Ciarlante on drums, who provided the perfect rhythmic match for MC Devlin’s  New Orleans frame of mind.

The first song available from the new collection is Crossgates Estates, a rumination on hard times in that tangential stream of consciousness style of MC Devlin’s. The remaining three songs will be released this summer.

[mad conductor] [presskit]