Your Real Dad

Your Real Dad was a Bloomington based post-punk band formed in September 1983, and featured James Daywalt Williams on vocals, Stephen Lee Canner on guitar, Dave d'Eath on bass, and Nathan Sturm on drums. Canner, d'Eath, and Sturm would all later be members of the Indianapolis/Bloomington based glam band Too Cool, Sturm also went on to play with The Rosebloods and the Peptides. Williams went on to front the short lived The Young Lords.

Your Real Dad's first gig was at a Bloomington street dance in September 1983. The band improvised the entire set and responded to taunts of "You're an art band!" from the audience by simply stating, "This is rock 'n' roll!"

Originally the street dance gig was planned as a one off and the quartet had no plans to continue as a band, but in December 1983, the band was offered an opening slot for the Zero Boys at Ricky's Canteena. Instead of improvising for this show the band borrowed a practice space from the band Glassfactory and wrote a set of original material the night before the show. It was at this gig that the song the band is best remembered for was debuted. The song, "John Barge is Dead", was an homage to former Panics lead singer John Barge who was, and is, very much alive. The band's sound from that point on drew from a mixture of influences including post-punk/no-wave, surf, early goth, and German poetry.

The band went on to perform, mostly at Ricky's Canteena, until about February 1984, after which the members all drifted to other projects.

A live recording of the December 1983 show exists and is sometimes traded privately.

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