Tom Gallello (Gravely) recording guitar for Betty D in Mash’s Basement. 6/15/12
Tom Gravely’s musical journey began in high school with Exploding Popes, a raw, high-energy band known for its unfiltered DIY spirit and anthemic absurdity. The band’s biggest song, Mothra, was written by Gravely when he was just 14 years old, and its lyrics were as simple as they were legendary:
“Mothra, giant fucking moth.”
It became an inside joke, a rallying cry, and an unexpected hit within their school’s underground scene. Even as Gravely moved on to new projects, Mothra never left—it became a tradition, a constant in the chaos. To this day, Mothra closes out every Dumb Echo show.
In August 2011, Exploding Popes were gigging at all the lovely shit spattered dive bars that they could find and Gravely formed a parallel project: Birdo + The Knees with drummer Mash Blabbater and bassist Josh Norberto. Inspired by Sonic Youth and the No Wave movement, Birdo + The Knees embraced raw, unpredictable soundscapes, dissonance, and a rejection of traditional song structures. While Popes leaned into high-energy punk absurdity, Birdo explored a more art-damaged, experimental sound.
But before Birdo + The Knees, before Dumb Echo, and before Gravely had even met Josh Norberto, he found himself in one of the darkest, most creatively desperate points of his life. It was during this time that he recorded his first solo album.
“Chagrin in the vast landscape. A portrait of bones and blood of our fame”
By December 2010, Gravely’s world felt like it was falling apart. Exploding Popes was inactive due to their bassist, Zac Vanacoro, leaving for college. He was stuck in a complicated, emotionally draining pseudo-relationship with a woman he loved but who didn’t truly love him back. And perhaps most significantly, after years of pain and disillusionment, he made the decision to sever ties with his mother.
It was in this moment of isolation and recklessness that Ascaris was born. Fueled by an XL bottle of Yellowtail wine, Gravely locked himself in his room and recorded an entire album in a single night—no planning, no second takes, just raw emotion spilled onto tape.
The result is a jagged, disjointed, and deeply personal work, a mix of avant-garde rock, noise, and unfiltered catharsis. The production is lo-fi, the performances are unhinged, and yet, through the chaos, there’s something undeniably compelling—something honest.
The name Ascaris is layered in meaning. On one hand, it refers to the parasitic worm Ascaris lumbricoides, a symbol for the toxic forces that had taken root in his life. On another level, it’s a play on words: “A Scar Is”—a reference to both the emotional damage he carried and the surgical scar on his cheek from a high school medical scare.
Though never meant to reach a wide audience, Ascaris found a cult following. Gravely burned every CD by hand, distributing them to anyone who would listen. Over time, the album’s jagged edges became its strength. Songs like Silicate and Entity became live staples, surviving across multiple band iterations and remaining in Dumb Echo’s setlist to this day.
“Watch this VHS Tape, it’ll teach you all you should know”
If Ascaris was an act of raw self-destruction, Dress Me In Your Dressings was the rebuild—through humor, absurdity, and electronic experimentation.
By 2013, Birdo+The Knees had solidified as a real band, running alongside Exploding Popes as Gravely’s creative focus. His artistic world had stabilized, and he had a newfound appreciation for the absurdity of life.
Originally conceived as a joke album, Dress Me In Your Dressings was a deliberate rejection of the dark, unfiltered chaos of Ascaris. Instead, it leaned into electronic textures, robotic drum machines, pulsing synths, and tongue-in-cheek lyrics. The title itself was a surreal, grotesque play on words—“Dress me” conjuring images of fashion, while “your dressings”could refer to anything from bandages to salad dressing to something even stranger.
But what started as a joke quickly became a fan favorite. The album’s offbeat humor and electronic weirdness were infectious, and beneath the surface, there was a real sense of joy—a realization that music didn’t always have to be about pain. It could also be about laughing at the absurdity of existence.
It spawned the classic UBMW.
“You know I broke my back, helping the drowning man swim.”
By 2014, Tom Gravely’s creative output was at an all-time high. While Birdo+The Knees was still running strong, he also started a side project with multi instrumentalist Mike Grippo called Charade You Are. Inspired by Nine Inch Nails and Skinny Puppy, Charade You Are was an industrial rock project that allowed Gravely to further explore his love for distorted electronics, metallic percussion, and abrasive sound design.
But amidst the controlled chaos of Charade You Are, Gravely was writing his most ambitious solo album yet—one that would blend everything he had learned from Ascaris, Dressings, and Charade You Are. That album was St. Stolas.
Named after the demon prince of astronomy and knowledge, St. Stolas was an expansive double album that brought together the unhinged aggression of Ascaris and the electronic experimentation of Dressings. Lyrically, it was deeply personal, touching on abandonment, promiscuity, and hope, as Gravely examined his past with equal parts self-awareness, bitterness, and dark humor.
The album was chaotic yet refined, wild yet intentional. It was a culmination of Gravely’s formative years, a final statement before the next evolution.
With St. Stolas, the cycle of solo albums ended, and Gravely’s full creative focus shifted toward what Birdo+The Knees would become next
.
By early 2017, Exploding Popes had disbanded. Gravely had to put his musical ambitions on hold when his paternal grandparents, who had raised him as their own, began to decline. Gravely became their full time caregiver. A selfless act of love and a way to give back to them the comfort, safety and dignity that they had provided him throughout his life.
Gravely, Josh and Mash would still get together often during this time. Jamming in his basement and writing many, many songs. They went through many name changes during this time but in November of 2019, they settled on Dumb Echo.
In 2023, Dumb Echo uploaded their first EP to streaming services. They titled it “Byrdo and the Knees” in order to avoid being sued by Nintendo. The EP exceeded all expectations, and got nearly 3,000,000 plays in just under a month. The distribution service they had used got greedy and decided to steal their revenue from this release and take down the EP as well as all of Gravely’s solo albums. This was a crippling blow to the band, even more so for Gravely who had lost his grandmother a few days before receiving the heartbreaking Email. Between planning a funeral and going back and forth with an entertainment lawyer, Gravely had felt hopeless.
In February of 2025, hope had been restored. After being in legal limbo for nearly two years, Dumb Echo as well as all the Tom Gravely solo albums were finally re-released on all streaming platforms.
Even as Dumb Echo continued to evolve, Gravely’s early solo albums remained an essential part of his artistic DNA. Songs like Silicate and Entity still appear in setlists, bridging the gap between the reckless chaos of Ascaris and the more refined energy of his band’s current work.
Now, for the first time, these albums are available on streaming services—no more handmade CDRs, no more lost files—just the unfiltered sound of Tom Gravely’s formative years.