Rodney Scott Pieres has seen it all, from incarceration and addiction to redemption, sobriety and “righteous living.”
The Phoenix resident has parlayed those experiences into Deep as Bones, a Christian hard rock band that opens for Talk to Sheep at Pub Rock Live in Scottsdale on Saturday, January 21.
Recently, Deep as Bones released the music video for its single “Spun,” which touches on freedom from addiction and being on the road to sobriety. Filmed at Painted Tiger Studios in Glendale, the video was directed, filmed and edited by Gavin Donnelly of Soundphoria Media. It appears on the band’s full-length, self-titled debut.
Pieres had a “pretty rough childhood,” raised by a father who dealt cocaine in the 1980s. He says his dad loved him but couldn’t stop partying. Then things turned for the worse.
“I was taking some of the coke he had lying around. You know, monkey see, monkey do,” Pieres says. “I ended up getting arrested a bunch for drinking.
“In about 2005, I was introduced to heroin. I had knee surgery, and they were giving me oxycontin. Eventually, the oxys run out. You go to the streets looking for them and heroin is, naturally, the next step in that progression.”
He stole everything he could to get money for heroin. After he was imprisoned, he found sobriety.
“I had a rude awakening,” Pieres says. “I got in trouble in there (prison) for paraphernalia. They put me in the hole.
“I was just tired of living that way and getting what I was getting. I held on to it (sobriety), and I held on to it ever since.”
During his stint in Arizona State Prison Complex, Florence, there was another positive: He met his bandmates, John Fabricius and Walter Willis, in 2016.
“It’s a common story, but it’s not a common story to have guys meet in the pen,” he says. “We wrote the songs on the album there. When we got out, we started recording them.”
The trio recorded with producer Jay Kereny (Linkin Park) at Studio 47 on Central. Jay introduced them to then-Red and Love and Death drummer Dan Johnson, who played on the record. They finished recording at TallCat Studios in Phoenix in 2020. Ralph Patlan (Megadeth) mixed and mastered the record.
In 2021, Pieres and his wife, Carrie Bradley, started a nonprofit called IdentiFreed, in which 100% of the proceeds benefit those affected by human trafficking through their weekly outreach work with a team of volunteers.
“I’m more interested in helping people than becoming famous for my music,” Pieres says.
Talk to Sheep w/Apex Nemesis, 73 Libra and Deep as Bones
WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday, January 21
WHERE: Pub Rock Live, 8005 E. Roosevelt Street, Scottsdale
COST: $10 in advance
INFO: pubrocklive.com
