Dennis Fuentes's journey as a singer/songwriter started with piano lessons when he was six years old.
Classically trained on piano from Grade 1 thru his sophomore year of high school, he was schooled on the classical masters: Mozart, Bach, and Chopin, It wasn't until his early-teens when he picked up an acoustic guitar and, after a handful of lessons, started playing just for fun. When he moved to Chicago in 1992, however, a more serious interest in songwriting started to surface.
"I've always had an eclectic taste in music. But around the early 90's, I became aware of this emerging music genre called 'roots rock' that bands like Barenaked Ladies, Hootie and the Blowfish, Dave Matthews Band, Blue Rodeo, and Freddy Jones Band were making. It was a more folk/acoustic approach to rock and roll that really captured my imagination and ultimately became the centre of my musical tastes. I've been writing songs for years, but it wasn't until I started listening to more roots-type music that I started to find my songwriter's voice."
Dennis spent a couple of years in the early 2000's studying songwriting and performance technique at the famed Chicago Old Town School of Folk Music. In his writing, he attempted to emulate his singer/songwriter heroes: Jimmy Rankin, Jim Cuddy, Shawn Colvin, Marshall Crenshaw, Sarah McLachlin, Will Hoge, and Teddy Thompson, among others. Then, in the spring of 2007, Dennis assembled a band and started record songs in bits and pieces in his co-producer's basement studio.
The end result of that work was his first full-length CD in 2009 titled, "Letters From Broken Street." One song from the album, the self-penned "The Show Goes On," was voted to the #9 position on the fearlessradio.com weekly listener-supported countdown show in the spring of 2010. Another of the album's songs, "Beautiful Again," was voted to the #19 position that spring as well.
It would be another six years before Dennis would make another record. In 2015, he headed back into the studio with his band to record two singles, both released in 2016: "Easily Bruised," a cover song written by Toronto, Ontario-based singer/songwriter, Matthew Barber, and "This December Nite," an original song that was inspired by military homecoming videos that he saw on YouTube. The song tells the story of a soldier who drives thru the nite to make it home in time for Christmas. The song earned Dennis a songwriter's nomination at the 2016 American Songwriting Awards.
In 2017, The Dennis Fuentes Band released a four song EP titled, "I Know There Will Be Better Days." Inspired by the political and social environment of the time, Dennis wrote the lead single, "Better Days," as "a rallying cry to anyone who believes in fairness, kindness, open-mindedness, compassion, peace, love, and understanding, and the pursuit and preservation of truth."
In 2018, Dennis took time to pursue work as an actor. After playing as an extra in a couple of independent films, he was cast in his first speaking roles in two independent short films in 2019: "Home" in which he played a real estate agent, and "Ducks" in which he played the principal of an elementary school. He has since been featured in a dozen indie short films as both an extra and in supporting roles and in 2022, was one of the lead actors in his first TV commercial for Albany Park Bank of Illinois in 2022.
A native of New York City and a 29 year resident of the Chicagoland, Illinois region (with brief residencies over the years in Toronto, Canada in 1990 and Portland, Oregon from 2019-2020), Dennis and the band are releasing new music in the coming weeks, with a new single, "Middle of Nowhere" (a cover version of a song originally recorded by the Regina, Saskatchewan-based band, The Waltons), as well as a new 3-song EP, "Hard Lesson - EP".
New music will continue to come from the band in the coming weeks. Dennis also continues to pursue other acting roles.