Dreams So Real

History

The trio was led by songwriter Barry Marler on lead vocals and guitar, with Trent Allen on bass and backing vocals and Drew Worsham on drums. Sheryl Crow guitarist Peter Stroud was a member during the band's later years. Formed in 1983 when its members met in an Athens record store, their debut single, "Everywhere Girl" produced by Peter Buck of R.E.M., was released in 1985 and was very successful at college radio. Buck also produced their first full-length album, 1986's Father's House. The band gained a bit more exposure by performing their song "Golden" (called "Steps" in the movie's end notes) in Athens, GA: Inside/Out, a rock documentary on their hometown music scene.

Dreams So Real signed to Arista Records and released Rough Night in Jericho in 1988. The title track earned some success, reaching No. 28 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Chart and receiving heavy MTV airplay. A follow-up single, "Bearing Witness" also cracked Billboard's Rock Chart. The album would reach the Billboard Hot 200, peaking at No. 150.

The 1990 follow-up album, Gloryline, met with less success both critically and commercially. Soon after, Arista dropped the band and Dreams So Real soon drifted apart. As a kind of parting gift, the band released a collection of outtakes, rarities and B-sides titled Nocturnal Omissions, made available through their fan-club mailing list, and while on tour.

After the breakup

Marler and Allen briefly reformed with the band Ether in the late 1990s, but have since appeared to have mostly left music behind. Marler is a bioinformatics analyst at the University of Georgia, while Allen became a graphic artist and entrepreneur as founder of Baseline SportsMedia, a company specializing in graphic design and fan photography which was later sold to Silicon Valley based startup Printroom, Inc. – now a division of another California company, Brand Affinity Technologies.

The band received mention in a number of R.E.M. biographies detailing their success and importance to the scene, including Marcus Gray's It Crawled from the South and David Buckley's R.E.M.: Fiction. Dreams So Real also appears in the "Athens, GA - Inside Out" movie, which is available on DVD.

In 2003, Worsham was shot in the head by a man who was reported to be Worsham's girlfriend's ex-boyfriend. Reports said the man, Joel Chris Blankenship, subsequently kidnapped and fatally shot the girlfriend, Dara Jo Wasdin, before putting a bullet through his own head. Worsham miraculously survived, as the bullet lodged in his cheek bone and never reached his brain, and reportedly recovered to return to his post-Dreams So Real music projects as well as his work as a computer technician.

The band reunited in 2009 for Athfest and again in 2012 for two shows in Atlanta and their hometown of Athens.

Discography