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Season 6 Episode 164 Interview with Dennes Sims
In this episode, we had the unique opportunity to chat with musician/ author Dennes Sims about his recently released novel, “Neckbeard the Awesome Pirate.” We also chat about how being a musician transitioned him into being an author, a voice artist, and a composer for audiobooks.
Both of Dennes’s parents were professional musicians; his mother Barbara was a singer, and his father was a bassist and a drummer.
From the age of 5, he started playing drums. His mother used to take him along to her band rehearsals, and she always told the story that one day Dennes just picked up a set of drumsticks and was keeping perfect time with the drummer.
At 19, he started writing songs and was frustrated that he had no way to express them, so he bought a keyboard and taught himself how to play by ear, listening to Prince, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, and others. He also started performing live with bands as a singer.
Over the years, he taught himself both guitar and bass guitar. Dennes says he tried the saxophone “but it sounded like a hit a goose with a scooter.”
While I was teaching himself to play other instruments, he began writing short stories and then screenplays.
Unfortunately, he says he never made any real inroads to making a career out of either. In 1998, he cut his long hair and got a real job, joining the FBI, and put aside his musical and writing ambitions. But he quietly kept doing them as hobbies over the years, recording all of his ownmusic.
In 2021, he was diagnosed with stage 4 throat cancer and underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatments for seven weeks. Amazingly, the doctors saved his life and his voice, but said he would probably not be a singer anymore.
God works in mysterious ways, they always say… because of the treatments, his voice timbre changed, and it gave him a wider range of expression. So, he started using it for a new purpose: narrating audiobooks.
Flash to 2025, now retired from the FBI, he has narrated three audiobooks for an author’s trilogy of stories, and is currently recording the audiobook for his own debut novel, Neckbeard the Awesome Pirate.
Be sure to check Dennes out here:
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By Bethany Koubsky and Carolyn Helmberger
5
77 ratings
In this episode, we had the unique opportunity to chat with musician/ author Dennes Sims about his recently released novel, “Neckbeard the Awesome Pirate.” We also chat about how being a musician transitioned him into being an author, a voice artist, and a composer for audiobooks.
Both of Dennes’s parents were professional musicians; his mother Barbara was a singer, and his father was a bassist and a drummer.
From the age of 5, he started playing drums. His mother used to take him along to her band rehearsals, and she always told the story that one day Dennes just picked up a set of drumsticks and was keeping perfect time with the drummer.
At 19, he started writing songs and was frustrated that he had no way to express them, so he bought a keyboard and taught himself how to play by ear, listening to Prince, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, and others. He also started performing live with bands as a singer.
Over the years, he taught himself both guitar and bass guitar. Dennes says he tried the saxophone “but it sounded like a hit a goose with a scooter.”
While I was teaching himself to play other instruments, he began writing short stories and then screenplays.
Unfortunately, he says he never made any real inroads to making a career out of either. In 1998, he cut his long hair and got a real job, joining the FBI, and put aside his musical and writing ambitions. But he quietly kept doing them as hobbies over the years, recording all of his ownmusic.
In 2021, he was diagnosed with stage 4 throat cancer and underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatments for seven weeks. Amazingly, the doctors saved his life and his voice, but said he would probably not be a singer anymore.
God works in mysterious ways, they always say… because of the treatments, his voice timbre changed, and it gave him a wider range of expression. So, he started using it for a new purpose: narrating audiobooks.
Flash to 2025, now retired from the FBI, he has narrated three audiobooks for an author’s trilogy of stories, and is currently recording the audiobook for his own debut novel, Neckbeard the Awesome Pirate.
Be sure to check Dennes out here:
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