 Dakota Max, fresh out of high school, brought a couple of his original acoustic songs he had worked out to Bill Kozlowski, co-founder of Rock Alaska Records, in late summer 2001. Bill helped Dakota record a four song EP with Dakota's buddy Cole Chitty accompanying. Doug Fanyak & Alex Romero were brought in to finish the drums and bass tracks, and after a year of production, "Daytime Television" was finally ready to be printed under the band name "Contra Public". About five hundred copies were eventually sold.
From this success, the next step was to put together a real band and start composing new songs with a full line up. Alex stepped up to fill the drummer position and in September of that year, Bud Curtis was added as the official bass player. Over the next 8 months Contra Public pursued an aggressive practice schedule and eventually put together about 5 hours of solid music that they would perform around Juneau. During this time a couple live EPs were recorded either from shows or first takes in the practice room. By the summer of 2003 Contra Public was off on a two week Alaskan Tour which took them from Juneau to Fairbanks, through Anchorage, and all the way down to Homer. The fans were ready for something more than just a 4 or 5 song EP.
In the fall of 2003 Contra Public started working on their first full length album False Feeling of Freedom. This was the band's first official full-length multi-track studio album and took almost a year to complete. Although there were so-called "issues" with the album, critics have claimed it to be "...one of the best recordings to ever come from the town of Juneau, Alaska". (see below) Featuring 12 tracks, False Feeling of Freedom would nearly sell a thousand copies locally, at shows, and online at cdbaby.com. One of Contra Public's most memorable performances would have to be, hands down, their Marlintini's CD Release Show in Juneau on July 2nd, 2004, sponsored by KSUP 106.3 FM.
Immediately following the release of False Feeling of Freedom Contra Public began a new shift in direction. Dakota & Cole continued to write new music, but there was still a lot of material that had yet to be recorded. In addition, Dakota felt very strongly about moving the band to the lower 48 to get a much broader range of exposure. A new album project was started, but to this day of writing, remains unfinished & unreleased. Dakota & Cole eventually moved to Portland, Oregon by the beginning of 2005 where they continued Contra Public's name as a band for almost another year, with Dakota now on drums and Jesse Johnson filling in the bassist role. Eventually, they too would split into different musical projects.
Dakota Max currently sings and plays with the group "Dirt Jake Replicas" out of Portland. Alex Romero is still active with Rock Alaska Records in Juneau and does sound production for Perseverance Theatre. Alex also continues to prefect his drumming abilities as the drummer for local Juneau band, Brown Haven. Bud Curtis went on to play bass in the band Satan's Taint and currently runs his own graphic design business, Alaska Grafix. Cole Chitty devotes much of his free time to writing new music and has a couple solo projects in the works.
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