Founding member Brent Gorcie began producing music under the name "Dark Waters" in 2012 with friend Charley Shellenbarger. The name came from a random page in the book 'Necronomicon' by H.P. Lovecraft tucked away on a dusty bookshelf at Charley's home. Gorcie had recorded most of the "Dark Waters" songs with various musicians between Los Angeles, New York and south Florida for over a decade with more of an industrial/electronic style. In early 2015, after meeting Danielle Romanowski at a local music venue, the two worked together on transforming the music into a Southern Goth sound with raw folk/americana live instrumentation, thus creating the original D.W.R. sound. In 2013 Brent met Nick Smith and Fabian Abarca on the rooftop of the apartment complex they lived in overlooking the boardwalk on Venice Beach, California. The building was sort of a community of industry professionals in music and film but they never talked much about doing music together. After a year apart, the three were coincidentally reunited back in South Florida. After Brent and Danielle formed the band, Nick and Fabian were contacted to join the project. Nick Smith (also of Back Porch Blvd) tapped into his Alabama southern roots, alternating between banjo, acoustic guitar, and harmonica, to contribute to the folk element of the D.W.R. sound. Fabian Abarca maintains the "goth" undertones in the D.W.R. spectrum with his dark, melodic bass lines Derek Mclean played guitar with Danielle in their previous Florida based project 'The Psymatics', and was approached about joining the Winter Tour just a few weeks before the bus left. Jumping on board and rehearsing along the way, Derek has rounded out the D.W.R. sound with his limitless psychadellic blues solos and atmospheric interludes.
