Dax Pierson’s presence in the Bay Area music scene was unmistakable. In the early 2000s, Pierson’s projects Subtle and 13 & God pioneered an introspective, expansive hip-hop sound that paved the way for East Bay artists like Lil B and Main Attrakionz. Later in his life, Pierson was a fixture in the world of Bay Area experimental music. After a 2005 car crash rendered him quadriplegic, technology and his constant effort and experimentation enabled Pierson to continue crafting arresting, otherworldly electronic music. On Dec. 30, his life came to an end at age 54, the result of a weekslong battle with sepsis.

Pierson was musically enamored from the beginning. Jala Anderson Moore, Pierson’s stepsister, recalls Pierson’s early love of Prince and Michael Jackson. “He could play music just by ear,” Moore says. “He’d play the keyboard, sing, and dance — that was his thing. Oh, he could dance.”

Pierson’s musical career began in earnest in his 20s, while living in San Diego. Tracy Curry, one of Pierson’s oldest friends, met Pierson through her ex-husband Stevie Harris. “They were the only two Black guys in the indie clubs, and so they bonded,” she remembers, laughing. Together with Harris, Pierson formed his first band Conglomerate. Eventually, the group of friends made their way to the Bay Area, “a place where Dax didn’t feel like he was the only gay guy in the room,” remembers Curry.

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Dax Pierson at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival.

Upon landing in the East Bay, Pierson worked at Rasputin Music in Berkeley, but later moved down the street to Amoeba Music, where he became a store buyer. “Buyer was the prestige role, because you got to pick what was being sold,” Curry says. “Everyone knew he’d [earn that role,] because Dax was an encyclopedia of musical knowledge.” 

In 2001, Adam Drucker, aka Doseone, an experimental hip-hop artist, visited Amoeba to sell CDs by

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