Medic-the Story Behind the Band

Jenn Cohen | April 1, 2013 | 1 Comment

by Tim Wenger

photo credit: Becky Boucher

Every band has a story–a story of who they are, how they formed, and how they ended up with that ridiculous name. But most bands do not have a story the way Medic has a story. Aaron Wagner and his older brother Dominick Wagner were born in the toughest of situations, from the same mother with two different fathers; Dominick, a crack baby; and Aaron, born while his mother was intoxicated, attempting to give birth herself in her home.

Through an amazing adoptive family and a lot of hard work, the Wagner brothers have been able get started on what looks to be a successful musical path, growing from what they have been through and turning it into a positive path.

“My parents were always interested in foster care,” says Aaron. “My folks were a foster home. I think they have had something like 80 children in and out of the house throughout the years, that they would bring in and take care of and feed and house.” Seven of them are the children of the foster parents, with four of those seven being adopted, including Dominick and Aaron.

Being born to a drug addicted mother, it was instantaneously necessary that Dominick find a home where he would be raised under responsible eyes. It was far from an easy shot, however, as the family that wanted to adopt him had to jump through hurdle after hurdle to make it happen. Dominick and Aaron are black, and were adopted into a white household, which even in the 1980s was a bit more taboo than it is today. “Dominick was immediately taken away from the mother, and had to get all of the stuff out of his system,” says Aaron. “It was very hard for our [adoptive] parents to get us because it would be a multi-racial home. They fought a lot of wars to get that happening. Dominick was almost taken by a grandma that we have, but she wasn’t in great health and was already pretty old as it is.”

Two and a half years later, Aaron was born to the same mother. His story is a bit different in scenario but the same in vulnerability. “Our mother was trying to have me in the home, she wasn’t telling anyone,” says Aaron. It is unclear as to whether the birth mother was trying to hide the fact that she was having another child, but it took a neighbor hearing her screams of pain to get an ambulance to the scene. “They have no idea if she was going to try to throw me away. She was drunk trying to have me in her house or her apartment or whatever it was. A neighbor heard her screaming and called the ambulance. I was actually born in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.”

The ambulance arrived at the same hospital where Dominick was born, and what happened next could be considered by some to be fate, by others to be an act of God. “When we got to the hospital, there was a nurse there that recognized the [mother’s] name from Dominick’s case a few years before,” says Aaron. “She heard the name and figured out that Dominick’s brother was born.”

Without concern for anything other than the safety of the newborn child, the nurse made a decision that could have jeopardized not only her job, but the future of the child. It turned out to be a heroic move, even if only in the minds of the few who knew about it. She called the adoptive parents of Dominick and informed them that his younger brother had just been born. “She called my parents immediately,” says Aaron. “She said, ‘I’m not supposed to tell you this. I will most definitely get fired if anyone finds out, but Dominick’s little brother was born and you guys need to investigate this and if you want him, come get him.”

Their adoptive parents didn’t think twice, they brought Aaron into the family and united him with his older brother. “I was the easy one out of the bunch,” Aaron says with a laugh.

Music has been a part of the Wagner household for Dominick and Aaron’s entire lives. “We were always kind of engulfed in music,” says Dominick. “My Dad played music growing up, and had his own band and they toured all over the place for years and years, so playing music and doing that thing was just what we did to connect as father and son. We grew up in church and started playing in church.”

Dominick started playing drums in church around the age of six, and Aaron got into the action a couple years later, although he wasn’t very happy the instrument he was initially stuck with. “Dominick was always the drummer, my Dad played guitar and sang, and there were some family friends that would also play with us, so I would always get stuck on the bongos,” says Aaron. “I hated it. I thought it was the most degrading and humiliating thing. No one thought I was cool.”

Regardless of that, they played on. “We started traveling all over and playing in different churches that would have us,” says Dominick. Eventually, Aaron persuaded his parents to buy him a guitar so that he could promote himself to a “real” instrument.

“Dominick and I were almost treated as twins growing up,” says Aaron. “When I got my first guitar, they also got him a guitar. We never had formal lessons, we just learned to read tabs and ask guitar players that we knew. He was better than me at first, and I was like, ‘No! I’m not getting stuck back on the bongos.’ So I would lock myself in a room for three hours at a time playing just so I wouldn’t get stuck on the bongos.”

The two played in bands growing up and after winning some battles of the bands with their previous group Saving Daylight, they thought they had it made. “We would just go to high schools and win battles of the bands and that was pretty much it,” says Aaron. “We won all these battles, and thought, ‘We’re gonna be signed, we’re gonna get huge!’” The group went to Nashville to perform at a showcase for some legit music industry professionals, and it did not turn out as fortunately as their previous competitions. “We go to Nashville, we spend a ton of money to get out there, and they pretty much were like, ‘You guys aren’t that good.’”

“That was the longest drive back from Nashville,” laughs Dominick.

The band eventually called it quits, but Aaron and Dominick did not give up on music. “[Dominick] and I have always been the constants,” says Aaron. “Friends come and go and move away, but [we] have always wanted to play music together.” A couple of their friends, Drew Barnard and Miller Harveaux came to be in the right place at the right time for the brothers, and Medic was formed.

The group has an EP out currently, with hopes of recording a full-length album in the near future. “We’ve done some tours with it, people have taken to it really well,” says Dominick. They have toured behind the record a few times, with good response both locally and nationally.

The EP is titled Grace and Gravity. “I think I talk a lot about change,” says Aaron. “I don’t adjust well to change. Songs are easier to write when you’re struggling or sad. I think Grace and Gravity has a lot of hopeful elements to it. I think an overall theme is hope. I like to talk a lot about hopeful situations and let people know that there is a lot more beyond what they can see, and what is going on right now.”

Look for them to be playing more around Denver in the near future. “When we started playing shows, I think we neglected a lot of what was happening in Denver,” says Aaron. “Not intentionally, it just never really worked out for us to hang out in Denver. We figured we should start making some friends around here.”

Online: wearemedic.com