An investigative deep dive into DB Montana’s decade-long crusade dedicated to destroying Bassnectar—and the human being behind the music.

Bassnectar fans, both past and present, have long been wondering: “what really happened to Bassnectar?” One of the original purveyors of the underground electronic music scene, Bassnectar didn’t fall from grace—he was hunted and torn down. Targeted, lied about, and ultimately “canceled” by the social media mob after a war of false accusations finally gained oxygen. What resulted was a dumpster fire in which Ashton’s career was caught in the flames. That war was waged by Bassnectar’s most deranged stalker and digital arsonist: DB Montana.

For over a decade, DB Montana has been fixated on Bassnectar, once declaring himself an important “figure” in the Bassnectar community, while boasting about his “huge sphere of influence” in 2016. He gradually devolved into a delusional conspiracy theorist, imagining a “battle” between himself and the artist he followed. Eventually, he rebranded himself as a self-proclaimed “hero” and even took on the title of “folklore legend.” Now, after nearly a decade of stalking, doxing, death threats, blatant lies, and outright defamation, David Montana Billings (known under his online alias, DB Montana) is finally being exposed for what he truly is: An unhinged man with a malicious agenda.

His direct target? Electronic Music artist Bassnectar, aka Lorin Ashton.

During the chaos of the COVID lockdown, Ashton’s career imploded under the weight of false allegations, which DB Montana created and then amplified on social media. However, what most people don’t realize is that this story didn’t begin in 2020. It started many years earlier: when DB deliberately invented a lie so heinous, he could weaponize it to “take down” Bassnectar while galvanizing online support as a perceived protector of survivors. Cloaked in this phony mask of heroism, DB misled the public as a fake #MeToo hit job for his own personal gain. By falsely accusing Bassnectar of committing sex crimes, DB exploited our society’s justified moral outrage against sexual abuse and sexual abusers, and our unanimous dedication to supporting real-life survivors. But this was never a story of actual sexual abuse or real-life victims.

This is a true story behind the calculated plot to ruin an innocent person’s life.

In 2015, DB Montana was an obsessive superfan who became a bitter troll when he didn’t get the attention or recognition he craved from Ashton. Addicted to internet clout, he spent his time trash-talking Bassnectar and running his online fan trolling group, Weird Drunken Unkle (“WDU” on Facebook). By June of 2016, he fully unraveled into something much darker—something psychotic. He threatened Lorin Ashton’s life, writing, “I wanted to kill you. Still do”

DB Montana spiraled after this email exchange, and his online rants became more venomous and unhinged. By September of 2016, he’d reached a low point. The entire fan community had widely dismissed him online as an obvious troll with no credibility. Rather than achieving the infamy he so clearly longed for, he was simply ignored. The more aggressive he became, the more his attacks failed to land a punch. And with every new deranged outburst, his reputation became more toxic.

To cope with his humiliation, DB began alternating between extreme personalities. Depending on the direction of his mood swings, he shapeshifted from posing as a brave Crusader, to a seething Creep, to a self-righteous Hero, to a cocky internet Bully, to a whimpering Victim. When Facebook suspended his account for being “abusive,” he falsely accused Bassnectar of “putting [him] in the hospital.” In reality, he appeared to have suffered a mental breakdown.

Over the years, this Victim mentality would become part and parcel to DB Montana’s multiple online personas, with the virtue-signaling Crusader on the opposite side of the spectrum. His diametrically opposed identity conflict is evident in a split-screen between what he said publicly versus what he said in private.

In public, DB continued to lash out against Bassnectar, while hurling homophobic comments and bullying Bassnectar fans online. Privately, DB emailed an apology to Lorin for leading “a witch hunt” in November 2016. He wrote, “I’m sorry for ever causing a stir against you” and “I feel like a complete dick.” His groveling tone conveyed not just regret, but the embarrassment of a deeply insecure person, longing for validation:

Yet DB’s clash of multiple personalities was far from over. He needed a new plan of attack to repair his tarnished online reputation and elevate his standing in the Bassnectar world. He decided to invent something so horrifying that it would shock the conscience, stun the mind, and position him as a Hero in the court of public opinion.

So a year later, in November of 2017, DB Montana launched a campaign of character assassination centered around the hot topic of sexual abuse and the #MeToo movement. He conspired with a woman named Miranda Hughes and her friend, Rebecca Polk, to fabricate “evidence” that Bassnectar was a sexual predator. Together, they concocted a fake #MeToo story with the express intent to destroy Lorin Ashton’s reputation.

When their lie failed to gain steam in 2017, they recycled it a year later into something more egregious. In 2018, DB Montana used the same phony story to publicly accuse Bassnectar of being a pedophile. Knowing full well that it was completely false, he declared, “Lorin Ashton of Bassnectar Fucks Kids.”

What makes this lie so malicious is that they obviously knew it wasn’t true. Yet, they worked relentlessly to promote it anyway.

This was the original smear campaign against Bassnectar, and the origin of the falacious narrative that Bassnectar was ever a sexual abuser. While Miranda’s motive seems more like that of a mentally ill stalker, it’s clear that DB Montana’s motive was to intentionally tear down another person to lift himself up, with his own “claim to fame” inextricably tied to the lie he invented about Bassnectar.

DB’s crusade continues to this day through ongoing attacks of brazen character assassination. In August of 2024, after again calling Bassnectar “a pedophile,” DB stated definitively that Bassnectar “is very much guilty of what has been alleged and the evidence is already laid out there.” In a Facebook post in March of 2025, DB’s true psychotic nature was more apparent than ever as he threatened, “he’s fried…who can be our next victim? I’m itching for another kill.”

Enough is enough. Reading those chilling words is enough to make anyone’s skin crawl. At this point, it’s undeniable: DB Montana is an unstable, unsafe, and actively dangerous person. So much so that he even doxxed Bassnectar’s home address in 2020.

So, we at Conscious Electronic decided to dig deeper. And what we found was horrifying—a trail of DB’s own incriminating words that document every lie, every smear, every act of targeted harassment. We also reached out to the Bassnectar team to get a better understanding of what they—and everyone in this community—have endured for years in silence. We received dozens of statements and documents, which we plan to release in more parts of this series. But Lorin wrote back personally, addressing the situation for the first time:

“Thinking about all the pain he has caused is just heartbreaking. This guy is truly sick. There’s no easy way to talk about it, and that’s the problem with trolls. They crave attention, and thrive off any reaction. It validates them somehow, and if you engage in any way, it feeds them. He seems like a hungry ghost with a starving ego, and I’ve just never had a guidebook for how to deal with someone so twisted. For me, as a human being, I’m a pacifist. I don’t want war. I just want to focus on the truth, which is that I thrive by reflecting positive energy and trying to lift people up. As an artist, I don’t want to be derailed from reality, or waste my time in the dirt arguing with a lunatic. That’s not why I’m here. It’s not my story, it’s not my truth. I just want to stay true to myself and focus on what I love, so I’m honestly relieved that our legal team is going to handle this. I really don’t want to give him any energy, but I really care about all the people he has hurt, and I hope people learn to be more careful in the future before buying into rumors or trying to banish or cancel other human beings. And specifically now, our world is filled with so much anger and hostility and divisiveness. It’s more important than ever to try and find ways to be part of a solution, to make peace, and to work to inspire people to be more kind to each other.”

– Bassnectar

With that, Bassnectar’s legal team is gearing up for a long-overdue process to bring an end to this nightmare. Last month, the legal team sent a formal “Cease & Desist” letter to DB Montana, laying the grounds for what appears to be an inevitable lawsuit.

Bassnectar’s legal team is clearly zeroing in on DB Montana’s pattern of manufacturing fake evidence to promote his defamatory claims. And several days after the letter was sent, DB seems to be in an obvious panic, working hard to cover his tracks. On August 6, 2025, he scrubbed the entire @EvidenceAgainstBassnectar (EAB) Instagram account:

But the damage has already been done. DB Montana has been responsible for so many Bassnectar lies over the years, the most critical of which is the original lie that Bassnectar is a sexual abuser, and worst of all: a pedophile.

He is not.

Not only has he never been convicted of a crime, he’s never even been charged with one. The fact is, no law enforcement agency has ever formally accused Lorin Ashton or Bassnectar of any crime whatsoever. These days, anyone can say anything about anyone—and they often do. An online allegation means absolutely nothing unless it results in actual criminal charges. Even then, in this country, you’re innocent until proven guilty. So how can Bassnectar be proven guilty if he’s never even been charged with a crime?

That’s the crux of the situation with the court of public opinion, where real-life people can spread lies like wildfire, and a mere false allegation can trick the masses and incite them into a violent mob. In Part Two of this article, we will focus on how DB manipulated the #MeToo movement to convince people to believe his lies, and the collateral damage that followed. But for now, Part One of this story is about false accusations that were designed to ruin the life of an innocent person. It’s the story of who chose to do this, and how they conspired together in a calculated scheme to destroy Bassnectar.

So how did it all get to this point? Let’s be clear about where this all started—because what most people believe is pure fiction. The truth? It’s all well documented in DB Montana’s digital footprint over the years, which CE put into a chronological timeline to track this dangerous Stan-figure’s evidenced pattern of stalking, harassment, and obsession. To get to the truth, we’ve got to go back to 2016 when DB is first seen trying to get his big, fat “pedophilia” lie to stick.

The Lie That Sparked It All

In 2016, Rebecca Polk (aka ‘Becca’) created a fake #MeToo Story, falsely claiming she had sex with Bassnectar when she was “17 going on 18.” This is not only untrue, but mathematically impossible, since she was born in 1991 and first met Bassnectar in 2010. DB Montana then publicly shared this phony evidence as a pretext for accusing Lorin Ashton of sexual crimes. Masquerading as a reluctant hero who wants nothing to do with the conspiracy theory he worked to invent, DB eagerly took to Twitter on November 29, 2017, promoting the lie for all to see:

Here, DB is gaslighting the public by pretending to want to “get this off [his] chest” and “get away from anyone associated.” Let’s be clear: This screenshot posted by DB Montana is not “evidence” in any way, shape, or form. In a court of law, it would be considered hearsay. In reality, this was an intentional lie. Rebecca Polk knows her own birthday. She was born in 1991, as is evidenced by her Tarrant County, Texas, criminal court filings for a DWI:

Again, the facts don’t lie: Rebecca Polk is 34 years old today. She first met Lorin Ashton in 2010, making her 19 years old at the time (as corroborated by Miranda Hughes below). This is simple math—and it’s backed by actual, verifiable evidence.

A year after claiming she met Bassnectar when she was “17,” Rebecca doubled down and exaggerated her lie—this time claiming she was “16” when she first met Bassnectar. Regardless of the facts and indisputable numbers, DB spread it across the internet with a vengeance. In 2018, he wrote “Lorin Ashton of Bassnectar fucks kids” and alluded to a mysterious tranche of more fake evidence: “there’s a lot more where this came from.” This was the origin of the now-infamous pedophilia smear—deliberately calculated and patently false.

Everyone knew it was false—DB didn’t care

Even Miranda admitted it was an intentional lie when she posted on Twitter in August 2018: explaining that Rebecca made it up. Miranda wrote, “It was her [Becca’s] exact goal & she posted lies on multiple platforms.” Still, DB kept promoting it as evidence despite knowing it was fake.

DB Montana’s co-conspirator, Miranda Hughes, is on record in countless emails to Bassnectar personnel attempting to extort the team for millions of dollars. Among her many psychotic musings, Miranda wrote about fantasies of marrying Lorin, revealing, “I’ve dreamt about being pregnant with his baby many times.” Warning: Her words are grotesque and not easy to read.

In 2018, she demanded “$3.6 million” and threatened to “destroy Lorin’s reputation” if they didn’t “negotiate something I [Miranda] like within like 2 hours.” She went on to write, “he’s not like going to what happens to him,” warning, “don’t fuck with me.” Suffering from a deeply rooted mental illness, Hughes later apologized, citing “bipolar disorder” as the reason behind her deranged, threatening ramblings. Evidenced below is Miranda admitting their narrative was false as she slid back and forth between her manic episodes:

All of this was going on while Miranda was working with DB on their smear campaign. These two EAB conspirators seemingly had one thing in common: a supremely unhealthy addiction to Bassnectar. United by their vengeful online crusade, they seemed more motivated by some intense need to have a closer personal relationship with Lorin Ashton. When the extremely busy, touring headliner could not give them the attention they felt so entitled to, each of them would lash out online in their own bewilderingly dark and sadistic ways.

Obsessively stalking Bassnectar one moment, and threatening him the next, Miranda Hughes tried again in 2020 to promote what Bassnectar’s legal team calls “the Polk Lie.”

The @EvidenceAgainstBassnectar account’s first post was not actually evidence at all. It was a baseless accusation. A meritless claim. Because they knew it was false, the allegations were definitively malicious. In a court of law, evidence is what backs a claim—not the claim itself. But in the court of public opinion, an accusation is enough to render a guilty verdict against an innocent person. The EAB conspirators didn’t care, and the public didn’t know the difference.

DB uses EAB to exploit #MeToo

After working together for several years to promote their lies and manipulate the public into a frenzy against Bassnectar, the three co-conspirators brazenly relaunched their old attacks in a new format on Instagram in 2020. All the while knowing it was fake, DB Montana took the same phony, discredited 2018 lie and posted it yet again as “evidence” of sex crimes on his EAB account.

It was an act of evil genius.

By grabbing the spotlight of the #MeToo movement, which should be reserved for actual survivors of abuse, DB Montana turned the masses against Bassnectar, and earned their trust by pretending to be the good guy. What followed was a relentless campaign of more fake “evidence” promoting the lie that Bassnectar was a sexual abuser, a sex trafficker, and a pedophile. Yet, not one shred of EAB’s so-called “evidence” was ever found credible by any policing agency.

If there were any truth to it, the police would have charged Lorin Ashton. In fact, authorities went so far as to put it in writing—a guarantee of nonprosecution. Because facts matter. And the fact remains, Bassnectar has never sexually abused anyone.

Trolls online keep moving the goalposts, shifting the conversation to morality debates or gossip, but when you accuse someone of crimes against women and children, you’d better be able to prove it with real backing that can be admissible in a court of law. DB Montana never could—because his “evidence” was fabricated to sell the lie he invented, all so he could play the role of society’s hero.

The Audio Smear

The most deceptive of his moves came in 2020 when DB Montana went on offense and posted chopped-up audio recordings—incomplete snippets, taken out of context, and heavily edited—promoting them as “evidence” of sexual criminality. Law enforcement listened to the full, unedited recordings, found no evidence of criminal conduct, and didn’t even bother opening a case. Yet, the court of public opinion decided EAB’s altered audio was sufficient “evidence” and went to grab their pitchforks.

Let’s be clear: Lorin Ashton has never been accused of any crime by any local, state, or federal law enforcement agency. And yet, DB Montana manufactured “evidence,” circulated it widely, and weaponized the #MeToo Movement to pit the public against Bassnectar. DB has been seen claiming that the audio release was all about his attempt to “protect the females.” Publicly, DB stated in 2025 that he was “just doing what he thought was right as a man.” In his Almost Familiar podcast in June of 2021, he is on the record stating the following:

“It’s a trip, through and through. The way this thing started and finished, and played out, and what happened, yeah, it’s insane. [laughs deviously] But, but a lot of good… a lot of good came from it, you know? People got, got justice and their voices were heard and a literal predator and somebody who was abusing music and women and just abusing their position of power was taken down from that position and looked at in a different light… so that’s good… that’s what makes me feel good about all this.”

– DB Montana

It’s pathological the way DB Montana can be heard having convinced himself of his own heroism. One need merely look to his documented, years-long fixation to see this was nothing more than a malicious crusade to assassinate Lorin Ashton’s character. DB Montana is no hero for women. This was a calculated, obsessive attempt to destroy Ashton’s name, career, and life.

The Lawsuit—Dismissed

In 2021, a lawsuit was filed by three ex-girlfriends, claiming they were victims of heinous federal crimes. But these women brought a civil case against Bassnectar with no actual criminal charges to admit into the courtroom. Their joint lawsuit was not a criminal case. It was a cash grab.

In criminal law, law enforcement must first formally accuse someone of committing a crime. In civil law, anyone can say anything with impunity. Lawsuits don’t seek justice; they seek money. The only “guilty” verdict was decided upon in the chaotic court of public opinion. Meanwhile, that lawsuit was permanently dismissed in February 2025, and, to this day, no law enforcement agency has ever filed criminal charges against Ashton. Why? Because Bassnectar is innocent.

When we asked Ashton for a comment on the whole ordeal, he referred us to the statement he gave to Billboard the day the lawsuit was dismissed. His statement bears repeating because few media outlets even bothered to cover it:

“I am relieved to be able to put this behind me once and for all. To be clear, I did not engage in any of the wrongdoing of which I was accused in this lawsuit. I have never abused or assaulted anyone in any way, shape, or form. I have also never been charged with any crimes. This process has been long and exhausting, and I am excited to get back to doing what I love most: making music and art for the world to enjoy.”

– Lorin Ashton, February 18, 2025

But the civil lawsuit was dismissed over five years after DB Montana invented the false accusation that Bassnectar is a “pedo creepazoid” and a “literal predator.” And still, the misinformed public seems to be conflating allegations with evidence, and criminality with cash grabs. Why? Because of DB Montana’s decade-long campaign of disinformation.

The Truth, The Bottom Line

Strip away the noise, the years of online drama, and the endless screenshots, and it comes down to this: DB Montana built his entire identity on a lie. He invented it, recruited unstable accomplices to amplify it, and then fed it back into the internet machine over and over for nearly a decade— warping it, dressing it up as “evidence,” and using it to manipulate anyone willing to listen. Check out this screenshot of DB Montana attempting to convince others to join him:

And even now, in 2025, DB Montana is still out there making defamatory statements about Ashton. He doesn’t know how to stop or let go— because without Bassnectar, DB Montana doesn’t know how to exist.

The truth isn’t murky. It’s not up for debate. It’s documented, timestamped, and undeniable: Lorin Ashton is not a sexual abuser, and DB Montana’s smear campaign has always been a fabrication. The only real story here is how far one man was willing to go to destroy another human being—and how that man may finally be held legally accountable.

He’s not just a troll. He’s a stalker. He’s not just angry. He’s dangerous.

And now, after years of public defamation and calculated character assassination, the tide may finally be turning. Bassnectar’s legal team has drawn a line in the sand—signaling that the days of unchecked lies may be coming to an end.

Where do we all go from here?

This is only the beginning of Conscious Electronic’s quest to uncover more of the truth. Stay tuned for Part Two where we uncover the aftermath of 2020, including the collateral damage caused by EAB, as well as actual receipts and evidence showing examples of several real-life women who brazenly lied about Bassnectar to profit off the #MeToo movement.

Like any path to real conflict resolution, accountability comes first—and that starts with exposing the bad actors who created this nightmare. For those ready to dig deeper into the facts, we’ll be publishing a full, detailed Timeline of Evidence Against DB Montana in the coming days.

This daunting investigative inquiry is dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of fans who make up the Bassnectar Community. This is dedicated to every real-life survivor of abuse who deserves to be believed. We hope this series inspires everyone to focus on how humans have the uncanny ability to spread love—to protect one another “like sister and brother”—rather than focusing on spreading hate and lies. Let DB Montana forever be our community’s reminder to always center ourselves on creation…and never destruction.

Happy 808, a day that will henceforth be known as “Justice for Bassnectar” Day.

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By: Ryan Morse
Title: Evidence Against DB Montana: The truth behind the character assassination of Lorin Ashton
Sourced From: consciouselectronic.com/2025/08/08/evidence-against-db-montana-the-character-assassination-of-bassnectar-part-1/
Published Date: Sat, 09 Aug 2025 03:07:39 +0000

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