Why Elk Heart

The Band With A Heart

In February I flew to Minneapolis to lay both my parents to rest. I spent most of the flight crying under my sunglasses writing down everything I could remember and everything I wished I could forget about my childhood. The time I told my dad I needed braces and he asked me if I was going to be a pretty boy movie star. The time he left me fishing for hours alone with nothing but weights on my line. Or the time our first family vacation got cancelled because my dad was in jail.

I am turning these and other stories like them into songs because it feels like the most enjoyable way for me to tell them. Depressing music written with a little wit always cheered me up. The Smiths. The Magnetic Fields. Girlfriend in a Coma. Love is Like a Bottle of Gin. Songs that embrace the pain so completely and with such mockery they make you feel better somehow.

My parents gave me a lot. A love of film. A love of music. A love of craft. And all the time in the world to use my imagination while they spent most of my childhood consumed in my dad’s alcoholism. I was alone a lot. Bored a lot. There wasn’t much to do in Elkhart. So I made things up. Worlds. Characters. Stories. Places I could hide. I turned my GI Joe into an Italian spy in my basement, had a crush on Aqua Marina the mermaid princess from Stingray, and spent hours listening to a five album Motown set being swept away by Stevie Wonder’s Fingertips.

I continued to hide into adulthood. Mainly in the form of pseudonyms. I did graffiti under the name Arthur V. Commerce — as if art versus commerce was a proper name. I put out a record under the name The Artificial Hearts. I paint using only CC in the form of two eyes, hidden in the pieces, peering out of the dark. My portfolio is called That Maker Freak. It’s hosted by a freaky monster who can’t stop making things.

All this to say, I’ve got a new hiding place. Elk Heart. The band with a heart. And a handful of disheartening songs about a mom and a dad.

They were real characters. I hope you like getting to know them. I feel like I am all over again with a much brighter perspective.

Come spend some time in Elk Heart. The band with a heart would sure love some company. Chances are, you’ll leave happy or sad, but maybe a little bit of both.