Listen to the
Daytrotter Session by Vandaveer, who will be perform at LPR this Monday, May 25th at 7pm (for details and to purchase tickets, click
here).
VANDAVEER is the alt-folk song singing/record making/globetrotting project penned and put forth by DC-by-way-of-Kentucky tunesmith Mark Charles Heidinger. The son of a preacher whose father was a gambler whose father was both judge and US congressman, Mark Charles one day found himself in possession of a golden pocket watch owned, wound, and regularly counseled by each in this paternal line. On the backside of said watch was a family name engraved, passed down for a century or more like the timepiece that followed. That name was Vandaveer.
Vandaveer’s debut album, Grace & Speed, a mostly live, stripped down affair, swiftly entered this great big dusty world in the spring of 2007 garnering rave reviews and hyperbolic comparisons to Dylan, Waits, Drake, Simon, and the like. Touring continually on both sides of the Atlantic ever since, Vandaveer has played hundreds of shows, sharing stages with a host of humbling artists including Bon Iver, Alejandro Escovedo, Vashti Bunyan, Vetiver, Evan Dando, Scout Niblett, The Ditty Bops, Smog, Fleet Foxes, Alela Diane and his dear friends in DC’s ramshackle collective, The Federal Reserve. In addition to said Vandaveering, Mark Charles has been known to fraternize and conspire with other music-making hooligans, primarily as a bassist with fellow DCers These United States.
Vandaveer’s sophomore effort, Divide & Conquer, touches upon similar themes found in its elder sibling, winding timeworn themes of love & death, malice & goodwill, sin & perseverance into (mostly) four-minute vignettes. To see D&C through, Vandaveer enlisted the able assistance of longtime collaborator and producer Duane Lundy, brothers-in-arms/TUS bandmates Robby Cosenza and Justin Craig, and most notably, his fair sister Rose Guerin, supplying the loveliest harmonies this side of Eden. A decidedly more produced venture, D&C offers up a flourishing chamber folk companion to its bedroomy lo-fi folk/pop predecessor.
Listen to
Vandaveer's Daytrotter Session.
Also check out the
Daytrotter Session with Dark Dark Dark, who will be at
LPR on July 10.
Cory Chisel & The Wandering Sons were recently in Rock Island, IL to visit Daytrotter. Click HERE to listen to the session and download it for free.
Love might kill Jolie Holland (@LPR on Sept. 18). At least that's how Sean Moeller over at Daytrotter feels about the folk singer. "Holland is a hypochondriac with very specific particulars attached to her mania," Moeller writes. "As a lyricist, she's almost positive that love is going to kill her. She's sure that either the good or the horrific aspects of love are going to stop her heart from pumping and her breathing to slow, choking her down into an immobile lump of bones and organs, from which there's no returning."
