What’s in a Name? For Erika Wennerstrom and Heartless Bastards, It’s Everything
The new Heartless Bastards album, A Beautiful Life, was almost released as Wennerstrom’s sophomore solo effort BY BRIAN BAKER
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or much of the past two decades, Erika Wennerstrom’s musical identity has been exemplified by the Cincinnati-spawned, now-Austinbased entity known as the Heartless Bastards. Since the band’s formation in 2003, the Bastards have been known for their blistering performances, with Wennerstrom as the ferociously intense focal point and lead singer, captivating audiences with her unique guttural purr-n-growl. The band’s 2005 debut, Stairs and Elevators was met with critical acclaim, grabbing a glowing
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three-and-a-half star review from Rolling Stone, and write-ups comparing Wennerstrom to Janis Joplin, Chrissie Hynde and Patti Smith. “I’m not really a calculated person,” Wennerstrom told CityBeat in a previous interview. “I really just try to follow my heart creatively. I always just hope that people will respond to the songs.” The Heartless Bastards’ sixth studio album, A Beautiful Life, is slated to drop Sept. 10 on Sweet Unknown Records/ Thirty Tigers. And though a release from the label says Wennerstrom “first considered releasing A Beautiful Life under
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her own name as the follow-up to her widely praised 2018 solo debut, Sweet Unknown, she ultimately came to view the new album as a continuation of the journey begun on Heartless Bastards’ milestone 2005 debut.” She and the band are taking the new songs on tour, with a local stop at Covington’s Madison Theater on Sept. 25. A Dayton, Ohio native, Wennerstrom’s musical aspirations were bigger than her local scene, so she and then-boyfriend Mike Lamping moved to Cincinnati in the early 2000s to find a place in the area’s more diverse music community. Ironically, her first band experience came in the form of now-defunct Post Punk Dayton band Shesus, which was her commuter gig for over two years. Ultimately, Wennerstrom quit Shesus and began writing her own songs. She threw a band together — drummer Dave Colvin and Ruben Glaser and Jesse Ebaugh (both of former Cincinnati Rock/Blues juggernaut Pearlene) — and christened it Heartless Bastards based on a bar trivia game. The question: “What is the name of Tom Petty’s backing band?” And one of the fake answers was “Tom Petty and the
Heartless Bastards.” The newly minted Bastards recorded a five-song demo at Cincinnati’s Ultrasuede Studio, one of which was given to Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney at an Akron gig. Carney sent the demo to Fat Possum Records owner Matt Johnson, and he signed the band and released Stairs and Elevators. From the outset, Wennerstrom seemed an unlikely bandleader. With her winsome beauty and soft-spoken charm, she could have passed for a 1960s coffeehouse Folk chanteuse, but after a couple of slashing chords and a vein-throbbing chorus shriek, that notion was quickly dispelled. Since the start of the band, the roll call accompanying Wennerstrom has changed dramatically — except for stalwart bassist Ebaugh, her demo bassist in 2002 and a constant since his official 2008 arrival. But her songwriting and stage presentation have remained largely the same. Wennerstrom relocated to Austin, Texas in 2007, and while she maintains that the city hasn’t influenced her on a musical level, it may have had an impact on her worldview and how she expresses it.
