Mike Behrends writes, records, and performs music with folk instruments. A few years back, he started playing in and around the Duluth, Minnesota area, where he composed songs that were more or less imitations of the music seen and heard around him. It wasn't until he moved to Madison, Wisconsin that he found his own familiar yet original sound. When Behrends met up with Lance Owens and Mike Grunder, the folkish songs were finally able to take shape in the same vein in which they could be heard in his head--with banjos, overdriven electric guitars, and simple percussion. Visit www.mikebehrends.com for more information.

Mike Behrends

Mike Behrends writes, records, and performs music with folk instruments. A few years back, he started playing in and around the Duluth, Minnesota area, where he composed songs that were more or less imitations of the music seen and heard around him. It wasn't until he moved to Madison, Wisconsin that he found his own familiar yet original sound. When Behrends met up with Lance Owens and Mike Grunder, the folkish songs were finally able to take shape in the same vein in which they could be heard in his head--with banjos, overdriven electric guitars, and simple percussion.

In 2009, straying away from the tired singer-songwriter combo of a voice/acoustic guitar, the three used subtle instrumentation to record Behrends' self-titled EP, which critics called "a new twist to the more indie-focused scene" and analogized as both a "flannel-clad cleansing" and "a log cabin in the woods with brush and trees right up to the front porch." The five tracks that appear on the short record were picked from a long list of tunes that Behrends had written since his days as a Duluth nobody. The raw, pastoral story songs were described as "not quite Dylan-esque" but "the chills they conjure are the same ones you get from listening to Blood on the Tracks for the first time."

Following the release, Behrends--who is incredibly prone to not liking anything he writes down on paper--began work on a new batch of songs that would become the material for "New Feet," his debut full-length. This time around, Owens and Grunder helped add more to the arrangements than on the sparse songs found on the EP by including synthesizers, chord organs, accordions, and busier percussion. Themes and stories of death, love, religion, and girl-related melodramas cover the expanse of the new, more involved material. "New Feet" will be released on Baby Animal Records, followed by a lifetime of Mike playing shows in support of not only the new record, but also paying rent, eating, and attempting to make a name for himself in the depths of the musical underground.