Additional Resources
Artist's Official Website: http://www.vandaveer.net/
Millennium Stage Home Page
Part of the Performing Arts for Everyone Initiative
VANDAVEER
About the Artist
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.
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 comparisons to Donovan, Dylan, Waits, Drake, Simon, and the like. Touring continually on both sides of the Atlantic ever since, Vandaveer has played 250+ 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.
Divide & Conquer was released in France, Belgium and Switzerland on April 6th, 2009, via Alter K. Records / Discograph, and in the USA on August 25th, 2009, via Supply & Demand Music.
Past Performances
September 24, 2009
This is the alt-folk song-singing/record-making/globetrotting project by DC-by-way-of-Kentucky tunesmith Mark Charles Heidinger, whose recently released Divide & Conquer was hailed by Rolling Stone as “jarring new folk.”
August 24, 2007
Singer-songwriter Rose, originally from Roxbury, Massachusetts, honed her skills in Madrid singing blues, jazz, and folk standards with local acts and in the underground. She then moved to D.C. in 1997 with the raw power of her extraordinary voice. Vandaveer, the town-folk, city-pop solo song-and-dance routine of Mark Charles Heidinger, can be heard on his debut record, Grace & Speed.
February 25, 2007
Vandaveer is the town-folk, city-pop solo routine of guitarist and vocalist Mark Charles Heidinger, who shares his volume of tunes about love, death, redemption, and flight. Hooked on the melodic charm of Paul McCartney’s early solo records, the grit of Tom Waits, and the wit of Bob Dylan, Vandaveer lingers comfortably at the corner of folk and pop.
