As you can see from the photos and video of Mr. Softheart performing in IPR’s studios, lead vocalist Nick Fisher and vocalist/keyboardist Halen Becker both wore sunglasses the entire time. To be fair, it was pretty bright in our studios, and it was also a Saturday morning. “For a morning show it’s especially important,” said Nick. “We’re not used to playing at 11 a.m. on a Saturday.”
That’s valid, but the sunglasses pointed me toward something I’ve always wondered about Mr. Softheart: Is it a band, or is Mr. Softheart a character that Fisher plays on stage? I had to ask, and got the best “non-answer” I could have hoped for.
“He's actually a real person who's on the lam at the moment that we're trying to, like, draw back on to the right side of the tracks and back into society,” said Fisher. Perfect answer. 10 out of 10, no notes.
Mr. Softheart is a four-piece band with members living in Cedar Falls and Des Moines. The core of the group since the beginning has been Nick, his brother John and Charlie Patterson. The three have had several bands together over the years, and most recently performed as Hex Girls, when John and Patterson pretty evenly divided up the guitar responsibilities. In Mr. Softheart, though, John has moved almost entirely to playing keyboards and synthesizers, and according to him it’s mainly for practical reasons.
“Part of it was the last tour where we couldn't fit my guitar stuff in the van,” said John. “So I just kind of took on this role as all keyboards, and I keep buying more. We'll eventually need a bigger van!”
The keyboards have become a key part of Mr. Softheart’s signature “kitchen sink” sound, which in their case is the sound you hear from the studio recording — without consideration for how they’ll recreate it live.
“After we do the record, it’s like ‘Oh, how the hell are we gonna figure out all these parts?’” said Nick. “But I guess I'm a maximalist at heart when it comes to writing the song, so it is what it is — throw the whole ‘21 guns’ at it and chase what’s exciting about it.”
“In the studio you can layer as many guitars as sound good,” said Patterson. “But live, I think the guitar blends well with the synth. If you can't do it live, just rewrite it to play it live. Who cares? Record the best song.”
Mr. Softheart's new EP, Reflections on Primitive Action, releases July 4. It’s the band’s first release since last summer, and second since Becker became the band’s official fourth member after appearing on previous Mr. Softheart songs.
“I started doing stuff with these guys several years ago now, but it was like randomly they'd be like, ‘Hey, do you want to do some vocals on this song?’” said Becker. “And when Magdalene In Crisis came out, I did vocals on a couple things, and that was sort of my audition, I guess, to make sure that I was funny enough to hang out. And I guess I passed.”
In addition to the usual places, such as Bandcamp and streaming services, Reflections on Primitive Action will be available on cassette, and it’s only partly due to the cost-effectiveness of cassettes.
“Shout out to those small independent tape labels that are out there. They make the music industry work at a deeper level, especially for independent bands like us,” said Nick. “We've been fortunate to partner with Warm Gospel, a tape label in Des Moines for this go around.”
The effort to release the EP on tape is all despite the fact that nobody in Mr. Softheart owns a cassette player. “We’re just gonna be upfront about that, now that cassette tapes are kind of coming back,” said Nick.
“People seem to buy them regardless of whether they have a tape player or not, (and) we need to make money for all the venues that don't pay us well enough,” said Patterson. “So we're selling tapes.”
Mr. Softheart will be debuting songs from the new EP at Octopus College Hill in Cedar Falls July 5, then the band's embarking on a tour that heads east, with shows in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. It’s a variation of the tour the group went on last year, and they’re applying some lessons they learned.
“I think there were a lot of hard things about the tour, and the biggest motivating factor for us to do it again is to just do it better,” said Becker. “Next time it will just be better and more organized, with less floor sleeping. You know, just like all of the kinks that you have to work out before things can become more streamlined.”
With a new EP on the way and a tour coming up, it’s understandable that nobody in Mr. Softheart has made many plans past that. Still, the band is constantly writing music and thinking about the future.
“I think there's definitely some changes that we'll be making in terms of how we orient our live setup and what that looks like, and the ability to kind of let it be a little more fluid and amorphous depending on where we're playing and when,” said Becker. “And I'm really looking forward to just playing more shows and writing more music.”
Mr. Softheart’s Saturday show at Octopus includes guests Daisy Glue, Toon Smokes and DJ Pals. Showtime is 8 p.m., tickets are $10. Mr. Softheart’s music can be found on Bandcamp and streaming services.
