Everybody Swoons - Mark Waldoch

Better To... Podcast with D. M. Needom

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In this episode, Mark Waldoch stops by the show to discuss his new group, The Hallelujah Ward’s, and new album Everybody Swoons. We also talk about how sometimes having a brat moment got him recognized and more.

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Everybody in Milwaukee knows Mark Waldoch. Either they met him working at the legendary Atomic Records, behind a bar at one of Milwaukee’s leading cocktail locales, or most likely singing from the bottom of his heart to the top of his lungs for over the past 25 years.

A songwriter and multi-instrumentalist punk crooner with a raw, uniquely powerful voice, he has opened, guitar tech-ed, or performed with everyone from Arcade Fire, Justin Vernon’s Volcano Choir, Interpol, Sylvan Esso, Daniel Johnston, Bright Eyes. The list goes on and on and on.
Born to Indo-Trinidadian and Puerto Rican/Syrian immigrants in NYC, Waldoch and his brother were pulled by their mother from the big city to the deep Midwest as kids to escape an abusive father. His mother passed shortly after, and Waldoch was adopted by a Racine, Wisconsin family—out of the frying pan and into a John Hughes movie.
It’s no wonder that he gravitated toward something outside the mainstream, which he found, ironically, at a store called Mainstream Records. Love and infatuation came young, aimed at the likes of the Cure, Siouxsie, the Smiths, R.E.M., the Velvet Underground, and Love and Rockets. The list goes on and on.
Inspired by those things and led by a heart that’s always open, Waldoch has been creating songs to match his passion and perfectionism with his pen and his pedalboard. He’s played solo and in various bands over the years, but nothing quite scratched his lifelong itch until now—The Hallelujah Ward’s Everybody Swoons. With drummer Dan Didier (The Promise Ring, Maritime) and bassist Paul Hancock (Testa Rosa), Waldoch finally put the pieces into place. Some of the melodies and seeds of its songs have been simmering for 10 years; some came to life just as this trio did.
Waldoch’s powerful lyrics range from deeply personal to complete fiction, and the music they exist inside is similarly familiar yet new, with elements of indie-pop, shoegaze, even art-rock, and Brit pop.
Everybody Swoons will be out digitally and on limited-edition vinyl, out now via Foreign Leisure Records.

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