Eric Bachmann

North Carolinian Eric Bachmann’s debut solo album may have been called Short Careers, but his musical career has been anything but. Beginning with his early-’90s indie rock band Archers of Loaf, the one-time Appalachian State University saxophone major moved through several generations to craft a relentlessly independent and uncompromising rock & roll journey. Archers of Loaf would slowly amass a devoted cult following on the strength of albums like All the Nations Airports and White Trash Heroes. Before Archers of Loaf disbanded in the late ’90s, Bachmann would be well into side project Barry Black and on the way to his long-running dark songwriting moniker Crooked Fingers. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Bachmann’s output was strong and consistent, both as Crooked Fingers and under his own name.
With their 1993 debut Icky Mettle, Bachmann’s group Archers of Loaf unleashed a collection of white noise, Pavement-style guitar pop, and loopy lyrics that deftly matched the crunch of Chapel Hill’s other underground giants, Superchunk. In 1995, Bachmann began the instrumental side project Barry Black with producer Caleb Southern and released two LPs. The Archers released three more studio albums before disbanding in 1998, capping things off with a posthumous live record called Seconds Before the Accident.