Seattle Superheroes: Lonesome Shack

The band Lonesome Shack has saved many a music fan from cheesy songwriting

By Seattle Mag February 2, 2016

A drawing of a man in a cape and a woman on a guitar.

Seattle Superheroes is a regular series on seattlemag.com wherein artists depict standout people in our community as superheroes. While we’ve taken some artistic license with the narratives, the sentiment behind them is very real.

Lonesome Shack is not the type of band that just saves a little old lady from a burning building. No, it also remembers to snag her cats Pennepasta, Little Kitty and Batman.

It’s this attention to detail that makes the band who it is: music saviors to fans who only know cheesy music without Lonesome Shack’s songwriting. Frontman Ben Todd has been picking guitars so long it’s as if his hands have turned into spiders navigating the strings. A trance washes over the audience when Lonesome Shack–comprised of Todd, Kristian Garrard on drums and Luke Bergman on bass–plays its stripped down blues.

And you can hear for yourself on Friday, February 12 at Lo-Fi Performance Gallery on Eastlake Avenue, where the band will be playing with Country Lips in a great romping bill.

Todd, who moved to Seattle in 2007, played around town solo for a year or so until Garrard and Bergman joined him. Lonesome Shack has been a trio since 2011, and while the band’s name originated from “an isolated place” where Todd lived in New Mexico, he notes “I’ve never really been lonesome, thankfully.”

He played in bands in the ’90s but says he lost interest until around 2000. “My brother got me my first CD player and it was a six-disc,” he says. “I bought Harry Smith’s anthology of American folk music and it filled up the CD player. I had that on constant rotation for about a year–it was a huge inspiration.”

Now, the Lonesome Shack trio plays their spooky, classic blues–sometimes raucous, sometimes hushed. And they do it while rescuing those who likely thought there would be no rescue from corny, cheesy music.

About the artist: Marie Hausauer is a self taught artist living in Seattle. She is a painter and a cartoonist and a regular contributor to INTRUDER comics. You can find more of her work at mariehausauer.com.

To see more from the band, check out its live in KEXP session here: