The Painstakers

The Painstakers are currently a four piece group of people who write songs, sing and play intruments to those very songs. Sometimes they play covers of other people's music. One thing that's very clear is that they very unclear about how to categorize their music genre. Mostly they use words and phrases like "alt-folk" or alt-acoustic-folk-pop" when they are pressured to come up with such a description.

All three songwriters, Cathering, Brad and Maddie have very distinct songwriting and vocal styles, which makes for a unique combination. Probably the best comparison to another group like this was Fleetwood Mac, where Stevie, Lindsay and Christine brought very individual style and influence to form a very unique sound. As far as the Painstakers are concerned, that's not a comparison to Fleetwood Mac (although that would be cool if someone compared us to them!) but you get the idea.

As far as how these four came together, you can trace Painstaker roots back into the early 80sm (Nineteen hundred eighties, that is) to Bellingham, Washington when they all attended Western Washington University and were in various band ensembles throughout those years. Brad and Al go back even further to the days pre-college growing up in South King County. You wouldn't really think it, but they are big fans of the Dead Kennedys, the Clash, the Who, the Replacements, the Beatles, Lucinda Williams, Neil Young, Aimee Mann, Fleetwood Mac and the Kinks among popular artists of the last 45 years or so.