“This generation's Nick Drake.” – XM CAFÉ

“Vandaveer is equal parts storyteller and musician… channeling countless ‘60s folksingers in his emphatic strums and sharp rhymes…” – NPR.ORG

Vandaveer is the alt-folk song singing/record making/globetrotting project penned and put forth by DC-by-way-of-Kentucky tunesmith Mark Charles Heidinger. The son of a preacher whose father was a gambler whose father was a US congressman, Mark Charles one day found himself in possession of a golden pocket watch owned, wound, and regularly counseled by each in this paternal line. On the backside of said watch was a family name engraved, passed down for a century or more like the timepiece that followed. That name was Vandaveer.

Vandaveer's debut album, Grace & Speed, a mostly live, stripped down affair, swiftly entered this great big dusty world in the spring of  2007 garnering rave reviews and repeated comparisons to Dylan, Waits, Drake, Simon, and the like. Touring continually on both sides of the Atlantic ever since, Vandaveer has played nearly 200 shows, sharing stages with a host of humbling artists including Bon Iver, Alela Diane, Alejandro Escovedo, Vashti Bunyan, Vetiver, Evan Dando, Scout Niblett, The Ditty Bops, Smog, and his dear friends in DC's ramshackle collective, The Federal Reserve. In addition to said Vandaveering, Mark Charles has been known to fraternize and conspire with other music-making hooligans, primarily as a bassist for fellow DCers These United States and guitarist/singer/songwriter for The Apparitions.

Vandaveer's sophomore effort, Divide & Conquer, touches upon similar themes found in its elder sibling, winding timeworn themes of love & death, malice & goodwill, sin & perseverance into (mostly) four-minute vignettes. To see D&C through, Vandaveer enlisted the able assistance of longtime collaborator and producer Duane Lundy, brothers-in-arms/TUS bandmates Robby Cosenza and Justin Craig, and most notably, his fair sister Rose Guerin, supplying the loveliest harmonies this side of Eden. A decidedly more produced venture, D&C offers up a flourishing chamber folk companion to its bedroomy lo-fi folk/pop predecessor.