For Ben VanderHart, lead singer of Chattanooga band Telemonster, the troughs of life started a few years before COVID-19. In the Fall of 2018, VanderHart left a cushy corporate job with a steady income to found Yellow Racket Records and release Telemonster’s most recent full-length album, Introspecter, Pt. 1. Within a year, he was working as a farm hand in North Georgia, then scrubbing toilets as a church janitor, then stuffing envelopes and sending out birthday emails to members of a trucking association. And things only got harder from there.

“Your Life Begins Today” is the outcome of that process. At just under four minutes, this concise pop song is a deliberate effort to find joy and hope in a life that is fraught with disappointment and hardship. Over the last year and a half, it seems like something almost everyone can relate to.

Your Life Begins Today

“Sun Farm” is the first song we’ve heard from Chase Waller, the 26-year-old songwriter and multi-instrumentalist behind the name El Rocko, since March 2020, right before COVID came sweeping in. During the pandemic, Waller got married, bought a farmhouse, and put his nose to the grindstone to complete his debut EP, Daydreaming. Less synthesized and more earthy than the first few singles of his career, Daydreaming reflects Waller’s life in quarantine, learning to live in close quarters with another person, and taming a plot of land left to wild in the North Georgia countryside. 
 
As Waller puts it, “For me, the most overwhelming part was the property: an overgrown garden, a chicken coop laden with scraps of metal, flower beds overgrown with weeds. I was so frustrated by the looming work that I often felt paralyzed and would walk around and watch. In observing the little ecosystem around the house, I experienced the order and chaos of nature that ensued. Some animals killed each other, some plants killed each other, some animals helped plants grow, some plants helped animals grow, etc. I thought about how, at our best, we could be a guiding hand to the chaos and order of nature. And so, with my wife leading the way (because I had no clue what I was doing), we started to make a garden.”
 
Snippets of this story and still frames of life in the country are woven into the concise three minutes that make up “Sun Farm.” It is the first track off El Rocko’s new EP, which embraces the pastoral imagery and blossoming love story that has characterized Waller’s life over the last 2 years. 

Daydreaming is out May 27, via Yellow Racket Records.

Daydreaming

Sun Farm

"Sun Over the Zoo" is about a dream of living life without restraint. To throw off useless trappings and routines and restrictions and to embrace the full spectrum of existence - both its beauty and its tragedy. To discard the comfort and safety of structure and predictability, and to pursue true joy, understanding that it must also be accompanied by true sorrow.

Sun Over the Zoo

This is the first track from my album "Courage and Self Destruction"

Arrêt

Richard Winham of NPR Chattanooga (WUTC FM) talks with Yellow Racket Founder and Telemonster front man Ben VanderHart, as well as fellow artists Joel Harris and El Rocko, about why the label was founded, what they aim to accomplish with their music, and what's important in life.

Program also features the song "Higher Ground" by MOMO.

Writer's in the Round - Yellow Racket Edition - WUTC 10/01/2020

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Writer's in the Round - Yellow Racket Edition - WUTC 10/01/2020

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