Chris Bathgate

by Margaret RegesChris Bathgate is a prolific singer/songwriter whose stark, heartbroken songs (similar in tone to those of Will Oldham or Damien Jurado) earned him a strong local following throughout southeast Michigan. He grew up in Pecatonica, IL and started playing music when he was 16, putting in a couple years with a heavy metal band before going solo in 2001. Eventually relocating to Ann Arbor in order to attend the University of Michigan, Bathgate released his next single in 2002, Twilight Unlimited, and his second album, Create and Consume, the following year. It was at this point that he started playing with Michael Beauchamp and Karl Sturk in an old timey-tinged folk trio called the Ambitious Brothers. The group released a couple records, Ambitious Brothers I and Ambitious Brothers II, over the next few years, and disbanded in 2005 when Sturk moved to New York. In 2005 Bathgate worked with the short-lived Descent of the Holy Ghost Church, which included Beauchamp in addition to local indie musicians Jansen Swy, Matt Jones, Louis Dickinson, and Carol Gray. The group disbanded in 2006, after which Bathgate went on to release two albums and an EP, The Single Road I Long For, Throatsleep, and A Detailed Account of Three Dreams. He was picked up by Quite Scientific soon after, and his first release on that label, A Cork Tale Wake, arrived in the summer of 2007.