Brian Vander Ark

Michigan native Brian Vander Ark gained recognition primarily as the lead vocalist of the Verve Pipe, whose modern rock single "The Freshmen" reached the top of the charts in 1997 and secured the group an ASCAP Pop Award. As an established songwriter and independent solo performer, Vander Ark picked up the guitar at age eight and began composing original material by sixteen. While still a minor, he refined his abilities through nightly one-hour performances in Holiday Inn lounges that paid $275 per week. At eighteen he enlisted in the U.S. Army; after his discharge he resumed those Holiday Inn engagements. Growing weary of cover material, he soon joined His Boy Elroy on guitar, then departed to form Johnny With an Eye before dissolving that project in 1992 and co-founding the Verve Pipe alongside Donny Brown.

The Verve Pipe achieved strong regional success, ranking among the Detroit area’s most prominent acts throughout the mid-to-late 1990s. Together with his bandmates, Vander Ark issued five albums: I’ve Suffered a Head Injury, later reissued as an EP, in 1992; Pop Smear in 1993; the platinum-certified Villains in 1996; The Verve Pipe in 1999; and Underneath, produced by Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger, in 2001. During the band’s hiatuses, Vander Ark pursued interests in theater and film. In summer 2001 he portrayed Charlie Bowdre in Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid at the La Jolla Playhouse on the University of California San Diego campus. On screen he appeared as a country singer in the independent feature Road Kill, which debuted at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and received an Audience Choice Award, and took additional roles in Mergers and Acquisitions, Rock Star—featuring his composition “Colorful”—and Dead and Breakfast.

Vander Ark released his first solo album, the eleven-track Resurrection, in 2003. The collection drew from personal experiences of painful breakups in the ballad “And Then You Went Away,” pressures of meeting label demands in the driving “Written and Erased,” and mortality in “When I’m Gone,” which appeared on the 2002 soundtrack for Angelina Jolie’s Life or Something Like It. Another track, “1229 Sheffield,” had earlier featured on the 1998 Clay Pigeons soundtrack. Resurrection was reissued in March 2004, followed two years later by Angel, Put Your Face On. His third solo release, a self-titled set, arrived in 2008.