Erika Wennerstrom and her older brother were raised by a single mom. She began singing as a young child, and by the age of nine, she started learning piano in order to write her own songs. In junior high, Erika participated in a magnet school program In the arts. But there really weren't any selections from “The Little Mermaid” that Erika felt like singing, so she quit. The nuns at Chamid-Julienne High School didn't do much to brighten up the dreariness of life in Dayton, and Erika dropped out of school her senior year. She hung around town for another three years, playing guitar and running through all the jobs in the classified ads.

At 22, Erika moved to Cincinnati and met Mike Lamping, who works at his family's janitorial supply company. They hooked up and began playing out as Heartless Bastards. Soon they brought in Kevin Vaughn on drums, a pizza deliveryman who's been wrestling out of a car finance program for so long that he's paid the sticker price several times over on a car long since wrecked.

In 2002, Erika decided it was time to take it to the next level, and the band struck out on its own. That's their story - nothing fancy, but everything real. Without further ado, welcome to Heartless Bastards.

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