Fonfara is a Minneapolis transplant from Denver. He graduated with a degree as a clarinetist and music teacher. After that, he went on to record and tour worldwide with 16 Horsepower/Woven Hand, and with Jim White, on David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label. Fonfara arrived in Minneapolis nine years ago with a well-honed, exploratory talent. He joined Spaghetti Western String Co. and combines the precision and delicacy that the band has with the loud playfulness of the Brass Messengers and silent film scores from Dreamland Faces. Fonfara recruited some of the best players from Minnepolis, including members of The Poor Nobodys and Dark Dark Dark Dark. Fonfara has continued to use Painted Saints as a platform for his songwriting, even when he was working with collaborators and other bands. His songs are a beautiful and intricate sonic landscape of visually imagistic lyrics. They are often as melancholic, forceful, and shimmering as they seem. Lyrically, the songs feature escapist dreamers and flailing underdogs as well as children’s imagined civil conflicts. Henry Darger paintings are the inspiration for many songs. They depict a boxer contemplating his life from the moment he takes the first hit to the canvas. Children can also be seen looking down at the world from the highest Pine tree in Wyoming and riding through the snowstorms. from www.paintedsaints.net
