Editor’s Note: This is the second of a weekly series in which The Red & Black will research biographical information about artists and bands that you want to know more about. This week’s idea was submitted by junior Adam Dugan, an environmental design major from Fayetteville. Submit requests to wkessler@randb.com.

A man of many mediums, Phil Elverum finds himself painting, singing, playing instruments, recording music and writing books at the mere age of 30 years old.

Originally from Washington state, the musician has played with more than 20 different artists and bands including the well-known experimental band Explosions in the Sky.

In the early ’90s at the age of 14, Elverum worked at a record store in Anacortes, Wash., where he easily slipped into the town’s music scene.

The segue from listener to maker came in the form of a band named D+. Owner of the record store, Bret Lunsford of Beat Happening, aided Elverum in his education of recording music. He actually got his start with a few cassette tape recordings in the back room of the store which Lunsford released on his small scale label, KNW-YR-OWN.

Elverum moved to Olympia, Wash. for college, but dropped out soon after. He took to music with a passionate obsession for broken, 16-track recordings and began the sounds of the Microphones. He then received the help of Calvin Johnson of K Records who alongside Dub Narcotic studios and Elsinor Records put out Elverum’s first full-length solo album “Don’t Wake Me Up.”

In an interview with The Olympian, he said, “The Microphones stuff was just late-night recording experiments. I was figuring out how to use (recording equipment). It wasn’t even like I had real songs, just weird experiments with noise.”

He toured with K Record’s Mirah and played with Old Time Relijun while beginning the recordings of his third album, “It Was Hot, We Stayed in the Water.”

Elverum also found the time to paint and create the majority of album art for the Microphones.

The albums kept coming throughout the beginning of the 2000s including the renowned “The Glow pt. 2.” The Olympian reporter Ross Raihala also wrote that Phil Elverum was a name to remember in spring of 2002.

After the release of “Mount Eerie,” which carried a theme of death, some say the album symbolically killed the Microphones. Subsequently, Elverum went on a hiatus to Norway for a winter.

Returning to the U.S., Elverum started to produce music under the alias of Mount Eerie and also began P.W. Elverum & Sun, Ltd. The company sells records by the Microphones and Mount Eerie. As it explains on the Web site, P.W Elverum & Sun, Ltd., also sells “vinyls, plastics, songbooks, dry goods, wholesalers and manufacturers of fine things.”

The site also includes a facetious description of the history, which one can only assume reveals a bit of Elverum’s sense of humor. It tells the story of a sunglasses company’s owner who runs for the border and runs into Elverum along the way. This meeting combusts into the manipulation of the company into an auditory project where “the freshly christened P.W. Elverum & Sun became the primary outlet for its owner’s deeply troubled worldview.”

Another hint to his personality comes at the disclaimer found on the company Web site:

“P.s.- Mount Eerie/Phil Elverum/the Microphones/PhilElvrum/ElverumandSun/etc. does not exist on ‘my space a place for friends.’ Do not correspond with impostors and think it’s me. It’s not. I’m me.”

Elverum published several recordings as Mount Eerie instead of the Microphones. The switch threw fans off, but made more sense as Elverum was quoted saying that it was time for something new.

Then, Elverum published a collection of photos that was inspiration for many of his musical endeavors and included a 10-inch record titled “Mount Eerie pts. 6 & 7.” The record is considered the follow-up or bookend to the last Microphones album.

Elverum is still producing and writing in Anacortes. He will have another book and album out this year chronicling his experience in Norway during the 2002-03 winter.