Like many of his favorite songwriters (John Hartford, Lucinda Williams, Jeff Tweedy),
Izaak Opatz is an ungulate in life’s winter pasture, chewing on and metabolizing
disappointment, heartbreak, and the other tough stuff into enjoyable musical
carbohydrates. A compulsive metaphorager (and inveterate wordplayboy), Opatz
breaks it all down with enzymes of wry humor, thoughtful simile and close observation -
a therapeutic process of narrativizing his own life that, almost as a byproduct, turns out
savory nuggets of literate, confessional pop.

Where 2018’s Mariachi Static drew from Opatz’s fragmented love life as a seasonal
Park Service employee and resonated especially with the sensitive dirtbag set, Extra
Medium, his latest release, splits time between romantic Hindenburgs across his native
Montana, up the East Coast, and in faraway Los Angeles. Montana and LA especially
decorate the album, supplying wells of metaphor and scene-making, and as characters
in their own right - LA’s alternately charming (“In the Light of a Love Affair”) and
discomfiting (“East of Barstow”), and, in “Big Sandy”, Montana evolves from setting to
subject as the girl’s feelings he traverses it to see prove less than his own feelings for
the state.

In LA, Opatz learned from and worked alongside Jonny Fritz at Dad Country Leather,
and met bandmates and Extra Medium collaborators Malachi DeLorenzo (drums,
producer, engineer) and Dylan Rodrigue (multi-instrumentalist, producer). He now lives
in Missoula, Montana, where he runs his own custom leather shop, is writing the next
album, and getting ready to pursue a Journalism degree at the U of M.