The Hopefuls

The Hopefuls: Chasing a Rock 'n' Roll Dream in the Minnesota Music Scene (McFarland & Company, 2018)   is the definitive musical biography of Erik Appelwick, Eric Fawcett, John Hermanson, and Darren Jackson and the musical collective that formed around them in the Minneapolis independent music scene, encompassing bands Kid Dakota, Spymob, Storyhill, Vicious Vicious, and many others.  The book comprehensively traces how their musical partnerships formed, reformed, and transformed from the early 1990s through the late 2010s. You can read the introduction  here  and watch the book trailer below. The book was recognized with a Certificate of Merit in the 2019 ARSC Awards for Excellence. It's available in paperback and ebook. Buy it from your favorite independent bookstore, Amazon , Barnes & Noble , or directly from McFarland . The official book trailer!

Heath Henjum, bass player for The Hopefuls and a dozen other acts, died unexpectedly in late February 2025. He was 55 years old. One of my regrets regarding my book The Hopefuls: Chasing a Rock ‘n’ Roll Dream in the Minnesota Music Scene is that - because the Hopefuls collective is so filled with fascinating figures - I wasn’t able to give all of them the spotlight they deserve. Heath is definitely at the top of that list; I estiamate I only used about a tenth of what he shared with me when I interviwed him in 2015. So please forgive me for using the sad occasion of his passing to remedy that. Not that Heath especially cared about the spotlight. All good bands, like all good sports teams, need a “glue guy,” someone who finds their joy not in adulation but in making everyone else around them better. Heath was a consummate glue guy. * Heath Laurence Henjum, born in June 1969, grew up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. His dad was a World War II veteran and a stockbroker. His mom worked as a ...