William Elliott Whitmore

Lee County

William Elliott Whitmore was born on May 11, 1978 in Lee County, Iowa, and grew up on a farm near Keokuk that has stayed in the family. He plays guitar and banjo, sings in a deep voice, and calls his sparse, mostly solo records roots-folk music; the ANTI- biography lists The Jesus Lizard, Bad Brains and the Minutemen among his influences. He has recorded since 1999, first on his own and then for Southern Records (2003-2006), ANTI- (from 2009), Bloodshot Records (2020) and his own Whitmore Records. His cousin Luke Tweedy has engineered and produced at Flat Black Studios in Iowa City, where Field Songs (July 12, 2011) and Radium Death (March 31, 2015) were recorded.

I'm With You (October 16, 2020, Bloodshot) was recorded at Flat Black Studios in Lonetree, Iowa and mastered by Todd Rittman. Kilonova (2018) is an album of covers of Bad Religion, Bill Withers, Captain Beefheart, Johnny Cash, The Magnetic Fields and ZZ Top. With David Zollo he plays in Middle Western, whose album When Your Demons Are Underground and You've Got to Dig Them Up appeared in 2018. In 2020 he said he chose to stay in Iowa rather than move to Nashville.

Silently, The Mind Breaks came out on January 26, 2024: ten songs in about 32 minutes. Apple Music lists music videos for "Break Even", "Darkness Comes", "Has to Be That Way", "Dance With Me" and "Adaptation and Survival".