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Haunted Ground (Single)


Heavy Capt.

 Haunted Ground Cover Haunted Ground (single)

Release Date: July 25th, 2025

heavycaptainandtennille@gmail.com

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Download album: Enter Bandcamp code here

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Haunted Ground












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Bio/Album Info


Genre: alt country tinged bedroom/dream pop

Haunted Ground is the new single from Heavy Captain, the lyrical project of composer and multi-instrumentalist, Dylan Deimler (pronounced dime-lure) (he/him). Currently based in Lancaster, PA after a decade in Philadelphia, Deimler was previously part of the freak-folk duo, Orca Orchestra, and wrote and performed under his alter ego Milton Haysbury, with both projects touring the US. In 2022, he eponymously released two instrumental works: Atmospheric Garland, a spacey mix of guitars and synths and an EP grounded in the fictional filmic American West, OK Corral. He is cofounder of the Philly-based LP/cassette label, Magic Death Sounds.

Joining Deimler on this recording are mandolinist Danny Mulligan(Danny and the Do-Overs) and vocalist Megan Gouda (Bodyguard).

This release follows Ride the ____ (2021) and Places, Strange and Wrong (April 2025).

The song is a transition from the other side. Looking for Gold where it may have never been. Haunted Ground is a song about channeling lost love from another plane. A hymn sung in the blurry haze of nostalgia. Composed after listening to a lecture about the spiritualist singers the Fox Sisters, it was inspired by their musical adaptation of a poem by the “late Mrs. Heamans,” with “music from the Spirit Land” - dictated to them by the practice of table rapping. It is not a cover of this supposed spirit transmission, but another “channeled” piece of music. It is drawn from love’s collected ghosts. By song’s end it is a clear warning of the past’s power to destroy us if we cannot move into the future. If we cannot tame the turbulent winds, the rough seas will consume us. Our journey begins on solid ground, but ends with a sinking ship in a vast ocean.

Musically, the song is a moody and dreamy three minutes. The song opens with a Chet Atkins-esque guitar intro set against a syncopated beat, creating the character of a 60s French Pop song à la France Gall or the British Jug Band revisionism of Mungo Jerry. The verse’s vocals sit on the framework of a simplistic counter melody. With co-vocalist Gouda providing a necessary softness to the staccato, piano driven counter- melody. The bridge section breaks the trance of the verse with a brief foray into 70s glam rock textures and the entry of a crunchy mellotron with pitch bent notes, distorted glissando, creating a spacey aeolian mode- pushing the song into a darker, more distant arena. The outro arrives boldly with a key change to the relative major. The mellotron’s melody, which has stayed constant, is now navigating a tonal shift. Its holdover from the minor key of the bridge is ultimately too much for it to handle and it fades out and the song returns to its country-tinged origins, this time with Mulligan providing tension and release with masterfully crafted mandolin accompaniment.



Heavy Capt


Additional Resources


Track Credits (including pronunciation/pronouns) and Full Lyric Sheet. Click here

Streaming Links



Places, Strange and Wrong


Cover Places, Strange & Wrong

 Release Date: April 25th, 2025

heavycaptainandtennille@gmail.com

@instagram

Download album: Enter Bandcamp code here

or via Google Drive:

WAV & FLAC options here

Focus Tracks


Places, Strange & Wrong



Roadside Souvenirs



Do Me A Favor


























Music Video




Bio/Album Info


Genre: sinuous, guitar-centered bedroom pop

Places, Strange & Wrong is the new full-length, sparklingly genre-absorbent album from Heavy Captain, the lyrical project of composer and multi-instrumentalist, Dylan Deimler (pronounced dime-lure) (he/him). Currently based in Lancaster, PA after a decade in Philadelphia, Deimler was previously part of the freak-folk duo, Orca Orchestra, and wrote and performed as country-tinged alt-ego Milton Haysbury, with both projects touring the US. In 2022, he eponymously released two instrumental works: Atmospheric Garland, a spacey mix of guitars and synths and an EP grounded in the fictional filmic American West, OK Corral. He is cofounder of the Philly-based LP/cassette label, Magic Death Sounds (Banned Books, Jamaican Queens).

Joined by Nashville percussionist Dominic Billett (Echolalia) and vocalists Megan Gouda (Bodyguard) and Devon Deimler on select tracks, Places, Strange & Wrong is otherwise entirely produced and performed by Deimler, utilizing the same Korg Workstation with which he recorded 2006 Baltimore breakout albums by Ecstatic Sunshine(Freckle Wars) and Ponytail (Kamehameha).

This release follows Ride the ____ , a collection of home recordings made while undergoing chemotherapy. Injections of the heavy metal platinum and the sense of captaining a body that had become a sinking ship—along with cryptic graffiti on his father’s old copy of Highway 61—birthed the name Heavy Capt. With Places, Strange & Wrong, Deimler’s resilient spirit combines with supernatural talent to produce a 9-track voyage through layered worlds and returns to life. It’s an album about shifts of being: loss and acceptance, anger and longing, fate and hope, and the translucent fantasies of inner and other worlds—through which we endure or escape hard realities. Imagistically, the album is populated by “kingfisher-calm” nature metaphors and a great surround of anthropomorphic figures, which also animate the album’s cover art: a freaker’s ball of doodles by Deimler’s father (who contributed his own coming-of-age poetry for adaptation on two tracks).

The parallel worlds that Places, Strange & Wrong glides through exist under a kaleidoscopic dome of stylistic influence. Early Bowie glam and Taking Tiger Mountain Eno meet cosmic country, by way of Bakersfield and Laurel Canyon. Procol Harum’s mournful cadence and piano-organ instrumentation grafts with syncopated beats and blue notes. Mellotron 60s Baroque pop (Satanic Majesties-era Rolling Stones and Odessey and Oracle Zombies) slips into bossa nova easy-does-it and millennial Moon and Antarctica atmospheres, or marches it out with Neil Diamond 3-chord songcraft. Lou Reed’s white light is a spiritual influence, as is the photography of Diane Arbus. Lyrically, Heavy Capt. approaches the runaway symbology of Marc Bolan while easing into Dylan-esque poetic turns and storytelling.

Vocally, in various crests, we hear Bolan and Dylan, too, with twinges of Joe Strummer, Ray Davies, Richard O’Brien, or the soulful tenor of Jerry Garcia. Guest vocalists lend dreamy harmonies reminiscent of Emmylou Harris and Graham Parsons, or of Mama Cass and Michelle Phillips crooning in from some faraway beach.

Places, Strange & Wrong is contemplative but upbeat, urgent but unhurried, a transcendent coming-of-age album made at 37 years old that is in effect a walled garden — it’s multi-specied flora forming one tangled network of roots.

Dylan Deimler


Additional Resources


Album Credits (including pronunciation/pronouns), Full Lyric Sheet, FCC Compliancy Info, & Link to Radio Edits. click here

Streaming Links: Spotify/Apple Music/YouTube/Deezer/Pandora/Tidal/Amazon/Bandcamp