In a biweekly series of features, we’re inviting Minnesota artists to introduce themselves to our audience. Today: Good Morning Bedlam, a “pop band pretending to be a string band.”

Isaak Gill Elker (guitar, ukulele, percussion, vocals): Sophie and I, we grew up together in Rochester. We started jamming probably when we were in middle school. We were basically in a theater conservatory program where we would compose and perform music for plays, and so we did a lot of that.

Then after my first semester of college, I took her to a Davina and the Vagabonds concert, and I was like, “Wasn't that great?” And she was like, “It was! We should start a band!” And now, a couple years later, we're doing it full-time. We're running around the country. So I like to say that I tricked Sophie into being in this band.

And then Tori has been around since the beginning; we're married. So when our first bass player went to college, Tori said, “I really want to be in the band.” So we just went and bought a bass and Tori learned the bass to be in the band. We started in summer 2015, and Tori officially joined up in January 2017. We're based out of Minneapolis now.

Victoria “Tori” Elker (bass, vocals): We say that we are indie folk. We put ourselves under the “folk” umbrella because it gives us a lot to play with, a lot of different areas to experiment with.

Isaak Gill Elker: I always like to say that we are a pop band pretending to be a string band.

Sophia “Sophie” Mae (violin, vocals): Isaac just loves the word “bedlam,” and he always wanted to put it in a band name. He used to have a band with a different lineup when he was a teenager, and they called it Good Morning Bedlam.

Isaak Gill Elker: We broke up immediately, and I was like, “Oh, I'm taking this name.”

Sophia Mae: One day we were sitting around the fire with Isaak's dad, and his dad was like, “You know, guys, I just love your band name and how it means welcoming the chaos of every day,” and we're like, you're right. It does mean that. Yeah, we thought this through the whole time.

Isaak Gill Elker: “Bedlam” is a synonym for wildness or chaos.

Sophia Mae: “Lulu” is a song that we're all really passionate about. It means a lot to us, as the title track of our upcoming album. It marks this transition in our sound, from a pared-back folkier vibe to this bigger pop sound that we've kind of been wanting but pushing against. You can hear that whole transition in our upcoming album, but it's especially there in “Lulu” because it starts very pared-back and then there's this like big romantic, cinematic, symphonic moment at the end. It's just a really special song to us.

Isaak Gill Elker: That song, and a lot of the record as a whole, is about exchanging old dreams for new dreams: the idea when you hold too tightly and too rigidly to the idea of what your dreams are, what you think your life might look like, it doesn't always leave room for the unknown and the unexpected. You miss those beautiful things if you hold too rigidly to those ideas.

Victoria Elker: A couple years back, we were in the John Hartford Memorial band competition. We went through that process, and I think that gave us a lot of confidence going in and playing more festivals. [We had the] opportunity to get to play at Blue Ox this past year, and the opportunity to get to play at Boats and Bluegrass really was so much fun. Getting to be a part of the community and be with people in the scene and get to know people has been such a joy.

Isaak Gill Elker: We've been down to South by Southwest in 2018; that was really a special experience for us.

In the Midwest, there's a really big jam-grass scene, and we love being a part of it…but it's taken us a little time to find our place. What is our voice in the scene? With the John Hartford Memorial festival, [we came] in as something completely different than almost every other band there and [found] that we do have a voice, we do have a place, even though we might sound different. In 2022, there's a lot of room for difference, and I think that's really beautiful as artists: that you don't have to hold super rigidly to one idea, one sound.

Sophia Mae: Fitting an upright bass into a Honda Odyssey was a challenge that we faced in the past! Now Tori has a folding bass, and we have a transit van. So life's easy now.

Victoria Elker: Our album Lulu is coming out Feb. 4 - and also on that day, we're releasing a music video for “Salt,” which I'm very, very excited about. Also on that day, we are playing a CD release show.

Isaak Gill Elker: We're celebrating the release of that record in St. Paul, at the Amsterdam. We'll be playing that night as a seven-piece band, which is very different for us. We're really excited. So it'll be the three of us, [and] a member - actually it's his first official show with Good Morning Bedlam and he'll become a full-time member, but he plays trumpet and keys - [and] we’ll have drums, trombone, and banjo on that night. It's gonna get funky. It's gonna get fun.