Ross Beach, an indie-pop singer/songwriter tied to the Elephant 6 collective, came into the world in New Orleans and grew up chiefly in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he launched his earliest group, Beach-Head, during high school. After shifting to Ruston, Louisiana, in 1991, he entered Smilin' Joe Fission, a band that transformed into the Gerbils through repeated lineup adjustments. In 1994 Beach assisted with engineering the initial rough demos for Neutral Milk Hotel’s debut album On Avery Island, while at the same time linking up with NMH’s Jeff Mangum plus the Gerbils’ Scott Spillane and Will Westbrook inside the near-mythic E6 all-star aggregate the Clay Bears. Also that year he released the self-issued cassette The Hand-Crafted Heart Sickness Calliope, the opening entry in a run of solo tapes that further comprised Cheesequake, They Call Me "Buck" and Utopian Love Songs. Establishing residence in Monroe, Louisiana, in 1995, Beach played drums for Midget and Hairs before heading back to Baton Rouge and starting his own outfit, the She-Devils. On the Chicken Ranch label he laid down the 1997 cassette Tender Severity, which was succeeded two years later by his first CD, Ride Theory.
