1. He’s known by many names – now including “Mr. Michelle Williams.” When no one was looking, Michelle Williams, 37, tied the knot with Phil Elverum, 40, an independent rocker who has been performing for more than two decades. The two were wed in the Adirondacks, “witnessed by only a handful of friends and their two daughters,” according to Vanity Fair. Phil is best known for his work with his experimental rock band The Microphones (1996-2003) and his current outfit, Mount Eerie.
2. Like Michelle, he’s a single parent who lost a loved one. Prior to his marriage with Michelle (who was in a relationship with the late Heath Ledger for three years), Phil was married to Geneviève Castrée, a Quebec-born artist and musician, according to Vanity Fair. Geneviève was known for “intricately drawn comics” that dealt with heavy issues as her relationship with her parents and childhood abuse. Phil’s record label, P.W. Elverum & Sun, released albums Geneviève’s musical projects, Woelv and Ô Paon, and the label’s website sells many of her books. Sadly, in 2015, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, four months after she gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Agathe. She died in 2016. “She was a firehose of brilliant ideas that never turned off,” Phil wrote following her death.
3. He dealt with his first wife’s death through music. Mount Eerie’s album A Crow Looked At Me is mostly about the death of Geneviève. The record was given high praise upon its release, with many considering it one of the best records of 2017. “It’s as if you’re watching him annotate each fresh revelation of her absence with a note he hopes she one day might see, or maybe can hear right now, in some leap of cosmic communication,” the New York Times wrote.
4. Phil Elverum is not his real name. Phil, born Philip Whitman Elvrum, started to spell his name “Elverum” in the mid 2000’s. “It started because when I spent that winter in Norway– it’s a Norwegian name, there’s a town in Norway called Elverum, with the extra “e” — so I started spelling it that way there,” he told Pitchfork, “just to avoid having to explain. And then I thought, ‘Hey that looks cool, I’m just going to keep writing it like that.’ Kurt Cobain used to spell his name all kinds of crazy ways, so why not?”
5. He’s a Washington native, now residing in New York City. Phil was born raised in Anacortes, Washington, in a small town on Fidalgo Island. The locale had an effect on his music, as the mythology of the Pacific Northwest has been a source of inspiration for many of his songs. During the 1990s to 2000s, he was active in the Olympia music scene with his bands, but in July 2018, he moved to Brooklyn to be close to Michelle.