Las Vegas Weekly

Busy Beekeeper sings … and prepares for zombie apocalypse

In case of zombie outbreak, find Rushmore Beekeeper’s Zach Fountain.

Photo: Corlene Byrd

Between handshakes and hugs with friends, Zach Fountain talks shop after his Friday-night performance. Turns out, the folksy singer-songwriter likes to write, likes to perform, loves music. He performs under the name Rushmore Beekeepers in an effort to distance himself from the solo singer-songwriter stereotype. Plus, he occasionally spices up live shows by adding more elements to his “band.” The cardboard case for Rushmore Beekeepers’ new CD, Throwing Mud at Your Streetlight, is more environmentally friendly than plastic. He chose to have his release party at Sunrise Coffee because it’s all-ages and locally owned.

Far more interesting: One of Fountain’s dreams in life is to be an extra in a zombie movie, preferably something by director George Romero.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the New Mexico native is a film buff. After all, his band’s name is a nod to Wes Anderson’s 1998 flick Rushmore, and Swedish director/writer Ingmar Bergman is listed on the band’s MySpace profile as an influence.

Still, why zombies and not vampires? Those fang-toothed villains are all the rage right now. “Vampires are all right. They’re fake, though,” the soft-spoken Fountain tells me. “I think it would be fun to dress up as [a zombie]. Of course, there’s a difference between entertainment zombies and real zombies.”

Fountain continues, “There’s nothing funny about the zombie apocalypse.”

Of course, that doesn’t stop anyone in Friday’s modest audience from laughing during the song “What It’s Like to Be Sad.” The song, more commonly and appropriately referred to as “The Zombie Song,” is a witty tale about traveling to Omaha to save a girl (“I knew she wasn’t safe with a bunch of emos in Nebraska”) but having to shoot her in the head instead.

Fountain says he wanted to write a zombie song that “wasn’t too cheesy or filled with too much novelty.” Whether that’s possible for a lead singer who likes to pretend—we hope he’s pretending, anyway—that he believes in the undead remains to be seen.