Nate Wedan, the 28-year-old drummer for DOMA-nominated Somebody's Darling, is always stationed at the back of the stage, where it's hard to see that his traditional-style tattoos are marvelous.
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His left arm is dedicated to his faith. "It's my spiritual arm, my religious arm if you will," he says. "I was born a preacher's kid and grew up in church and did a lot of soul searching kind of by myself, and got out of the scene and came back to it on my own without my dad shoving down my throat."
Wedan's first tattoo was the blue outline of a dove that his best friend, Adam Carter, former bassist of Spector 45, got for him. "He bought that for me when I was 18," Wedan says. "We were best friends, but he killed himself a couple of years ago." Instead of getting a memorial tattoo, Wedan says, he just looks at this tattoo when he wants to be reminded of Carter.
On top his burly forearm is a flames-encompassing sacred heart tattoo. The sacred heart is represented in Christianity as a symbol of Jesus' divine love for humanity. "It's kind of a very peaceful thought for me," he says.
Inside his forearm is a beautiful neo-traditional style anchor surrounded by roses and a menacing eagle, inside the words "Anchor of my soul." This piece was done by Danielle Felan, at Legacy Art Tattoo. "Anchor of my soul has to do with Hebrews 6:19," Wednan says.
His right arm is a tribute to his family -- except for the upper portion, where he had some drunken mishaps. Wedan's hometown of Wichita, Kansas has a sculpture of an Indian chief overlooking the Arkansas and Little Arkansas rivers. He says he wanted something that would remind him of Wichita and still have that Native-American influence, so he got the statue tattooed.
"It represents the plains Indians and the Indians that came over through the trail of tears." Next to the tattoo is the Cherokee nation symbol. "My granddad was full blood Cherokee."
At the top of his right arm is a little graph of musical notes -- "my seven in the morning whiskey tattoos." He says his buddy gave him those after a late night of drinking. "It looks like a fourth-grader who just learned how to write with his right hand used his left hand."
Wedan says he had the notes touched up but then two weeks later he accidentally had the same guy do a Texas-themed tattoo on the inside of his upper arm. "It's really good real estate eaten up by bad by some bad ink, but you know I look at it and I laugh and it's kind of where you came from."
"That's kind of how it goes. If you're into tattoos you're going to get some bad ones," he says, talking about the bad ink.
Wedan says he wants to be able to make a modest living playing drums and is looking forward to their February West Coast tour and the South by Southwest festival in Austin.
