Warren Defever

Who is Warren Defever?

Warren Defever is a musician and producer originally from Livonia, Michigan now based in Detroit. He is most known for his chameleonic project His Name Is Alive, though he is active in numerous other circles. He produced, engineered, and or remixed recordings by Iggy and the Stooges, Blanche, Low, Ida, Michael Hurley, Califone, Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore, the Gories, the Go, Nomo, Saturday Looks Good to Me, Faruq Z. Bey, the Von Bondies, Reba Fritz, Destroy All Monsters, Jenny Toomey, Slumber Party, John Sinclair, Elizabeth Mitchell & Lisa Loeb, as well as HNIA offshoot Velour 100.

Defever was born in Livonia, Michigan to Charles Defever, who is American, and Grace Kloschinsky, who was a Canadian citizen.[1][2][3] Defever was raised in a strict religious household along with his brothers, Johnny and Matt. He grew up a music fan. His grandfather, John Kloschinsky, was a musician from Saskatchewan and had taught Warren and his brothers how to play various musical instruments. Defever has spoken of him often in interviews saying, "I was so young I can barely even remember, but I have a hazy vision of having to hold a giant accordion on my lap when I was only two. It's one of my earliest and worst memories. That's probably why I hate music." The Defever family spent many years travelling back and forth between the U.S. and Canada before eventually settling outside of Detroit near the Canadian border. Defever's early life was marked by a multitude of physical maladies; he suffered collapsed lungs twice, had pneumonia 4-5 times, a burst appendix, a cyst on his tonsils and asthma. This served to isolate him from other children at school because, as he claims, he was in the hospital so often that no one knew him well enough to befriend him. He has revealed recently in a radio interview in Detroit on WDET that his health finally improved, however, once the family settled in Livonia.