Sean Ingram

Sean Ingram (born September 11, 1975) is an American musician and entrepreneur, best known as the frontman for the mathcore band Coalesce.

He contributed all the lyrics and most of the artwork and packaging for his band.

After several years as a vocalist, he started an entrepreneurial career inspired by the DIY punk ethic, founding the companies Blue Collar Press, Merchtable and Fixcraft.

Sean Ingram was born on September 11, 1975 in Kansas City, Missouri.

He grew up in a middle-class family with an older sister and another younger sister.

Ingram and his family moved to northern Oklahoma and later back to Kansas City.

He describes his father as a racist man who "would carry around ... a constant anger" with him and recalls occasions where he verbally abused him and beat him.

In his early teens, Ingram used to skate along with his friend Dan Askew and shortly afterward spent most of his free time skating vert.

Both discovered punk rock and hardcore through skateboard videos.

Since seventh grade, Ingram was progressively affected because his father started distancing himself from his family and he began to "escape" through "loud music in headphones, skateboarding, or getting drunk", spending much time outside of his house.

Ingram got into straight edge through friends who practiced freestyle BMX, including Rick Thorne and Dennis McCoy, and after bad experiences with alcohol and drugs he claimed edge.

Ingram states that he "always have liked creating things" and, inspired by the DIY punk ethic, he founded the skateboard zine Our World as a teenager, and afterward the skateboard company Reaction Skateboards at the age of sixteen.

He describes himself as "a merch freak" and collected figures and toys as a teenager.

He started school a year earlier and graduated at the age of seventeen.

In the mid-1990s, Ingram was hired by Home Depot as their wallpaper expert but stopped going after three days because it did not satisfy his "need to create and make something".

Ingram, who became a big fan of Earth Crisis' 1992 EP All Out War, began exchanging letters with members of the Syracuse, New York vegan straight edge scene and, a few months after finishing school, he relocated to that city on Christmas Day, 1993.

He lived there for four months in the same house as Earth Crisis' original guitarist Ben Read.

As a teenager, Ingram became largely involved in the hardcore straight edge scene of Kansas City and for this reason, in 1993, he was invited to join the band xRestrainx as a vocalist.

Around Easter 1994, he came back to Kansas City for a weekend visit and Jes Steineger and Stacy Hilt, whom he knew from before, gave him a tape of an instrumental song to audition for their new band, Breach, as singer.

Even though Ingram had a good relationship with some people from the Syracuse scene, he ended up disillusioned with their militant attitude and, shortly thereafter, returned to Kansas with the vocals and lyrics of "Harvest of Maturity", being accepted to join Breach, which subsequently changed its name to Coalesce.

In 1995, Coalesce released their debut EP 002 through Solid State Records, which became a pioneering and influential work in the mathcore genre.

Through an unstable career with numerous disbandments, the band went on to release three studio albums until 1999.

In order to support his music career, Ingram worked as a wallpaper hanger by trade during the first years of the band.

In 1999, Ingram founded the screenprint company Blue Collar Press, originally selling merchandise to the local bands The Get Up Kids, Appleseed Cast and The Anniversary.

He made this decision following the frustration of most bands he knew, including Coalesce, at the lack and low quality of merchandising.

At the time, Ingram was teaching himself graphic design, while simultaneously working as a singer and independent wallpaper hanger, and after seeing a screen press on eBay, he borrowed $200, his father drove him out to Denver and bought it.

Friends let him plant it on the basement of the Black Lodge Recording studio and he learned to use it.

At the beginning, Ingram handled all production but now acts mainly as the manager.

On July 8, 2001, Ingram joined The Dillinger Escape Plan as vocalist during their performance at the Krazy Fest 4 in Louisville, Kentucky, while they were auditioning for a new singer.

He was scheduled for a second show at the CMJ Music Festival in New York City on September 12, but it was cancelled after the September 11 attacks.

Later, the event was rescheduled in October but the band had already hired Greg Puciato.

In 2002, Blue Collar Press expanded its services and offices with its new division Blue Collar Distro, which manages the artists' merchandise through their own websites and sells distribution models.

In 2005, the company was selling merchandise to bands such as Linkin Park and Dashboard Confessional.

In 2009, Coalesce released their fourth album, Ox.

Ingram has contributed to the artwork and packaging of all the band' studio albums.

Ingram has been featured in most albums by Reggie and the Full Effect, the solo project of former Coalesce drummer James Dewees, with the pseudonyms Hungary Bear and Sean-O-Tronic.

In 2010, Ingram founded the Hardcourt Bike Polo equipment and bicycles manufacturer company Fixcraft.

In 2013, Blue Collar Distro was renamed Merchtable.

Nowadays, it works with Porter Robinson, Neurosis, Hydra Head Records, Marc Maron, DJ Snake, Rufus Wainwright, Yung Gravy, among others artists.

As of 2018, both Blue Collar Press and Merchtable have twenty-five workers in aggregate.