Arthur Ace Enders is best known as the frontman of the popular emo/punk band the Early November, though he also distinguished himself as a songwriter, producer, and solo artist by tackling several concurrent projects. Born in Hammonton, NJ, in 1982, Enders formed the Early November in 1999. On the strength of a solid demo and a strong local following, they signed a deal with the influential independent label Drive-Thru Records in 2003. While the Early November's debut EP, For All of This, emphasized the group's harder-edged material, the band displayed a greater musical sophistication on their first full-length, 2003's The Room's Too Cold, which was co-produced by Enders and dominated by his songwriting.

As the Early November blocked out plans for their next album, Enders opted to record and release an album with an acoustic-oriented solo project he called I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody's Business; Enders wrote the songs, played most of the instruments, and produced the sessions with Chris Badami, his studio collaborator on The Room's Too Cold. The album was released in the fall of 2004, and a split EP featuring the Early November and I Am the Avalanche appeared in 2005. It wasn't until the summer of 2006, however, that the Early November finally released their second album. The Mother, the Mechanic, and the Path was a sprawling and wildly ambitious three-CD set whose final disc took the form of an audio narrative, with the songs interspersed with dialogue between a young man and his therapist.

By many accounts, the Early November were often at odds during the recording of The Mother, the Mechanic, and the Path and Enders battled with Drive-Thru to release the album as a low-priced triple-disc set. Following an extensive tour with the Rocket Summer and Mêlée, the group posted a statement on its website in March 2007 declaring that it was going on "indefinite hiatus." Enders responded by working on a new solo project called Arthur Enders and a Million Different People, whose debut album, The Secret Wars, was offered as a free download via the website for Fuse TV. The project's follow-up effort, When I Hit the Ground, arrived in early 2009. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi