At the northern edge of Joshua Tree National Park, just past the town line that announces your arrival into Twentynine Palms, an unassuming white house nestles amid the wild creosote and mighty boulders. The updated midcentury, built in 1954, serves as a modest creative compound where Todd and Orenda Fink live with their dog, Grimm. Here, in the stillness of the open desert, Todd spends the better part of his days making things.
It’s midday, and Todd — frontman of The Faint — is hosting a casual walkthrough of his High Desert home. He pulls at the handle of a sliding glass door to reveal his music studio. The minimalist, sunlit room houses all the necessary implements: wires, cables, keyboards, sequencers, guitars, drums, drum machines, and recording gear.
Formed in the late 1990s in Fink’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, The Faint continues to record and tour, recently marking the 25th anniversary of their breakthrough indie synth-rock classic, Blank-Wave Arcade. Arriving around the same time as contemporary (and one-time bandmate) Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes, Fink’s band stood apart from Omaha’s emerging music scene with a distinctive dark-synth sound that quickly earned them a reputation as one of the city’s must-see acts.
But music can require months in the studio, years even. Fink finds balance with another creative outlet that has a clear finish line in sight.
Exiting his music room, Fink cuts through a breezeway to the front of the house and gestures toward the garage. Two roll-up doors open to reveal his hatmaking space. Above one of them, in sharp black lettering, the word RECAPITATE stretches over the entrance, flanked by a stencil of a behatted bandit wearing a bandana.
“That’s me,” Fink says, pointing to the shadowy figure.
His creations — whether in music or millinery — share a similar spirit, even if the tools he uses to make them are separated by more than a century. Most of the implements in his garage date to the early 1900s; his recording studio, meanwhile, makes use of more familiar 21st-century sights of glowing monitors and oddly shaped bass guitars. While at work in either space, Fink’s ultimate goal remains the same.
“Writing songs or creating hats — it’s really not that different in my view. I just like to make things and do my best at whatever it is I’m focused on. I’m the type of person that enjoys incremental progress,” Fink says. “I tend to get really good at things if I’ve made the decision to spend my time doing something. First it was skateboarding, then it was music. Now it’s hats. I’ve also started playing pool.” (This explains the alfresco billiards table on the back deck.)
Crown and brim blocks, used for shaping.
The Recapitate logo features a graphic silhouette of Todd Fink.
Recapitate HQ is impressively organized, filled with ribbons of thread, stacks of fabric, and all manner of hatmaking materials. Century-old hat blocks sourced on eBay line one wall, while finished hats decorate the others — pieces he’ll either keep or sell. Fink takes custom orders through the Recapitate website and in person during the annual Hwy 62 Open Studio Art Tours event every October. He also sells them at Mojave Flea Trading Post in Yucca Valley.
Each order takes about a month to complete, and Fink does it all by hand: measuring, trimming, steaming, shaping, buffing, burning, and, eventually, finishing with custom adornments.
“Making music is a great way to connect with people. It can help people feel better about themselves. I think it’s the same with hatmaking,” Fink muses. “The people who like the music I make — we’re the same type of person. We like the same things. I’ve prioritized my time to make things for people — whether it’s music, or the right hat. It’s that connection with people that motivates me to try new things.”
Fink’s recording studio features a trove of musical instruments and production gear, all essential to crafting The Faint’s electroclash sound.
His oldest keyboard, a ’90s relic, is scrawled with notes and lyrics from The Faint’s earliest shows.
He’s entirely self-taught in all his endeavors.
In 2007, Fink decided to dabble in headwear after an impromptu dip in a pool led to a sartorial epiphany. As the story goes, he was on tour when he accidentally made his own hat better. “We were at a hotel rooftop with a pool, and I jumped in with all of my clothes on,” he recalls. “The next day, my hat had turned into a way cooler hat. That’s when I realized that water changes them. It gives them a better shape.”
This realization, in retrospect, became the impetus for Recapitate, which he launched in 2017, after nearly a decade of learning and refining his craft.
Fink attributes his commitment to developing specific skillsets to his years spent as a skateboarder on the verge of going pro. “I’ve spent a lot of time in my life on a skateboard. It’s where I found my confidence,” he says. “I will get good at anything I decide to spend my time doing. I designed my own skateboard shape, I won all the right contests. Then I had to have surgery for an injury, and that ended that.”
He drafted a business plan and borrowed money from his father to fund his next pursuit — music. As The Faint gained recognition, he paid his dad back early.
For now, making songs and designing hats consume his creative time.
As word spreads about Fink’s attention to detail, his work methods, and especially his signature pre-cowboy, less rigid, more loosely shaped styles, his hats have become increasingly coveted. He claims he doesn’t do any self-promotion, yet his proximity to L.A. has led studios to seek him out for an unannounced HBO project and Kevin Costner’s latest Western, the four-part Horizon: An American Saga.
The Recapitate hat wall at Mojave Flea Trading Post in Yucca Valley.
A variety of tools for shaping, stretching, and refining details.
Used in traditional hatmaking, this vintage conformateur ensures a snug, comfortable fit tailored to each wearer.
“I don’t actually try to get new clients. I prefer to let them find me,” Fink says. “It seems to be working out. I’m a musician first. I know I could get more sales if I advertised more, and that’s a good problem to have. But the people who really want my hats are finding me at the right rate, and I like to make them myself instead of hiring a partner. It takes about four weeks for me to turn around a design, and that seems to work even during my busiest months.”
His wall of hats takes center stage at Yucca Valley’s Mojave Flea Trading Post, but Fink admits it’s more of a “showroom” designed to entice potential customers back to his home workshop, where he can spend more time reviewing styles and offering personal fittings. Whether it’s custom-made or ready-to-wear, once Fink gets going, he’ll regale clients with all the details that make a hat sit just right. He’ll mention the occipital bone at the base of the skull and how that helps determine the best angle to wear a hat. He’ll discuss brim proportions, carefully considering a customer’s face shape and shoulder width.
“Working with somebody directly and having them put on a hat they custom-ordered for the first time, they seem empowered and confident,” Fink says, drawing another connection between his two pursuits. “That’s a great thing to see when it happens — when a person suddenly looks like they’ve become the person they’ve always wanted to be. I’ve seen it from the stage, too. It’s always great to be part of the reason someone else feels good about themselves.”
At his home studio in the High Desert, Fink shapes, sculpts, and singes his way through the hatmaking process.
Each piece takes about four weeks to create.
“It’s great to be part of the reason someone else feels good about themselves.”
As the house tour comes to an end, Fink settles into a bench in his yard and points toward the nearby mountains. He likes to wake up and wander there most mornings for a hike before going about his day, he mentions. “When we sold our house in Omaha, we’d thought about moving to Los Angeles, but we felt trapped by the traffic. Out here, we have access to Big Bear, the ocean, and our friends in L.A. — when we’re in the mood. Mostly, we can just live out here in our own spacious paradise and enjoy the vast openness of the desert. It’s just better for us than the chaos of a city.”
As he kicks back in the sun, the brim of his own hat casts a crisp band of shade across his eyes — indicative of the undeniable utility of well-made headwear in the desert.
Does everyone need a hat?
Without hesitation, Todd Fink replies firmly, “Yes.”
Why?
“Well, because everyone I’ve ever met has a head.”
