Hello. We are Hope Sarah Wells and Richard Humbach, or the “Wellbachs.” Sarah is a Van Wert native and Crestview graduate, while her husband Rich hails from Warren, MI, a suburb of Detroit. Our joy in life is creating things, so with that in mind we’ve opened the Bachwell in downtown Van Wert.

The Bachwell building.
We’ve taken over the charming old Anderson Architects Building, which was at one time Showalter’s Sporting Goods, which at one time was Brown’s Pool Hall, which at one time in the late 1800’s was built as two buildings, one with a storefront on Court Street and one with a storefront on Washington. (If you have more information about our building, please share it!) We renovated the west half to become a dance studio and music academy, which opened on September 13, 2014.

The Wellbachs.
Sarah Hope Wells was born and raised in Van Wert County. She studied piano with Ms. Cathy Steffan for eleven years, dance with Ms. Jeanine Tressler Howell at Van Wert Academy of Dance for seven years, and voice with Ms. Danille Hancock through high school. After graduating from Crestview, Sarah attended Otterbein College, where she majored in Music and English, and minored in Dance. After graduating from Otterbein, she moved to New York City to study acting as well as dance and voice at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, where her teachers included working television and film actors, stage actors, former underwear models, and an original member of the Broadway cast of A Chorus Line. She finished her certificate in Acting at the Los Angeles campus of AMDA. Since that time, she has performed as an actor, dancer, and singer in stage shows and films; she has taught music (including a year at Crestview Elementary), dance, private piano and voice, high school math, and English in Los Angeles, Detroit, and Van Wert. Her gift in teaching is to understand where the student is coming from so she can help him straighten out where he needs to go.

Richard Humbach graduated with a degree in English from Detroit’s Wayne State University, after having spent a year at Sacred Heart Major Seminary. He then went back to school, studying literature and culture in yet another language (Spanish) in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. After working for a time in Detroit in the service industry, he returned one more time to Wayne State for a degree in Computer Science. His first job afterwards was with Ford Credit in the Ford College Graduate program, but he soon left Detroit to roll west and follow the sun to Los Angeles. There he worked a number of years as a quality assurance and software engineer for internet services companies, where he discovered that his true passion was not in computers per se but in using computers to create art. A major devotee of electronic music, he’s spent the last several years honing his skills as a DJ and producer, learning the ins-and-outs of PAs, live sound, digital audio workstations, consoles, mixers, synthesizers, and the like. In the summer of 2014, he completed the core and advanced programs, with honors, at the Recording Workshop (RECW), a music recording and audio production school in Chillicothe, OH. Most recently he’s taken several online classes at Point Blank Music School and completed their Mixing/Mastering award in London during the spring of 2016. He is devoted to using technology as a means of democratizing art and creativity in general.

We are currently living in Denver, Colorado, in order to be open to more opportunities in the performing arts and in the electronic music industry.  They continue to be part of the Van Wert community during the summer.

Real Human Robot
We produce left-field techno under the moniker Real Human Robot. We’d love for you to give us a listen on Soundcloud, check out a mix on Mixcloud.

Palanese Summer
We produce trance under the moniker Palanese Summer. Rich does a monthly Mixcloud show that you will love if you love trance, psy-trance, tech-trance, vocal trance, or just good, really well-put-together sets.