Photo credit: J. Adrian Wylie
Fire Station 5 stands just off Plymouth Rd. on Ann Arbor’s North Campus, its iconic red trucks visible through wide bay doors. On the surrounding lawns, a small colony of chonky woodchucks have made their home, scurrying between burrows as firefighters go about their routines.
“They are the unofficial mascots of the station,” says firefighter Pat Deneau with a huge mustached grin. “There’s roughly a dozen running around at any given point in time.”
Deneau, who works regular twenty-four hour shifts, finds comfort in his woodchuck friends. “On a day where things aren’t going our way, our station mascots are still out there doing their thing—unbothered by circumstances outside of their control.”
Deneau approaches his job as a firefighter with that same compassionate spirit. Ann Arbor Fire Chief Mike Kennedy says he “brings a level of positivity and caring in delivering service to our community.
“Generally, being a firefighter is a pretty cool job,” Kennedy continues. “However, being in a rock band is a close second.” Deneau is the singer, songwriter, guitarist, and frontperson for The City Lines, which Detroit Public Radio host Jeff Milo once described as a contender for “the most endearing band in Michigan … charismatic in an unapologetically kind and wholesome and down-to-earth sort of way.”
If you catch a City Lines show (they’re regulars at the Blind Pig and Ziggy’s) you might find yourself dancing alongside Deneau’s firefighting colleagues. AAFD’s social media channels recently shared the single “Do It All,” a song about being a firefighter and a father that’s become a runaway hit within the department. “It’s such a familiar tale,” says Deneau.
Though his roots may not be immediately visible from his appearance, Deneau is a proud tribal member of the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians based out of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. His Indigenous heritage comes from his mother, who grew up in the Soo.
“My mom’s parents really tried to distance themselves from Native identity in the 1950s and 60s because being of Native heritage was not very popular in the country,” Deneau explains. “Additionally, our tribe was not federally recognized until the late 70s, which meant there weren’t federal resources, like education and health care support, that were accessible to the tribe.”
Deneau is grateful to his mom for making sure he and his sister knew they came from a Native bloodline. “Though she left when she went away to college and didn’t go back, she made sure we went there to spend time with her father on Sugar Island.”
At the age of ten, Deneau was gifted the name “Many Hearts” in a special naming ceremony by his paternal Grandpa Al, who retired after working as a photographer and cameraperson for Channel 7 in Detroit for twenty-five years, and opened up a bait shop in Petoskey.
Grandpa Al, a lifelong inspiration for Deneau, was a volunteer firefighter as an arson investigation photographer. Deneau’s father took on more typical firefighting duties.
“They volunteered together, and when I wasn’t at school, I wanted to be at that fire station,” he says with his trademark grin. “My grandpa could tell that I was a compassionate kid and that I liked helping people, and I think that’s where ‘Many Hearts’ came from.”
Deneau says he never once thought about being a doctor, a lawyer, or an astronaut, even as a child. “It was always photography, firefighting, and music for me.”
Photography was also Grandpa Al’s influence. Deneau pursued a photography degree at Wayne State University, where he met his wife Crista in 2008. The Deneaus began to spread roots in Ann Arbor ten years later, when Crista accepted a job as a curriculum coordinator at U-M. The couple are now parents to a bright-eyed six-year-old named Isla with an obsession for K-Pop Demon Hunters. Isla recently had a Native naming ceremony of her own. Her beloved Native name, “Purple Starburst Sky,” was inspired by the purple horizon on the drive to Mott’s Children’s Hospital the morning she was born.
Deneau, who has seen all of Ann Arbor through the windshield of a fire truck, says, “I have an incredibly strong connection to the city and the people who live here.”
When he started high school, Deneau’s family moved from Petoskey to Northville for more employment opportunities for his dad, a tradesperson, and his mom, who worked in retail. He came to nearby Ann Arbor for concerts and events downtown. He describes the city as having a vibrant, magnetic energy. “It’s a music town,” he says with a chuckle. “You can’t say that about Livonia, you know?”
For Deneau, writing and playing music has been a way to process questions about his Native heritage—and rage, and fear. Driving on the freeway several years ago, he heard a CBC radio story about the residential school system in Canada, where Indigenous children were torn from their families and sent to be converted to Catholicism. “They were cutting off their hair and they wouldn’t let them speak their Indigenous language,” said Deneau, “and they were finding these mass graves.” He was overcome with emotion and needed to pull over. “These kids. They never went back home.”
Deneau started asking hard questions that opened up intense dialogue in his family. He learned there was a similar boarding school in Harbor Springs, Michigan, close to his hometown of Petoskey. This experience resulted in his writing of the powerful song “Erased,” which is featured on The City Lines 2023 sophomore album, Analog Memories. Defiant lyrics—“They tried to put a culture in the ground / And now they say move on / But the wound’s too deep / Only truth can heal / If truth we speak / We won’t be erased”—overlay a punk-rock protest tempo.
The single “Blood and Smoke” from the band’s latest album, Prescribed Fires—released in September and co-written by bandmate Bob Zammit—is a companion to “Erased.” Deneau says the first song was about grief and anger. “In ‘Blood and Smoke,’ I move forward with more understanding about my identity,” he says. “It’s about the family spirits guiding me along the way.”