Wheelchair Sports Camp began as a solo project for rapper/producer Kalyn Heffernan who started releasing music under that moniker around 2009. The project has always benefited from Heffernan’s creative and energetic wordplay honed from growing up as a vocalist and imitating her favorite artists of that time. Since 2009 Wheelchair Sports Camp has become a fixture in Denver underground music but a project that has a footprint well beyond Denver due to fortunate tour and opening slot opportunities and some national press support. After all Heffernan isn’t just a rapper and producer, she’s an activist for disabled communities and really anyone experiencing persecution and prejudice. Her participating in the occupation of then Colorado Cory Gardener in 2017 garnered her pieces in various publications including a feature on Democracy Now! including an interview with legendary investigative journalist Amy Goodman. Which is part of the point of the art, to draw attention to everyday people’s struggles as a means of addressing injustice.
Listen to any Wheelchair Sports Camp track and you will hear a richness and variety of sonics that set the band apart from many other hip-hop projects. Longtime collaborator Jerod Sarlo aka Qknox brings a deep underground electronic dance sensibility informed by classic hip-hop production to various recordings. Other members of the live and recording band include or have included Gregg Ziemba on drums, Joshua Trinidad on trumpet, Wesley Watkins on synth, Tom Hagerman and Jeanie Schroder of DeVotchKa on accordion/strings and tuba respectively, experimental hip-hop luminaries RAREBYRD$, Abi McGaha Miller on sax and vocals and more recently Jello Biafra, Mark Bliesner aka Radio Pete, Michelle Rocquet and Kimya Dawson. A debut album was released in 2016 called No Big Deal and that era of the band was very avant-garde jazz forward in the sounds but it also showcased Heffernan’s development as a lyrics offering deep personal lyrics and incisive social commentary. Between then and now the COVID-19 pandemic happened and Wheelchair Sports Camp did a soundtrack to a theatre production of Alice in Wonderland in 2021 as well as music for an installation at Meow Wolf (Wheelchair Space Kitchen, 2025) and various singles.
In 2026 the second full length oh imperfecta was released via Alternative Tentacles. The imprint is more known for punk but anyone familiar with the label’s roster knows it’s the home of weird punks in general and other artists outside the mainstream. The new Wheelchair Sports Camp album feels somehow both stripped down and maximal in impact. The songwriting feels incredibly focused and not just for this band. The songs address the instability and peril of the world we’re living through at the moment and understandable emotional reactions to all of that when your own life could use with some maintenance to put in motion to where you want it to be but still having to find the daily strength to get through to those better moments. The song “Dead” is a delightfully pointed song about how aspects of our warped culture deems certain people disposable as a drag on society and how that designation can be applied to anyone when the powerful want it to. It’s a hip-hop album with that sensibility and production guiding its style and sound but its spirit is rebellious and very punk in attitude.
Listen to our interview with Kalyn Heffernan and Gregg Ziemba on Bandcamp and follow Wheelchair Sports Camp at the links below.
Wheelchair Sports Camp on Instagram
Wheelchair Sports Camp on Facebook
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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