Photos by Simone Lueck
Sean Tillmann, AKA Har Mar Superstar at day job as Postal worker
We’re still a week out from the start of the busy holiday delivery season, but at least one neighborhood’s mailman has already achieved celebrity status. As the lid on a Northeast Minneapolis mailbox thwaps shut and the mailman merrily walks away, an elementary school distance learner scrambles through the front door and into the overcast November morning.
“Hey!” the kid yelps. “It’s HAR MAR SUPERSTAR!”
Good eye, kid. On this autumn Wednesday, musician and performer Har Mar Superstar, né Sean Tillmann, isn’t on the road touring or in rehearsal. He’s out delivering the mail—outfitted head to toe in official U.S. Postal Service–issued flannel blues. This is his fifth week as a city carrier assistant, or CCA, earning $17-something an hour plus overtime and clocking around 25,000 steps a day. “These boots are made by a company called Thorogood,” he says about the sensible black clunkers protecting his hooves. “I researched ‘mail carrier shoes,’ and these are Thorogood’s mail carrier model.”
He swears he’s not doing this for a movie role or because he’s writing some new USPS concept album. Nope, he was simply at the post office mailing some vinyl one day and decided, spur of the moment, to apply for a gig. He was hired almost immediately, and, poof, Har Mar Superstar became a regular working man. Granted, on this day, with a writer, a photographer, and a USPS PR agent in tow, he’s probably the only mailman in the city delivering mail with an entourage. After all, he’s still a literal rock star.
“Hold on,” he says as he goes through his satchel of letters before starting a new split—mailman terminology for one of the slices of city blocks his route is divided into. “I have to finger through these here.” He glances up and his eyes twinkle. “I did not pick the terminology.”
As I trail him across a yard and through a gap in a hedge row, he muses that he hasn’t worked a day job for more than 20 years. Back then he was a proofreader for the Minnesota Department of Education in Roseville across the street from, well, Har Mar Mall.
“I’ve definitely considered quitting music and getting a real job,” he says. “So many times.”
He never felt he could do both. When he was living in L.A. there was a stigma about straight work. His manager wouldn’t even let him clerk at 7-Eleven for fear of how it might look when somebody inevitably recognized him. But he thinks COVID is changing all that. Plus, he joins pretty good company as artist/mailman, with John Prine and Charles Bukowski having laced up the Thorogoods before him. And the benefits are nice.
“I mean, I’m really excited to have pension and benefits and all that kind of stuff,” he says.
Speaking of that, at 43, he’s a more mature, grown-up superstar. He owns a home and has a rescue terrier with his schoolteacher fiancée, Laura Hauser. Oh, and he quit drinking about a year ago.
“There’s a lot of gratitude that comes with the not drinking,” he says. “You’re just like, ‘I like to help people.’”
And don’t worry, he says he’s not giving up music. He even has an album coming out next month.
“It’s a weird salvation album,” he says. “Melancholy, piano ballad–based. I’m excited to release it in the middle of winter.”
But for now, he can’t believe how much faster he’s gotten at slinging mail, having shaved more than an hour from this route just via organization and learned shortcuts.
“The post office is like the military for slackers,” he says. “You punch in at 0700 hours, and then you’re on tour.” He pauses. Then, an epiphany: “That is what they call it. I’m on tour right now!”
He believes there’s something romantic about his new gig. He’s the only person some people see all day, performing a service everybody relies on in, you know, rain, snow, or shine. And he’s really looking forward to the summer outfits, noting that he’s “psyched for the short shorts and the pith helmet.”
In the meantime, he relishes the way the mail drains from his truck in the course of a workday.
“The best thing about this job is just watching your progress,” he says. “Seeing it all go away.”
This article originally appeared in the January issue.
