The Bowery Presents

The Bowery Ballroom upcoming shows

She and Him
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She & Him make music for an eternal springtime, when the temperature is warm enough to go riding with the top (or at least the windows) rolled down and the radio turned up. They occupy an alternate universe where the saddest of songs feel as warm as sun showers; the rain may be coming down, but somewhere nearby, everything looks bright. What began as a fascinating, no-strings attached collaboration evolved into a bona fide, touring band, and She & Him are here to stay. Zooey Deschanel and Matt Ward are as comfortable and complementary a musical pair as Les Paul and Mary Ford.

Deschanel and Ward’s seemingly unlikely pairing—the effervescent actress-singer and the sought-after yet self-effacing guitarist—proved to sound absolutely right. When the Volume One was finished, they didn’t so much announce themselves as simply step up to the mic and start playing. Their choices of band moniker and album titles were deliberate; as Deschanel told the New York Times: “I wanted a name that was very humble, modest and anonymous.” Matt agrees: “We wanted the music to come first, which sort of explains the band name as well as the names of the records. The songs are what we want people to remember.”

Prior to forming She & Him, Deschanel had been writing and secretly stockpiling tunes for years. She agreed to let Ward hear them after the two collaborated on a Richard and Linda Thompson cover for an indie film, The Go-Getter, that she was starring in and Ward was scoring. Like many movie fans, Ward had first heard her sing on screen in the disarmingly affecting Elf and was intrigued. As Deschanel recounts, “I explored the idea of doing my own stuff with other people but hadn’t found anyone who I’d really trusted. Then I met Matt. He was the perfect person, and the only person who shared my taste. We’re almost always coming from the same point of view musically.”

“I had no idea what I was going to hear when I first got her songs,” admits Ward. “I think Volume One surprised a lot of people when they opened up the package and learned that she wrote all these songs. There are a lot of people who write music so that they can take their audience to a dark night of their own soul or to get something really heavy off their chest. I don’t think Zooey looks at music that way, and I think that’s a huge part of where her songwriting is coming from…It’s contagious to be around people like that.”

—Michael Hill
The Chapin Sisters
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The Chapin Sisters, Abigail Chapin, Lily Chapin and Jessica Craven, are three actual sisters who live and play music in Los Angeles. Upon hearing the first notes of one of their shows or recordings, it becomes obvious that the Chapins have the sort of tight, celestial harmony that only sisters can achieve. The Chapin Sisters’ lilting voices, lush arrangements and lovely melodies are wedded to dark lyrical content. Their words are sometimes cheeky, sometime utterly forlorn. Their EP of demos recorded in friends’ basements and garages has been a CDBaby top seller, and the Lake Bottom LP , their full- length debut was released by Plain Recordings in March of 2008.
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