Two girls, one show — Aly Tadros and Alyse Black make great musical pair
October 18, 2009
Alyse Black and Aly Tadros
Howlers Coyote Café
Oct. 19
9 p.m.
What’s better than one… Alyse Black and Aly Tadros
Howlers Coyote Café
Oct. 19
9 p.m.
What’s better than one up-and-coming singer-songwriter? Two singer-songwriters? If you’ve heard Alyse Black and Aly Tadros, you’d have to agree.
Just such a treat will be at the Howlers Coyote Café tonight when Black and Tadros perform music from their new albums, respectively Tadros’ debut, “Things Worth Keeping” and Black’s sophomore album, “Hold On To This.”
Tadros is pleased with her debut album.
“I’m really happy with what ended up happening. A lot of the songs really came to life with the musicians who worked on it,” she said. “I don’t have to burn homemade CDs and write my name on them with Sharpie anymore.”
The title of “Things Worth Keeping” came from a conversation with a friend — to whom the album is dedicated — about having too much stuff laying around and what was worth holding on to.
“A lot of songs on the album were the process of letting go of certain things,” she said.
Black is also excited about her sophomore release.
“I’m insanely proud of it,” Black said. “It was produced by Ryan Hadlock. He’s worked with The Foo Fighters and The Strokes, so that’s a cool club for me to be in.”
“Hold On To This” takes its name from the last track, of which Black said, “I can’t stop falling in love with that song. It hits me so hard in its simplicity and its sweetness. It’s not necessarily going to be the radio hit of the album, but it’s the one that’s closest to who I am.”
Black’s album instrumentation includes horns, banjos, ukulele and backup vocals, creating a difficult sound to replicate on tour.
“I try and get it as close as possible within the constraints of touring. Aly [Tadros] will throw down guitar percussion to add some drum action or
play the banjo part on her guitar,” Black said.
Tadros said, “I like to improvise a lot on stage, and Alyse [Black] and I have fun with harmonies. I make cracks quite a bit too; we have a lot of fun with the audiences.” Tadros and Black take turns performing their own compositions but are usually on stage together.
Black described her style as “jazz-influenced singer-songwriter indie pop,” while Tadros is often compared to artists like Tom Waits, Fiona Apple and Rodrigo y Gabriela.
Despite her musical inclination from an early age, Black said she earned “degrees in everything but music. I had studied abroad in Germany and adopted a very pragmatic view. I got it into my head that I had to do something responsible. I totally repressed the musical side of myself.”
She said that eventually, “Something kind of snapped me out of it and made me realize that I was living somebody else’s dream. I wanted to let somebody else have that so that I could do what I needed to do, and I started singing on the streets in Seattle.” She later relocated to Austin, “a hotbed of songwriting,” where she met Tadros last year while performing at a show case called Shut Up and Sing.
Tadros was similarly drawn to music and eventually taught herself guitar and left college to perform full-time. She said, “On the night I wrote my first song, I had a really big final the next day and instead of studying, I wrote this song. I kind of knew instantly that I was going to find a way to do music.”
Tadros said her youth — she just turned 22 — has often worked to her advantage.
“People really just base a lot on work ethic. Being mature, responsible, dependable and young is a great position to be in,” she said.
Both artists spoke warmly of having each other’s support as travel mates, as well as that of a third traveling companion, Tink, a Boston Terrier. Tadros, who has been on the road nonstop since July, said, “The long stretches of drives without shows are boring. The drive from Seattle to Austin was like 26 hours. We could barely speak English by the end of it, we were so exhausted.”
Road weariness aside, she said, “The tour is going great. We’ve really gotten the hang of it, so [the shows] are getting pretty smooth. It’s a lot of fun.”
Tadros’ New Year’s resolution was to play concerts in 20 new states, an ambitious goal considering that her East coast tour was not planned at the time. So far, she said she has played in 17 new states, and Pennsylvania is on the list.
“I’m really excited — I don’t think I’ve ever kept a New Year’s resolution before!” she said.