OurStage

“Focus on a recording project. It's amazing how the littlest thing you do in your basement will get out there.”

“Mine your own uniqueness. That's the best thing you can offer the world: what's inside of you.”

About DeVotchKa:

A woman sets aside an upright bass to pick up a copper tuba adorned with glowing red lights. She left a traveling Civil War recreationist band to find a home here.

The drummer stands up behind his kit and lifts a trumpet to his mouth. Raised by Lithuanian polka musicians, he skipped a treatment center in Mexico to right himself in the study of mariachi horns. Here he exorcises demons of a punk past, and dreams ahead to Mexico.

A slight, black-suited man stands beside an accordion waiting to be played. He cradles a violin called ‘Juan Pablo’. In too many cities after too many shows, this beautiful instrument sits unattended, as its owner starts drunken fights with friends and fans alike.

The grandchild of an arranged marriage between a Sicilian and Gypsy, the singer holds an electric guitar in one hand, and with the other, draws invisible lines in the air with pinched fingers, manipulating a home-made theremin’s ghostly call. From busing tables to pay for an infested apartment above the Bucket o’ Suds on Chicago’s Cicero Street a decade ago, to crisscrossing America with three classically trained musicians, he has been developing and refining the sound of DeVotchKa.

As DeVotchKa, Jeannie Schroder, Shawn King, Tom Hagerman and Nick Utra have quietly become one of the most celebrated bands making music today. The sound is a disparate yet articulate union of Eastern European, Southwestern, South American, and American roots music, both punk and folk. This music, performed at virtuosic degree and teeming with intangibles, is unique enough to rightly be called ‘special'.

Related Links: http://www.devotchka.net