v:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } .r{} table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} ...dulci’s perspective Sunday, May 3, 2009

Well, it was a hell of a weekend, starting on Wednesday, April 29^th, when we played on the LaZoom Bus in Asheville for the third official time. What a great gig! Jennifer and Jim (who own/run the bus biz) are amazingly nice and fantastically entertaining, and the people on the bus went up and down all through the town laughing, learning and enjoying the tour and our music. We met a coupla ladies from Texas and Chicago who invited us for drinks at MoDaddy’s afterward, and, true to Now You See Them fashion, we took them up on it!

Thursday, we played our first show out at Pisgah Brewing Company in Black Mountain. We had no idea where it was, and if you’ve ever been there, you can understand our confusion. From the outside, it looks like an industrial park, full of giant trucks and pavement. It’s a whole different story once you pull around to the back! Loads of people were out enjoying the sunshine of that beautiful spring day while Thunderdrums set up his equipment inside, and someone else fired up the grill. Now you see them played in the back yard, which is lush and green and has a pretty little stream running through it. There weren’t THAT many people there, but there were definitely a few of our favorites: john and barb and ryan, Claire and her gaggle of pretty friends. Rumor had it that we had competition with the Asheville Toursists’ first “Thirsty Thursday.” All in all, it was a great show, and we got to drink awesome beer while playing outside! We really hope to play there again soon, so if you’re in the neighborhood, drop our name into someone’s ear, and, hopefully, they’ll listen!

v:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 .r{} table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Finally Friday rolled around, and we were all set to play at our friends Ana and Claire’s plane crash-themed house party. We knew it was going to be a good one when we were looking for costume ideas at Goodwill and a random woman approached us saying, “I’m sorry, but are you all planning to go to a party tonight where you’re supposed to dress up like something from a plane crash?” We each worked out our costumes: Jason rigged up an oxygen mask looking thing to a wire hanger around his head and dressed as a tourist in a Hawaiian shirt with a camera around his neck. . I was someone who was pulled from some wreckage…either out of water or some trees…I had a white mesh laundry bag as a net over me, strewn with foliage and sea-creature sponges. Shane was a gay, never-nude terrorist. “How would you ever convey that?” you may ask. Well, with style, I guess.

Shane sported extremely short denim shorts and a cutoff white T-shirt with a giant letter T on it which he then wrote “terrorist” underneath in sharpie. He fashioned a turban from some seersucker material found at goodwill, and the rest, as they say, was history.

The party was lots of fun, and there were tons of people there. Ana met us in the driveway with jell-o shots, and Robot Baby’s band (http://www.myspace.com/themysterycult) played amazing music in the garage while an organ (like, a pipe organ) burned in the front yard. Our set went well, and we had a new experience when an adamant female fan approached Shane from behind to unbutton, unzip, and almost unveil his manliest parts! Good thing I talked him into wearing undies with those short shorts! What would they do without a girl in the band?

So now it’s Sunday, and it’s rainy and breezy outside. We’re all tuckered out from our long weekend of fun, and we’re looking forward to the next couple of shows we have lined up. I’m going to try to keep this blog thing going, even though I’m not a huge fan of blogging in general. So why don’t you show up and give me something to talk about?

Check out our upcoming shows at our myspace page.

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well...jewel has popped up on my "music choice" station of the moment entitled "adult alternative." she's singing "foolish games" for jesus while i flip through the MILLION pictures that i've taken and haven't yet loaded on my computer. my computer is an entirely different broken ball of wax, which i won't even get into, and i've just returned from a day of running stupid errands which i hate. jason and i almost always have a fight on those days, and i KNOW i just need to get over it! it's the swirling, overwhelming thoughts which inhabit my everyday subconscious that decide to come screaming out while i'm waiting for the bock centrifuge to extract the water from my hang-up clothes that get me down. like i said, i need to get over it.

the only reason i have a million pictures is because of the million fun things i've gotten to do during the first part of my favorite season, summer!

i tend to be long-winded when i'm feeling expressive, so i'll try to keep this one short.

maybe i'll change the music station first though...the fray. not today.

we played the grey eagle for the first time with josh phillips folk festival! i have no pictures from this night, but i can tell you that it was amazing, and so much fun, and we'd do it all again in a heartbeat!! here's a picture of shane on the couch in the green room at the grey eagle:


there's proof!

THEN

we had friends in from pittsburgh and nyc. they camped in our yard, and we went on a 5 hour tube down the swannanoa! it was so nice to have friends from our old homes at our new home. they all came to our beacon pub show, which would have been VERY sad without our neighbor

and friend,lyndsay wojcik (http://www.myspace.com/lyndsaywojcikband), who lent us her pa and really saved the day, because i had some kind of mutant allergy attack and lost my voice! the show went on though, and, all in all, i'd say we survived it.

THE NEXT WEDNESDAY...

we played the grey eagle again!!! our friend, taylor martin (http://www.myspace.com/taylormartinsmusic) invited shane and i to participate in his cd release party for his new album, engine. it was the second most fun i've ever had play-


ing at the grey eagle, and i can't wait for the third, fourth, and fifth!!! there were amazing musicians there (as you can see), and it sounded beautiful, much thanks to eric wilson, who produced the album brilliantly.

SOMEWHERE ALONG THE LINE...

our good buddy, chris michael (tennessee hollow, taylor martin and friends) decided he would take us up on our invitation to sing and play bass with us! we rehearsed for a total of about 5 hours in some of the hottest sun you've ever felt. it was beautiful. he played with us at bobo, and it was the best kickoff to a birthday weekend i'd ever had!

WAIT! I FORGOT!
we also played the blue plate special in knoxville, tn. holy cow, it was fun. a live, attentive studio
audience made us feel welcome and appreciated. it was a little like being transported in time. people came in off the street to hear what was being piped out to them from inside the quaint, yet impressive knoxville visitors' center. we couldn't help but notice that a lot of great musicians have played there before us...like the mad tea party, and the avett brothers!




WAIT!? BIRTHDAY WEEKEND??

yes! it was my birthday on friday, june 19th, and it kicked ass. we bottled up some brews at the highland brewery, went busking, got to eat some sushi, and then played a surprise show at fred's speakeasy with taylor (martin, duh).

TO WRAP IT ALL UP...

we had a float/badmitton/fire at the treeshack! rachel marie and sabrina (not pictured, sadly) got me a happy penguin firework (pictured)! and it did make me happy!

AND ALL THE WHILE...
we've been getting amazing support from our fans and family in the WNC magazine last band standing contest. if you don't know what it is, check it out!
http://www.wncmagazine.com/lastbandstanding
basically, we have the chance to play the orange peel and possibly bele chere! wishes have been coming true left and right lately, and we'll know friday, june 26 whether or not this is another one! either way, it was an honor just to be nominated....

stay tuned to our myspace, twitter, facebook (we're a group), or reverbnation pages (so many choices!)

http://myspace.com/nowyouseethem
http://reverbnation.com/nowyouseethem
http://twitter.com/nowyouseethem

to see what's going on with your favorite quirk-pop band out of asheville. i'll try to be more frequent with my posts so they don't have to be three years long.

NOW YOU SEE THEM LOVES YOU!
thanks for helping me get it all off my chest.

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it was about a week or two following mine and jason's deportation from australia that we were invited by my friend holly to a unique music venue in denver, colorado, called the oriental. she worked there at the time and was insistent that we go to see her friends, paper bird play a show (myspace.com/paperthebird). holly got us on the list, and she served us free beer, and it was, without a doubt, the show that changed my life.

it had been my goal the entire time we were traveling to get to thailand. i don't know why, but it was. prior to our untimely departure from aus, we were planning the dates for our jaunt to thailand, and we had every intention to buy those tickets as soon as we returned from fiji. fate intervened. with only a book bag full of tshirts and seashells, and about $200 (australian),we were dropped off at LAX. my little sister lived in denver, and it was the cheapest one-way flight we could find with 15 minutes to spare. we swiped the last $400 left on our visa, ran to the gate, and 4 hours later, began our new lives in denver. the first week post-deportation was full of jet lag, shock, an economy suite hotel room (thanks to Tori, my sister), some bottles of vodka, moving tori into her new condo, lots of phone calls, and tons of explaining to a lot of people in our lives. it was pretty crushing,actually, at first. jason and i both lost our instruments. my alvarez guitar was in the case i borrowed from my dad, an orange alvarez hard shell case with orange fur(ish) lining. it was complete with camouflage duct tape adhering backpack straps to it. shane played that guitar at every one of our gigs in australia, because his didn't have a pickup. jason lost the drum he bought when he first learned he would be living with shane in nyc . it went to the cleaning woman who covered our asses at the guest house we were running when we got the boot. she earned it, she deserved it, but still...we mourned it. we had no money and no instruments. all of our clothes were lost, and we spent what little money we had coming to us on getting the belongings we had collected in our year of traveling sent back to the states. to rub some salt in my fresh wounds, i learned that shane was going to thailand. he made it...without us.

the night we saw paper bird, i couldn't stop crying. it was father's day, and they each had their dad come up on stage to sing "you are my sunshine" with them. now you see them used to sing that song in australia. but we were young in the life of our band. we didn't understand the true meaning of what were were getting into; the commitment that comes with being a band in the truest sense of the word. we gave up on each other pretty easily, and we certainly didn't make much effort to understand one another. three is a really tough number, and the fact that we have a 10 year age-difference between us adds a lot of dimension to the ways we communicate.

during that show, i very clearly remember turning to jason with giant tears streaming down my red face and saying, "jason, i hate it. why are they so good? why are they SO good? i swear i'm going to jump off the roof." that's actually pretty mild compared to what i really said.... they had my dream. all to themselves, in front of me, they were living my dream. poetic story telling through songs full of intrigue and three part harmonies that blended seamlessly inspired romance in that room. They were all barefoot, and the girls were gorgeous with voices to make angels think twice. they were so happy. in talking to them afterward, we learned that their presence was genuine, and their music was true. They sold their old clothes with patches sewn onto them at their merch table, and their cd covers were hand-drawn. it was the physical manefestation of what i had been subconsciously dreaming of for a year. it was my wake up call. time to stop dreaming and start living! time to stop taking for granted that, "things would work out" without having to sacrifice to make it so.


the past year of the lives of now you see them came to that same sort of cathartic head when we played the orange peel for the first time on wednesday, july 8, 2009. no matter the outcome of the last band standing competition, by the time we struck the last chord on our last song, we had won. we ALL jumped up and down. there were people in that room who loved us, who supported us, and who wanted us to do well badly enough to be there! to tell their friends to be there! to come on stage and dance with us, and to lend their time and musical integrity to our cause and make us better. we were so happy! and i'm so proud of us. timing is everything, and we've worked our asses off in most aspects you can imagine to get to this point with our music and with our personal relationships. it's not easy when you're always shoved into spaces too small with not enough food or not enough money. it's hard to be vulnerable enough to share a song with people who know you. it's rewarding to feel that you've achieved your top goal, and fun to think of what could possibly happen next and how to make it happen best. it's good for me to know that we can be like paper bird, and we can change the way people feel about life, just by working hard to do what we love.

i feel like a superhero! like the pittsburgh steelers! like i can't WAIT to get to work on our set for bele chere, and to work out what we'll record at echo mountain. we are so fortunate to live the lives that we do, and lucky for us right now, we've been greatly reminded. download our orange peel show! http://www.sendspace.com/file/..sxto2q and some video if you'd like! http://www.wncmagazine.com/..video/last_band_standing_now_..you_see_them even some pictures from our friend jose: http://www.flickr.com/photos/..hozae/sets/72157621157857804/

thank you for being a part of making three peoples' dreams come true. i can't really speak for chris or pete, but i feel pretty safe in saying that they had a kick-ass time! they'll be playing with us when we kick off bele chere on july 24th somewhere around 3:30 on the main stage.














it would be an honor to see you there.

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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Marley and Us

Monday, May 18, 2009

Here I go again, on my own, walking down the only road I’ve ever known. Like a drifter, I was born to walk alone. And I've made up my mind. I ain't wasting no more time.
- Whitesnake




It’s not easy to know where to begin describing the recent lives of Now You See Them. On Thursday, we gained a new friend and a new perspective on our lives when we were visited by a girl named Marley. She came to us from UNC Chapel Hill on recommendation from our friend John Elliston at the Mountain Xpress. She was looking for a street band to do a story on, and she found us! From that moment on, Marley was one of us. She went to our show, she took our pictures with our friends, she interviewed us each separately in our bedroom, she basically took note of everything we did (or didn’t do), and caught most of it on camera. This was weird. As someone who does not enjoy having her picture taken, ever, really, it was difficult to get used to a camera around every corner…especially at times when I felt less than camera-ready. The interviews were pretty funny too, as I had never really thought of the questions she asked or how I might answer them if someone wanted to know. I found myself thinking, “What if she was a hard-hitting journalist just looking for some dirt?” and “What if I just unknowingly sabotaged myself and my band?” Then I re-realized that she is a genuinely cool girl, just looking to do a story on the awesomeness of Asheville and the people who inhabit it. The thought of being involved in something so scandalous was exciting for a moment …if only in my mind. Like I said, she gave us a new perspective on our lives, and I think we were able to provide her with a pretty solid dose of how our band exists in this somewhat-storybook life of ours.

Friday night, we played an outdoor concert at a really well decorated house in West Asheville for a wonderful group of people who didn’t let the rain stop them from dancing to our tunes. Ben Gradison opened up for us with some bluesy harmonica moments (http://www.myspace.com/theoreticalbluesharpboy), a 7-year-old girl got on stage and sang “somewhere over the rainbow”, and we had a taste of some of the best banana pudding pound cake ever! Our favorite local artist Julie Armbruster was there (juliearmbruster.net). She designed our logo, and she’s always really positive about our music and our future. It’s a treat to see Julie at our shows. Ryan, it was an honor and a pleasure, and we hope to play the stone porch series again someday soon!

Saturday was rainy and depressing during the day, so Marley got a lot of shots of us on our computers and drinking coffee. However, Saturday night was a different story all together! It was our friend Zach’s birthday! I feel like a lot of really awesome people were born in May…. Anyway, we went to Hookah Joes, where RBTS Win was playing (http://www.myspace.com/robotswin). Upon entering, I immediately felt like the plainest, lamest Jane ever to enter that smoky room. Everywhere I looked, there were exotic hipster looking boys and girls; tattooed from head to toe and sporting eyeliner like it was their career. The girls were beautiful, and the boys were mysterious, and with RBTS Win and hookah smoke swirling in the background, the scene was rich with pulp and film-noir vibes. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, someone announced that there would be a “fire performance” outside in the parking lot. There sure was! A beautiful man and woman, both with blonde dreadlocks, twirled fire batons and swallowed flames with style right in front of our eyes. Their performance was stunning, beautiful, and an “only-in-Asheville” moment.

Sunday was sleepy and full of more rain (blah), so again, we got a lot of pictures taken in the tree shack while sipping coffee and checking our email…a lot. Finally, we got restless enough to get motivated enough to get up and go! We realized that our good friends, Taylor Martin and friends were playing at the Charlotte Street Pub, and that it would be great for Marley to see more of the musical diversity of Asheville (http://www.myspace.com/taylormartinsmusic). We got there late (of course), but still with enough time to hear a few songs like “Engine” the title track from Taylor’s new cd, and three or four others. Woody Wood was sitting in with them this week, so that made it even more special (http://www.myspace.com/woodywood33). If you’ve never been to the Charlotte Street Pub on a Sunday afternoon, you should make it a priority in the future. It’s like a sweet little secret, where great musicians get together to play, and other great musicians get together to listen. Marley was really impressed, and we were really proud.

Now it’s Monday, and we still have Marley. We’re thinking about keeping her! Shane promised to feed her, and Jason said he’d make sure she’d get her baths, so it seems like a pretty good deal! Having someone around to observe our lives and ask us questions with the intent of listening to the answers has been really refreshing. Marley has reminded me that we do lead an interesting lifestyle, where we’re lucky to be doing what we want to be doing. She’s reminded me that we have great support from people who believe in us, and we have extremely talented friends to provide us with inspiration and good laughs. Marley has also lit a little fire under us to get back into the habit of practicing new songs, and as a result, we’ve got a couple of new ones on the way! Who could’ve known that having a complete stranger plop down in your life could make you appreciate it so much? I guess I do now.


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Monday, May 4, 2009

Now You See Them's first blog ever!

 ...dulci’s perspective Sunday, May 3, 2009

 

Well, it was a hell of a weekend, starting on Wednesday, April 29^th, when we played on the LaZoom Bus in Asheville for the third official time. What a great gig! Jennifer and Jim (who own/run the bus biz) are amazingly nice and fantastically entertaining, and the people on the bus went up and down all through the town laughing, learning and enjoying the tour and our music. We met a coupla ladies from Texas and Chicago who invited us for drinks at MoDaddy’s afterward, and, true to Now You See Them fashion, we took them up on it!

Thursday, we played our first show out at Pisgah Brewing Company in Black Mountain. We had no idea where it was, and if you’ve ever been there, you can understand our confusion. From the outside, it looks like an industrial park, full of giant trucks and pavement. It’s a whole different story once you pull around to the back! Loads of people were out enjoying the sunshine of that beautiful spring day while Thunderdrums set up his equipment inside, and someone else fired up the grill. Now you see them played in the back yard, which is lush and green and has a pretty little stream running through it. There weren’t THAT many people there, but there were definitely a few of our favorites: john and barb and ryan, Claire and her gaggle of pretty friends. Rumor had it that we had competition with the Asheville Toursists’ first “Thirsty Thursday.” All in all, it was a great show, and we got to drink awesome beer while playing outside! We really hope to play there again soon, so if you’re in the neighborhood, drop our name into someone’s ear, and, hopefully, they’ll listen!

 

Finally Friday rolled around, and we were all set to play at our friends Ana and Claire’s plane crash-themed house party. We knew it was going to be a good one when we were looking for costume ideas at Goodwill and a random woman approached us saying, “I’m sorry, but are you all planning to go to a party tonight where you’re supposed to dress up like something from a plane

crash?” We each worked out our costumes: Jason rigged up an oxygen mask looking thing to a wire hanger around his head and dressed as a tourist in a Hawaiian shirt with a camera around his neck. . I was someone who was pulled from some wreckage…either out of water or some trees…I had a white mesh laundry bag as a net over me, strewn with foliage and sea-creature sponges. Shane was a gay, never-nude terrorist. “How would you ever convey that?” you may ask. Well, with style, I guess.

Shane sported extremely short denim shorts and a cutoff white T-shirt with a giant letter T on it which he then wrote “terrorist” underneath in sharpie. He fashioned a turban from some seersucker material found at goodwill, and the rest, as they say, was history.

 

The party was lots of fun, and there were tons of people there. Ana met us in the driveway with jell-o shots, and Robot Baby’s band (http://www.myspace.com/themysterycult) played amazing music in the garage while an organ (like, a pipe organ) burned in the front yard. Our set went well, and we had a new experience when an adamant female fan approached Shane from behind to unbutton, unzip, and almost unveil his manliest parts! Good thing I talked him into wearing undies with those short shorts! What would they do without a girl in the band?

 

So now it’s Sunday, and it’s rainy and breezy outside. We’re all tuckered out from our long weekend of fun, and we’re looking forward to the next couple of shows we have lined up. I’m going to try to keep this blog thing going, even though I’m not a huge fan of blogging in general. So why don’t you show up and give me something to talk about?

Check out our upcoming shows at our myspace page.

Posted by Now You See Them at 3:25 PM 

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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

LEAF weekend!

Monday, May 11 2009

As some of you may know, this past weekend was tough competition for the local music scene in Asheville with LEAF going on in Black Mountain and great music happening in town. For us, Saturday night at the garage with the Baker Family Band and Peace Jones was as packed as we’ve ever seen it….

Baker Family Band opened up with an awesome set that fell upon too few ears, but those who were there were on a mission to enjoy the colorful, whirlwind experience BFB had to offer. I know I did! We had a decent set and a great surprise when our friends Neil and Rochelle from Tennessee showed up! Super-fan Susie was there too, and she always makes the crowd look better! After us, Peace Jones set the tone for a dreamy, jammie, dancey night, and what we caught of it was a great mix of all of those things. They even rapped! We had to bounce early, though, because we knew we’d be up at the crack of dawn (like, 10:00am in nyst land) to head to LEAF!

Ours was the 1:00 opening show on the waterfront, which we won our way into by playing on the back of a pickup truck in 20-degree weather in the Asheville Mardi Gras parade. Did I mention that Shane and Jason were both wearing dresses in that parade? They have great legs, so that could have swayed the judging in our favor….
LEAF was beautiful. As my first festival (ever! I know!), I can say that it was packed with positive energy and happy people, and it ran the musical gamut all the way from folk to old time; Latin, jazz, and blues to indie-quirk-pop (shameless plug).

Everywhere we looked there was another group of people gathered to play their instruments and sing their stories, and moms and dads got to relax and enjoy while tons of kids ran wild and barefoot over the muddy grounds. One of the highlights of my LEAF experience was, without a doubt, David Wilcox, a local singer/songwriter whom I had not had the pleasure of experiencing live until Sunday at LEAF. Seamless story-telling lead into beautiful, insightful songs that lulled everyone in that steamy-hot barn into a blissful, romantic state of mind that made it easy to sing along when the time came to do so. We missed The Space Heaters (which was a bummer), but we’re trying to get them to play with us at Fred’s Speakeasy on the 23rd (of May), so look out for that! Tired, hot, and sunburned, now you see them piled into our little clown car and headed on home to our tree shack in Oteen.

That night, Jason and I attended our friend Grace’s surprise birthday party in West Asheville. Surprise parties are nerve-wracking, aren’t they? We were so scared that we were going to ruin it somehow! When we arrived, Grace’s roomie came out to tell us to move our car down the street, and that she’d be there any minute. So we rushed down the street, found a good spot, and SPRINTED back to the house, the whole time adrenaline pumping through my heart like I was on CSI or something. It all worked out fine though, and Grace was as happy as could be when she came home to a dark house full of friends ready to attack her...really, she was! It was a lot of fun, and an honor to be among some of Asheville’s finest musicians, like the birthday girl herself (from Silver Dagger), Moses Atwood, Paul Johnson (Johnson’s Crossroad), Taylor Martin, Chris Michael (Tennessee Hollow), Ty Gilpin (High Windy), and Amanda and Pete from The Honeycutters! There were plenty more talented musicians there, but pbr and multiple jams prevented me from either meeting them or maintaining their names. Any way you slice it, it was an awesome weekend, full of nature, music, friends, and new experiences.



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In the beginning the name Now You See Them was the inside joke of a band that never intended to be a band. As in “Now you see them, now you don’t.” As in, they rarely played in the same town twice. The irony is, these days Now You See Them is oft-seen on Asheville’s streets and increasingly in its clubs.

Despite the tentative name, this band claims to be in it for the long haul. “Our goal in Asheville was to make a home base,” says multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Shane Conerty. The trio, including guitarist/vocalist Dulci and percussionist Jason Mencer, has accomplished that in the past year—enough so that their dream of making a living as a band (albeit a meager one: “When we shop it’s sale meat,” Mencer jokes) has become a reality. There’s no turning back, Mercer insists. “I could go back to video production,” he muses (that was the drummer’s previous field), “but this is too much fun.” Mencer adds, “Asheville is fantastic because [busking] pays pretty well and the shows are starting to pay.”

NYST, regularly on the Pack Square sidewalk, is foremost a street act. “We can transplant the street show into a bar setting,” Conerty explains. “What you see on the street is what you see in the bar.” A lot of that flexibility comes from the group’s acoustic setup. Conerty plays guitar and ukulele, Dulci plays guitar and melodica, Mencer plays a drum kit fashioned from a djembe and a tambourine. Necessity is the mother of invention, and from low-fi instrumentation sprung NYST’s folk-pop sound.

“I don’t think we’ll be changing anything soon,” Mencer admits. “I wouldn’t play a kit; Shane wouldn’t play an electric guitar. We’re not afraid to grow with instruments, but we drive a Volkswagen Cabrio.” Like a clown car stunt, the three pack themselves and their gear into the diminutive vehicle. “If we wanted a fiddle,” Mencer quips, “it wouldn’t fit.”

But NYST is used to making due. The three musicians (who all grew up within 30 minutes of each other in Pennsylvania but didn’t meet until later) came together by chance in New York City. Dulci was just out of college pursuing a career in musical theater, Conerty was just out of high school and Mencer hoped to work in video production. They pooled their savings for a move to Hawaii, but dead-end jobs and tatty digs soon had them searching for cheap plane tickets to anywhere. Turned out $300 each got them as far as Australia.

While living down under, NYST busked and played clubs sporadically. Mencer and Dulci ran a bed and breakfast in Melbourne, making occasional international jaunts for the purposes of renewing their visas. It was one of those trips that raised red flags with immigrations officers: The musicians found themselves unceremoniously kicked out of the country. “At the time, it was pretty bad,” remembers Conerty, who was detained in a minimum-security prison and deported a few months after his friends. “But we wouldn’t be here otherwise. The day I got deported was the day Jason and Dulci signed their lease in Asheville.”

Finding himself at loose ends, Conerty joined his friends in N.C. and the three decided to make a serious go of the band—but it wasn’t a completely arbitrary decision. “Everywhere we traveled, people said, ‘Your music belongs in Asheville,’” Mencer recalls. That, and the trio all seem to share (along with a car and a one-bedroom rental) a belief that “All of it happens for a reason” (says Conerty), “We’ve had ridiculous obstacles but the end result is when we get back together, we’re stronger” (says Dulci), and—as Mencer puts it—“I go with the flow.”

If the NYST backstory seems like a Wes Anderson-directed film, their quirky, subversive pop would make a suitable soundtrack. Themes touch on travel and social commentary, but always with a darkly humorous spin belied by bubbly harmonies and pleasantly bombastic rhythms. There’s a sense that (though the musicians claim to get sick of each other) this 24/7 dedication to cultivating the band is paying off. NYST’s members finish each other’s sentences, balance each other’s musical aesthetics and seamlessly blend their singular talents to build a whole larger than the sum of its parts.

Now, if the universe that threw them together would just deliver enough studio time to record a demo and a van to carry them around the eastern seaboard ... all things considered, that actually seems pretty likely.

who: Now You See Them
what: Subversive indie-pop
where: Root Bar (Wednesday, April 22, 9 p.m., free. 299-7597); Town Pump (Saturday, April 25, 9 p.m., $3. 669-4808); Mo Daddy’s with Brad Dogget (Sunday, April 26, 9 p.m., $5. 258-1550)

We were on Local Edge Radio with Blake and Lesley at AM 880 "The Revolution".

http://www.880therevolution.com/cc-common/podcast/single_podcast.html?podcast=localEdgeRadio.xml

To take a listen just follow the link, scroll down to March 13, 2009 Hour 1, and either download or stream the show...we're on towards the end so don't give up!

Enjoy!

check it out holmes.

http://www.mountainx.com/ae/2009/pat_allis_weekly_winners44

we're pumped!

SoundTrack: Ready for their close-up

Now You See Them, a quirk-pop trio often seen on Asheville’s
street corners, manages to always look as though they’re in the middle
of a video. A cool video from the short-lived-yet-golden-age of MTV:
One in which they stand on a ratty piece of Oriental carpet and play
their hearts out in real time while scenes from the street and farmer’s
market and smoky hipster club flash by in fast-motion.


In reality, the band is pretty low-tech. They play acoustic
instruments (Shane Conerty on vocals, guitar and ukulele; Jason Mencer
on a makeshift drum kit consisting of a djembe and tambourine played
with brushes; Dulci on vocals, guitar and melodica) that can
be amped but produce more or less the same sounds in the great outdoors
as within the confines of a club. And Now You See Them sounds pretty
much the same in either location, which is to say, wherever they go,
they sound like themselves.

They also sound a little bit like the Moldy Peaches (albeit an
upbeat, Wellbutrin-bolstered version). And the comparisons keep coming:
Intended or not, Now You See Them is aligned with current
indie-darlings Ingrid Michaelson and Colbie Caillat (which means
they’re tapped into trends) as well as ‘80s post-New Wave alternative
groups (they bust out a savvy cover of the Violent Femmes “American
Music").

They’re cute and offbeat; their lyrics (both covers and
originals) dexterously balance between self-depreciation and humor.
At a recent Fred’s Speakeasy show, Conerty announced to the crowd,
“We’ve got a lot of stuff to play so we’ll just get right to it.”
Getting right to it involves a lot of flinging of Conerty’s red mane, a
lot of jumping, and a lot of trading vocal duties. The Now You See Them
style—and yes, they’ve developed a signature style—is characterized by
contagious zeal as much as by Conerty’s red guitar, Dulci’s miniskirts
and Mencer’s apt Roger Miller tribute ("King of the Road"). The latter,
by the way, transformed the PBR-sipping, chain-smoking Fred’s crowd
from noncommittal observers to candid enthusiasts.

Outside, it’s easier to hear how Conerty and Dulci harmonize (he
tends to take the high parts); indoors Conerty leaps into falsetto to
catapult his voice over the hum of the crowd. Inside, it’s clear that
Now You See Them is a seasoned act dedicated to careful arrangements
and complex time signatures, key and even instrument changes (their
hyper-paced, well-constructed original song, “Leona,” has Conerty
trading guitar for uke mid-stream). But that talent is tempered with
wit (cheeky original, “It Could Be Worse,” offers up the sage advice
that “There’s somebody who’s got it worse than you ‘cause you could be
dead. Or stupid.").

Indoors or out, they look like they’re just jamming in
their collective basement (in an arty ‘80s music video sort of way, of
course), but Now You See Them is as serious about their musicianship as
they are about having a good time.

Catch Now You See Them at the Garage at Biltmore on Thursday, Oct. 9
(10 p.m., $5, 545-4841) and at Fred’s Speakeasy on Friday, Oct. 17
(10:30 p.m., $3, 281-0920). For more info, go to http://www.nystonline.com.