DeVotchKa

On stage sit a sousaphone, accordion, piano, violin, a bouzouki, an upright bass, percussion, a trumpet, drums, and a theremin.

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’ (which has graced songs on a Mercury Rev album called All is Dream). 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 busking 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, these four musicians have quietly become one of the most celebrated bands making music today. A disparate, yet articulate union of Eastern European, Southwestern, South American, and American roots music, both punk and folk. It is music unique enough, performed at virtuosic degree, and teeming with enough intangibles, to rightly be called ‘special.’

Behind three records (SuperMelodrama, 2000, Una Volta 2003, How it ends 2004), DeVotchKa began its touring life as a house band for a North American touring Burlesque troupe. Since then, DeVotchKa has traversed the continent with a wide range of like-minded musical peers including Belle & Sebastian, M.Ward, Calexico, 16 Horsepower, Los Lobos, Jim White, and the Dresden Dolls.

The release of How it ends introduced the country to what a burgeoning national audience had been following for four years. A staggeringly good record from far out of left field, How it ends met with nearly universal acclaim (see attached quotesheet), the exposure turned the band into a growing underground phenomenon. Nationwide sold out shows followed as the band continued to convert with their soaring and beautiful live road show.

The Curse Your Little Heart EP showcases the band’s versatility, reinterpreting tracks by the Velvet Underground, Frank Sinatra, Siousxie and the Banshees, and others, in addition to taking on one of their own older songs. Could the band itself even have predicted what would transpire of the Arcade Fire’s Win Butler’s suggestion to the band that they take on ‘Last Beat of My Heart?’ The end result is the center-piece of the EP, a grand and soaring take on the song; a testament to the band’s true unique ability to transform nearly anything via a sound only DeVotchKa can create, and perhaps a look at the epic nature of where the band’s own recordings may move in the future.

With Curse Your Little Heart, and the band’s score for the highly anticipated Sundance Festival darling “Little Miss Sunshine’ to meet audiences this summer, DeVotchKa expects a busy end to 2007.

DeVotchKa is:
Nick Urata - vocals, theremin, guitars, piano, trumpet;
Tom Hagerman - violin, accordion, piano;
Shawn King - drums, percussion, trumpet;
Jeannie Schroder - sousaphone, upright bass, vocals