The all-female trio featuring musicians and songwriters from different regional projects — Olivia Vargas, Marley Kaye and Audrey Pearson — play The Stray. The back story at Local Spins.
‘We Want to See Where This Takes Us’: The Temperances make their live-show debut in GR tonight. (Photo/Isabel Elise)
SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO
Support our coverage of
West Michigan's music scene
When The Temperances rehearse, they’re usually seated on the floor of a studio apartment in Heritage Hill.
They face each other, accompanied by only an acoustic guitar, letting their voices carry the rest of the song. Sometimes, there are waffles involved.
While this is a new musical project, the three songwriters who created it are versatile, music industry veterans individually.
There’s Marley Kaye, who works as an audio engineer and performs devastatingly gorgeous songs as Marsfade (as well as pumping up indie-rock’s Low Phase). There’s Audrey Pearson, who pens introspective songs on acoustic guitar and is also an audio engineer. And there’s Olivia Vargas, a classically trained pianist and vocalist who leads the band August and operates her own teaching studio.
The Temperances make their public debut at The Stray at 7 p.m. tonight (Saturday, May 25). Melissa Dylan & The Better Thans join the bill with their powerhouse, pop-nfused live set. Tickets are $13 in advance and $15 the day of the show; details here.
Loving Vocal Harmonies: A Temperanaces trademark. (Photo/Isabel Elise)
“Creative expression during performance is a little different performing with the trio compared to performing solo,” explains Audrey. “Solo, if I feel like improvising a vocal run during a song I can, but with the trio we can do more with textures and dynamics and be creative by paying attention to moments on stage when each other’s energy shifts during a song and that’s really fun.
“I love vocal harmonies, I think we all do. It’s cool to see song arrangements come together in new ways with the trio. Since I mostly perform solo, it’s also just fun to be on stage with my friends.”
Says Vargas: “We want to see where this takes us. This isn’t our first project. We all do other things with music individually. We’re all full-time musicians and studio owners and audio engineers, so we take it really seriously. Our personalities are very different and we’re all different artistically.
“But we all gravitate toward music that sounds pretty and evokes emotion. We all do that in different ways individually, but when we bring it together it just works. So I think our goal is to see where it goes. If we record, that would be a great next step, if we play more shows that’d be a great next step. Wherever it takes us, I think we’ll be pretty content.”
The three songwriters began collaborating during their respective live sets. They found themselves on the same bill often and soon those serendipitous guest performances during one another’s sets grew more intentional over time. They started carving out a portion of those shows to convene together onstage as a trio, summoning a singular wave of harmonies that captivated audiences.
“People would come up to us after a show and ask if we were going to start a band. We spent a good three or four months trying to come up with a band name and it was very stressful. We would just sit in silence for a long time staring at a bunch of words, trying to put them together,” Kaye says.
“One day, I was driving in my car and I wondered if we could get ideas from a deck of tarot cards … and I don’t even own a deck of tarot cards. But for some reason it just popped into my brain. The next time we got together, we all sat down to look at some cards and found the ‘temperance’ card, which is defined as ‘harmony and balance.’ And that was it. That’s our origin story.”
DIFFICULT TOPICS, INTENSE FEELINGS EMERGING IN THEIR MUSIC
The trio of artists eventually decided to make The Temperances official, and began the transition from spontaneous on-stage collaborations to seated, songwriting sessions on the floor.
A few days before their first show, I meet with The Temperances on a perfect summer afternoon. From the sidewalk, I hear Olivia’s voice calling through the screen door. I follow the sound up the steps of a whimsical front porch.
The Temperances welcome me into a serene studio apartment. They are each elegantly dressed and perched in their own corners of a quint living room. There’s a calming presence when they’re in the same room, a permeating level of comfort, perhaps only achieved by the vulnerability necessary to distill one’s own despair into a song.
Telling Secrets: The Temperances’ songs. (Photo/Isabel Elise)
“If you feel things really intensely, chances are you’re gonna have to get that out of you somehow. We tend to write music that represents a lot of the feelings that maybe we are too shy to ever speak about,” Marley says.
“I will tell you all my secrets in my songs but I won’t say it out loud. There’s some sort of weird crossover where it’s easier to talk about your stuff and relate to an audience through music because it feels like a safe place,” Olivia adds.
“Difficult topics are allowed in that format. Whereas some people aren’t prepared to have an actual conversation like that because it’s a scary thing. They feel the need to respond in a certain way. Versus if you are relaying a personal experience through a song they’re allowed to simply listen and sit with it. They don’t have to give you anything back.”
We move outside to the front porch to film a live performance in the afternoon heat. Marley ventures out to her car for a guitar. Olivia and Audrey play tetris with a cafe table to make the most of the sunlight hitting the porch. Angling and inching the chairs and table closer, striving for symmetry. But then they completely strike the setup so Olivia can sweep the corner.
Meanwhile, Marley is on a quest for a coveted Heritage Hill street parking. We see her cruise past the house once. Then again going the other direction. The next time, Olivia directs her into the driveway. She parks and emerges with an acoustic guitar.
With the corner swept, the cafe table repositioned and the city sounds at a temporary lull, the trio ease into an original song.
Marley strums a few opening chords, then they carefully layer their voices into a moving mosaic of melody and harmony. Soon, the porch feels like a stage and neighborhood block is enveloped by three ethereal voices working as one.
VIDEO: The Temperances
Copyright 2024, Spins on Music LLC
