 BIOGRAPHY |
 | harmony driven alt-folk rock,
with a touch of bluegrass, jazz and punk
Since the fateful night seven years ago when Cregan and Danielle met in a Boston bar, the duo has lived up and down the east coast and performed throughout the country at festivals like Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, SXSW in Austin, NXNE in Toronto and International Folk Alliance in Memphis. Maine was the birthplace and home of divineMAGgees (pronounced "Maggies") until 2004, when the duo sought to expand their touring base by moving south. After a year in Athens, GA, they settled in Asheville, NC, in the heart of the southern appalachians. Individually, Danielle Tibedo and Cregan Montague bring years of musical training and experience to this mutual labor of love. Danielle grew up amongst a family of professional jazz musicians. Her earliest musical education began with jazz trumpet and music theory before she found the guitar at age 16. She's expanded her repertoire via other expressive arts endeavors, earning a BFA in sculpture from Maine College of Art and pursuing graduate studies in multi-media at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She sculpts sound in percussive acoustic guitar strokes and electric licks with equal ease. Danielle's vocals can spike the volume meters when she wails into an intense ballad, or make it move smooth as glass on a love song. Cregan's violin work echoes some of the fiddling from her days busking on the streets of Ireland, as she intertwines dancing melodic lines with her vocals. She will take you down into the deep waters, too, riding the undertow on broad, dark, bowed accompaniments on her 5-string electric violin. |
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Cregan began her music
studies as a young child and continued at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Admittedly influenced by pop
idol Madonna, she gives "punk" a new interpretation, stirring a potent mix of sound that ranges from ethereal
to foreboding. She's shared the stage with indie folk rocker Ani DiFranco, too, proving her extreme talent
for matching style with skill and innovation. The most intriguing aspect of divineMAGgees' music is this: they make you hear things that go beyond what they actually play. The musical texture presented in harmonic structure is both subtle and sonorous, including parts that play against each other while they compliment. Vocally, Danielle and Cregan trade lines frequently, leaving you to wonder who had which part (high or low), while presenting unusual combinations of their acoustic and electric guitars and fiddles. "These two fiercely talented women have a way of combining folk, bluegrass and pop with a sophisticated, artful ear. Love me like the roses leaves you speechless entirely."Time Out NY divineMAGgees recorded two live EPs while living in Maine before coming out with their debut studio album, love me like the roses, voted by WNCW listeners as one of the top new albums of 2005. The duo -- Danielle on acoustic & electric guitars and piano, Cregan on acoustic and electric violin -- teamed up with three world-renowned Asheville musicians (River Guerguerian, Chris Rosser and Eliot Wadopian) on percussion, drums and bass, to create an intoxicating alt-folk rock album. All eleven tracks on the cd (including their unique version of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine") reflect and build on divineMAGgees' dynamic live show: featuring their provocative vocal harmonies. Indiegrrl song contest winner, "little black crow," is the opening track of love me like the roses, which, along with their DVD of music videos, is currently being featured on cable music channel, Publik Music. Watch for a new studio album, in the works for 2007. Co-written by Susan Lachmann, producer/host of "Women on Air," WETS |
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