Lakeport >> Marilyn DeFrange and Janet Orsi are a wholly collaborative musical duo. DeFrange may be the singer-songwriter of the two, but Orsi contributes entire underlying bass lines to each of DrFrange’s original melodies. “I create the union between the bass and Marilyn’s rhythm guitar,” Orsi explained. In their bio, her playing is described as “the glue that holds the duo together.” They’ll be performing at O’Meara Bros. Brewing Company in Lakeport tonight.
When Orsi was in seventh grade, her teacher introduced her to the bass guitar and she’s never looked back. “I had a good feel for the beat as well as just the underlying bottom end to emphasize guitars and whatever else,” she said. “I liked that low sound of playing the melody or keeping the beat at that lower octave. So I just have an ear for it. I kept a good tempo and I liked playing down in the bass area.”
Though Orsi’s teacher isn’t the only one responsible for her foray into the music scene; her whole family is littered with musicians, which is what first piqued her interest before she even picked up a bass guitar. This is just one of the many things she and DeFrange share. “Just like Janet, I come from a musical family. We have that in common,” DeFrange said. DeFrange has been playing music since she was nine.
DeFrange started songwriting not just because she wanted to, but because she felt a powerful need to. “It wasn’t anything I consciously thought about,” she said. “It’s just inside of me and it has to come out.”
As a 16-year-old in Kent, Ohio, DeFrange started performing professionally in coffee houses. She looked to a wide variety of artist’s for inspiration and influence during that time, from rhythm and blues to Motown to the big musicians of the singer-songwriter era like Joni Mitchel and James Taylor. “I really kinda had a mishmash of influences,” she said. “It comes out in my music because I write in all kinds of styles.”
This presented somewhat of a problem when she took her act to the West Coast. “I wanted to do something with my music so I first began my journey in LA. And I got totally overwhelmed and nothing seemed to work out when I was there. I couldn’t find anyone to play with. It was a disaster,” she recalled. “There was a time when someone was trying to get me signed in LA and they couldn’t pin point what type of music I was.” She said this lack of a specific style is basically why LA never worked. Though today the music industry relishes unique artist’s with a plethora of fluidity, things were vastly different when DeFrange was trying to make it happen.
So she moved up to Ukiah and that’s when things started to work out. “We just decided to move from LA to here and it was really just kind of a spontaneous move,” DeFrange said. “It was very beneficial for me musically because that was when I started playing with the musicians around here. I just kind of gravitated back and forth between all these groups and people.”
This was also when she first met Orsi. DeFrange was hired to direct the music for a theater production and Orsi was playing in the band. The two discovered that they had great musical chemistry but Orsi lived down in Santa Cruz, and the distance was too much to play together. It was well over 20 years before they came together as a duo.
When Orsi moved back to the area, the timing was perfect. DeFrange was just getting back into her music after five years away taking care of a family member and she was looking for someone to help round out her songs. “Really once I got past the 50-year-old mark I just wanted to play my stuff and write and that’s just how Janet and I got together ,” DeFrange said. “Whenever we got together and we played together we knew there was this connection … When I heard she had moved back to Ukiah I actually kinda stalked her because I was trying to find someone who really wanted to play my material and wasn’t trying to get into this cover thing. Someone who could connect to my music.”
Though stalk might be too strong a word, because Orsi was thrilled to play with DeFrange. “She found me up here and we got in contact and she brought me over two CDs of her songs to practice to and I thought, ‘Yes, this is what I want to play.’ It was just perfect,” Orsi said.
DeFrange described their coming together similarly. “All it took was one time over at her sisters and we were both hooked,” she recalled. “The cards were right for us to be together and play. It’s been a wonderful experience. She’s just like my musical soul mate.”
The duo play entire sets of DeFrange’s original songs, though the style is just as hard to pin down today as it was when DeFrange lived in LA. Thankfully, DeFrange isn’t the only one who has trouble sticking to a specific category. “I just fell in love with the bass guitar and I just gravitated towards any style that needed a bass guitarist,” Orsi said. “I’ve picked up so many styles of music doing that. It really suits our music now because she writes so many different styles of music.”
DeFrange and Orsi also work perfectly because their duo is exactly in the vein of what Orsi enjoys most. “I like creating my own bass lines to people like Marilyn,” she explained. “They’re singer-songwriters who write their own music. They give me a song and ask me to write a bass line for it. My bass lines really flow with her vocals and guitar playing. The bass guitar is pretty much my voice. I like to play melody lines and harmonize with her vocals.”
Some apparent influences in DeFrange’s songs are old Motown, soul and rhythm and blues tunes as well as rock vibes like Hall and Oats. Pop also makes an appearance, Sam Smith being the first artist DeFrange listed as an inspiration. “Right now I’m really into him because I think he’s very real,” she said. “That’s another thing about musicians, you can tell when someone is really singing from their heart. He feels very real to me.”
From this it can only be assumed that DeFrange sings from her heart as well, something people have picked up on. “People seem to relate to my songs. They seem to relate to my lyrics,” she said. “We have a lot of fans that have favorite songs. I just think that’s so wonderful. To me that means more than anything, to be able to connect … When they say, ‘That song that you wrote really got to me. I can really relate to that.’ That’s the real joy for me.”
The audience aren’t the only people to feel this emotion, though; the heart of the music is what Orsi enjoys most as well. “The main thing I love to do is to feel the passion of the original material and put my own signature on it with my bass lines,” Orsi said. “I love the feel, the passion of original material. It comes from that songwriter’s inner soul. It’s a real creative process that they’ve gone through. I really respect that.”
Orsi insisted that people who come out to their shows are never disappointed. “It’s just very satisfying to get the support for our original music and people come to see us for that reason because we are doing original music. We don’t sound like another band playing cover songs,” she said. “We always have a good time with the audience. There’s a good exchange going on between us when we’re performing and the audience. We appreciate them just as much as they appreciate us.”
Even without the original songs, the duo’s show tonight would be a unique one. “When people hear us they’re amazed that it’s just the two of us,” said Orsi. “We’re just a duo but we have a big, full sound.”
DeFrange and Orsi have never performed in Lake County, and they’re thrilled for the opportunity. “We’re a really looking forward to playing in Lakeport because we haven’t been there yet and we love making good friends,” DeFrange said. “We’re really looking forward to it.”
The show starts at 7:30 p.m. at O’Meara Bros. Brewing Company in Lakeport.
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
