Josephine & The Mouse People

Josephine and the Mousepeople don’t wear pants when they dance. The two person electronic influenced pop band, consisting of of Avi Sherbil and Danny Shyman take playing so seriously, that they perform their shows in white dresses. In this almost African looking, feminine garb, it’s hard not to immediately identify with J&M’s vulnerable, yet wry playful stage presence. Though the dance infused beats and accessible melodies immediately hook crowd’s attentions, they’re music is by no means tame or trite. J&M’s songs like the members of the band, balance untamed creative fervor with tight, cautious musicality.

As the youngest son of a Rabbi, Avi Sherbill spent a majority of his youth in Northbrook, Illinois pouring over religious texts for up to 12 hours a day in the hopes of one day following in his father’s footsteps. As he grew older, Sherbill also grew dissatisfied with the limitations of religious dogma to fulfill his intellectual and spiritual needs. Abandoning the shackles of formal religion, he turned his voracious appetite for understanding towards the only other practice that had ever fully engaged his senses, both physical and metaphysical—music. Though he’d grown up listening to folk, punk and eventually indie music, Sherbil discovered something new and fascinating in the repetition of electronic and loop-based rhythms. To him it was a reenactment of the heart beat—the vibrancy of life itself. Sherbil went from record label to record label devouring electronic music, until it was as much a part of him as any text he’d ever read or prayer he’d spoken. Combining this realization with an appreciation for singer/songwriter based pop tunes and the cathartic, wailing cries of religious singers like Shlomo Carlbach, Sherbil began to find his own unique voice. On stage or on record, Sherbil’s vocal sincerity and stage presence penetrate audiences. Watching him perform live is akin to witnessing a musical exorcism—wild, at times a disturbing mix of the profane and pious, and always gripping entertainment.

In Juxtaposition to Avi’s unbridled shamanic energy, Danny Shyman is the rock of solid musicianship that keeps J&M from gyrating beyond human consumption, out towards the ethers of sound. Originally trained as a guitarist, Shyman spent a year at the Berklee School of Music in Boston studying musical engineering and production. After a year long musical hiatus in Israel, Shyman worked in Chicago at Pressure Point Recordings, but though he enjoyed mixing other people’s music, Shyman had the urge to create something of his own. In an attempt to perfect his abilities on the guitar, Shyman began picking through the technical challenges of Bluegrass music and though you won’t hear it in J&M’s music, Colorado’s burgeoning Bluegrass scene was actually the catalyst that brought Shyman to the Rocky Mountains soon to be followed by his childhood friend, Avi Sherbil. With these two musicians once again in the same city, and their individual preparations complete, Josephine & the Mousepeople emerged.

Like mad alchemists, for the last seven months J&M have been in the studio infusing often disparate elements to create new material— keeping what’s essential, and discarding the rest. What remains is accessible, yet progressive pop music that combines traditional songwriting with parsed samples, live instrumentation with looped segments, analog with digital technologies. Amidst a jaded search for something true, J&M found a preadolescent abandon which they share fiercely. With a full set of constantly evolving songs and a demo at the ready, this band is ready to play, seriously.