Duo is made to harmonize

Award-winning folk masters Chris and Thomas play in Lacey

By Molly Gilmore | For The Olympian • Published August 21, 2008

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When folk duo Chris and Thomas had their first telephone conversation years ago, it was magic at first sound.

"Immediately, we launched into playing songs to each other on the phone," Anderson said this week. "We were on the phone for a couple of hours. We knew there was something special."

When they had that first conversation, they lived on different continents -- Thomas Hein hails from Germany, Chris Anderson from Memphis. Both now live in Los Angeles. They know that musically, they have something special.

And their lives seem charmed in far more ways than just their meet-cute story.

With just one album and one EP to their credit, the duo already has won an Independent Music Award and co-written the title song for Garry Marshall's 2007 movie "Georgia Rule."

Their voices seem made to blend. "Chris and Thomas are nothing if not born to sing simultaneously," said NPR's Stephen Thompson, editor of Song of the Day.

Their music comes together just as naturally, although they'd been friends for years before they began writing together. They've drawn comparisons to Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel and many others. Their sound -- both play banjo and dobro as well as guitar and piano -- most often is labeled Americana, although British folk also is a huge influence on both.

"We found our own sound organically -- the two voices and the harmonies," Hein said.

The singers studied together at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, started by "the queen and Paul McCartney and a few others -- Lou Reed," Anderson said with a laugh. Their first conversation was about the school, where Anderson had been accepted into the first class; Hein enrolled the following year.

In Liverpool, they shared a house with other musicians and artists. "We'd go out on the weekend and come back at 2 a.m. and sit around playing old Dylan songs and drinking whiskey and eating good food. That's how the food came in."

Anderson and Hein's first joint venture was not music but a cooking show called "Cook Au Van" with other artists. The show, conducted out of a refurbished van, involved cooking elaborate meals and inviting celebrities for dinner.

It wasn't until both men landed in Los Angeles that they began to write music together.

"We shared a house in Los Angeles, and in the evenings, we would blow off steam playing other people's songs," Anderson said. "Tommy would throw a harmony on, or I would throw a harmony on. Eventually, we started saying, 'Hey, let's write some songs.' At that point, we'd been really good friends for eight years and listening to the same music and loving the same music. It started pouring out very freely. He would say a line and then I would say a line."

The duo's fame has been happening almost as easily. Their first live gig was opening for singer-songwriter Alexi Murdoch.

"We wrote for about a year before we played our first show," Hein said. "Alexi is a friend of ours. He came to our house and sat down and listened and loved it so much he invited us to open two of his shows the following week.

"With his help, we immediately got a buzz going in Los Angeles."

The duo's first album was the work of legendary producer Mark Howard, who's worked with Dylan and U2.

Howard rented an old soundstage to record the album and furnished it with vintage equipment, Persian rugs and Victorian lamps.

"Two months before, Tom Waits had sung into the same microphone," Hein said. "These things do matter. They put you into that enthusiastic vibe, really in the moment. We did it live, which is great. You put it all in that one moment, which is really what music is all about."