The travel-stained cloak of a vagabond captures not just our ideal of the bardic tradition, but our actual lives so far. It works for fantasy themed-music well, and that crossover is important since our lyrics have that bent.

We played Claremore's King of Clubs and have another music night planned at Shepherd's Cross--we're arranging venues to share music among friends and family. We're open to invitations!

The immediate availability of anything has globalized the industry in a way that makes it hard to find that local, intimate audience we'd like to see. But it also means we can post for chance passersby, typing the right keywords, to find us!

That would take a lot of thinking we don't need to do at this point. We both are pursuing other careers and have other passions to balance with music.

Daniel and Bethany Powell are as siblings that, as a result of being thrown in together on a quest that took them across the States and down before falling into a portal to Japan, and then to Oklahoma four years later (jet lag is no joke), are now as thick as thieves.

Some of their earliest memories are of arguing away time while shut up in the car as their parents worked on a folk project in some guy's home studio. This likely scarred them forever, and in some twisted way brought them to recording a Lord of the Rings project in their very own living room, shutting their three younger siblings out in the bleak prairie winter winds--well, not quite, but we do throw them out of the house for hours on end.

Daniel plays bass like a solo instrument, guitar like a bassist, drums, and on the Dark Before Hope CD even plays Ent. Bethany wedges lyrics into his brilliant musical ideas, tramples over his production, and avoids actually playing piano for accompaniment. That one track, on the recent demo...escaped her grasp! She sings, for what that's worth.

Daniel particularly loves: Newsboys, Jars of Clay, P.O.D., Relient K, Kutless, Falling Up, and Skillet

Bethany particularly loves: P.O.D., Caedmon's Call, Loreena McKennit, Falling Up, Lifehouse, Jars of Clay, The Lion King, Enya, Anberlin, and Bach.

They grew up listening to First Call, Keith Green, Scheherazade by Rimzky/Korsakov, and country music, as well as Maranatha, Vineyard, and other popular modern church worship like Hillsongs (Matt Redman!). Reading influences also count. Tolkien! The Psalms and Prophets.

Bethany wants to see the world! She loves Boston and Yonezawa as hometowns (furusato), Yokohama, Pasadena, Sendai, and Washington the state. New England in general is great. As is Japan. Coffee shops (The Zephyr of Pasadena, places with artsy charm).

We love Lord of the Rings! Our "The Dark Before Hope" project is available (a home-made product) if you want to check it out. These Tolkien-themed songs include a love-ballad to Lothlorien, a drinking song for Pippin, and a couple that are settings of poetry out of the text.