wordplay by Brian Kenney
image by Paul Schroder

It’s now been close to 10 years since the debut of DeVotchKa. It’s been a decade since they brought their unique art-house-urban-cabaret hybrid of Roma, Latin, Slavic influence and combined it with an air of carnivalism, of gypsy-folk-polka-punk styles.
A decade of questioning integrity, dedication, and direction, but for lead singer Nick Urata, the results are coming to fruition. And those results have major labels salivating, and crowds flocking to their shows.
    And these results are showcasing Urata's efforts of decades previous: for this has been his baby since the beginning. A penchant for performance at an early age, he began humbly when he was 9, back home in Chicago, where DeVotchKa's roots were sown. "I started playing trumpet when I was 9 in the school orchestra," Urata confesses. Even then he realized the seductive nature of music. "All the cute girls were in my church chorus so I started hanging out there and pretending I liked singing."
Fast forward a few years and about 1,000 miles to Denver, where this summer, DeVotchKa find themselves in various avenues of entertainment. Heading out on yet another national tour in support of the recently released Curse Your Little Heart, they play the high profile Bonnaroo Music Festival in addition to headlining an East Coast jaunt of their own with stops in New York, Boston, and Chicago. They return to Denver for the CD release party of Curse Your Little Heart at the Ogden Theatre on July 14th.
    They will also find themselves on the screen in Little Miss Sunshine, at least in an auditory manner, providing the film's score. The film, for which they collaborated with Mychael Danna, a Canadian composer (whose soundtrack credits include The Sweet Hereafter and The Ice Storm), is a quirky, witty, wiry comedy which seemed a perfect fit for the cerebral, existential, musically noir band. "It was one of those rare occasions that seemed like fate," Urata says of the experience which had the band holed up for months reinventing and reinterpreting some of their own work in addition to recording new songs.
    Sunshine's directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris were born out of the video industry, handling such luminaries as Weezer, REM, and Smashing Pumpkins, heading as far back as Paul Abdul and Janet Jackson. They realized the importance of auditory complimenting the visual. "They had been searching for months to no avail and one morning they were listening to [Los Angeles'] KCRW and heard our song "You Love Me" [off of How It Ends] and thought it was the sound of the movie."
     Sunshine, with Hollywood heavyweights Steve Cannell, Greg Kinnear, and Alan Arkin, has already generated a huge buzz as this summer's sleeper comedy to see. The dysfunctional family comedy entered the Sundance Film Festival without a distributor and exited as the first indie film to leave with a major distribution deal at a record 10.5 million.
The eclectic comedy proves a perfect medium for the functionally chaotic band, for DeVotchKa (the name originating from Anthony Burgess’s Nadsat dialect in A Clockwork Orange, go look it up and while you're at it read the book) are a goulash of influences, talents, and instruments of thespian manner. Urata's multitalented counterparts in the band are not just primary experts on one instrument but rather virtuosos on a host of them. Drummer Shawn King, is not just relegated to playing percussion behind his kit, he's apt to, for an intro and a fill, lend his talent to the trumpet. Tom Hagerman, seamlessly mends bridges to choruses with violin and accordion fills, and piano riffs, and Jeanie Schroder, on sousaphone and cello, who like Hagerman is classically trained, ameliorates and accentuates with her own delicate touch.
    The mesh of these styles was always what Urata was looking for. "I always tried to have a revolving door policy," he admits. "And anyone who actually wanted to play these songs was welcome." The classical and refined vernacular brought an entirely different aspect to early DeVotchKa where Urata's street-level minimalist approach was rooted in punk from his early days busking in Chicago.
    To say that Urata earned his musical education with a streetwise sensibility must be taken literally. "I guess you could say some of my first gigs were on the road under the L in Chicago. [I would try out] a bunch of my early songs on unsuspecting commuters." In his subsequent years, in subsequent bands both in Chicago and Boulder, Urata would hone his multi-lingual musical skills in all aspects of the guitar, theremin, glockenspiel, bouzouki, piano, and trumpet, all of which, in addition to his heart-wrenching croon, (hand caressing his emblematic antique microphone)  have become the trademark of a DeVotchKa show.
     In and around Denver, DeVotchKa has become quite an attraction. While at home they are able to reap the rewards of a strong network of burlesque and cabaret enthusiasts who add another dimension: the visual. Local shows are complimented by the carnival and vaudevillian ambiance that the DeVotchKa is known for. Trapeze artists, contortionists, belly dancers, and bubble girls provide stunning kinesthetic accompaniment, at times in between songs, when the band calculates, with feverish prop comic precision, their next choice of instrument for their next arrangement. This alone proves a taxing skill both physically and mentally for the band but adds to its mystique. "I sometimes feel pressure to be mysterious and sexy when deep down we're just music room geeks."
Accolades are piling up locally, nationally, and globally for these music room geeks. Last year's How It Ends, won Westword’s Best Recording of 2005. This year Little Miss Sunshine puts DeVotchKa on the silver screen, adding a Hollywood twist to their hard-earned success.
For Curse Your Little Heart, a 6-song EP which will be celebrated at the Ogden release party on July 14th, DeVotchKa pays tribute to the wide and varied influences before them: tracks range from traditional arrangements and originals, to covers of Siouxsie and the Banshees, to Sinatra, to everyone's punk indie fave, "Venus In Furs" by Velvet Underground. The Ogden Theatre release party, which will no doubt sell out, is a faraway cry from the days of busking in Chicago and shorter sets at smaller venues such as the Lion's Lair, Larimer Lounge, Red Fish, and Tulagi's.
DeVotchKa: bridging a gap of cultures, of folklore, of influences in a new world language: Slavic, Greek, Latin, Roma, Gypsy --cabaret noir, burlesque, polka, mariachi, punk, rock and roll. "I think the beauty of all music is it transcends cultures," Urata surmises. "I hope that people can turn off the analytical side of their brain when they hear music."
    DeVotchKa provides the soundtrack to descend. They are the music you drink red wine to. They are the music when you might create art to. A cerebral venture. An exotic experience. Perhaps Urata sums up the DeVotchKa experience best in his own words. "I am constantly having to shut my head up so my heart can get some." Their music is pure seduction.

Little Miss Sunshine: In Theatres Soon

July 14th @ The Ogden

www.Devotchka.net