Amy Curl & Dan Kennedy

Amy Curl and Dan Kennedy stay busy in Madison creating panoptic pop music that ranges from folky acoustic to quirky indie. Although the lyrics sometimes stray into the humorous, sarcastic, and, indeed, often the ridiculous, they do try to maintain an irony-free approach. “Irony has ruined everything,” says Dan. “If you hear us playing some unexpected cover song it’s because we love it, not because it’s funny for us to do it.” Of course, it may be funny too, but honesty is where the intent lies.

Amy and Dan are currently touring in support of their debut release on Slothtrop Music. Their first recording, “In An Orderly Fashion” is a spare and subtle blend of voice, piano, and acoustic guitar. “We like to hear a lot of air,” says Amy. “As Miles Davis said, ‘Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.’” In the studio or on the stage, doing justice to the song is the top priority for this twosome, and often that means leaving plenty of space for the song to be what it wants to be.

Amy and Dan have been crossing paths on the Madison music scene for years, Amy playing solo shows (her album “Mixed Bag” was nominated for “best acoustic album” at the Madison Area Music Awards), and Dan backing up singer-songwriters like Mark Croft, Chris DeMay, and Sean Michael Dargan on guitar and bass. When Amy was recruited as a pianist and singer for a wedding band that Dan was playing in, they jumped at the chance to work together. The band stereotypically imploded, and our dynamic duo found themselves transitioning into a new musical partnership as the dust settled. “We just kept showing up for practice, and pretty soon there we were, working out our own songs together,” says Dan.

So we come back around to their own songs. Honest and silly, quiet and crashing, expansive and intimate--it’s panoptic pop, and it goes well with both tea and scotch.