Dash & Will

Who the hell are Dash & Will and what the hell are we doing?

Simple answer: we are two 21 year old girls who write,record and perform!

In 2009 we released of our debut album,Up In Something in Australia. A lot of people said a lot of really nice things(*see below) and we played a pile of great shows with some great local and international artists.We also got to play some great Oz Festivals.

2010 has been the year of travelling! We had some time off to write for our next album and headed to New York and L.A, that was so good. We also played for the Oz troops in East Timor which was wonderful and then in recent months headed to the U.S a couple of times and then interstate to make our follow up album( to be released January,2011.)

We're lucky to be still doing what we love and even more lucky to be able to take it around the world.

If you want to know more keep reading.........

Cheers,
D&W x

D&W ARTIST AND ALBUM BIO (2009,Universal Music)

Some things are worth the wait. And it’s an extraordinary understatement to say the debut album for youthful pop duo Dash & Will has been a long time coming. A bigger understatement however, would be to downplay Up In Something as anything less than what it is – one of the best Australian pop albums of 2009.

Yes, this world class record bares the fingerprints of a couple of production heavy-hitters. But as skilful songwriters and performers with a voice of their own, Dash & Will- a.k.a Charlie Thorpe and Josie DeSousa-Reay- simply cannot be ignored.

You may think you know the fundamentals around the Dash & Will story.

Two girls meet at a Melbourne primary school, graft out a friendship that steadily develops into a meaningful connect, begin writing songs together as teenagers, rebadge themselves with the names they would have been called if they were born boys and record a demo that’s uncovered by producer and musician Barry Palmer. But there’s always been something else at play. The two 19-year-olds possess an edge that underlies the spunk in these ten slices of pop-perfection. This diverse collection of songs draws on a wide variety of influences. Album highlight, and hit-in-the-waiting Painful has a DNA traceable back to forgotten Australian pop duet Leonardo’s Bride and also recalls Howling Bells chanteuse Juanita Stein and even echoes of Chrissie Hynde. Elsewhere, there are vestiges of veterans Natalie Merchant in the brilliant mid-tempo cut Save Me and Veruca Salt on Didn’t Know blending with their contemporaries, think Michelle Branch on the scorching opening track Some Like It Hot. It’s a brand of pop music that’s never too straight, and clearly has something else in play.

Whether it was getting up at dawn every Saturday to consume every video on Rage (Josie) or learning guitar with dad (Charlie), neither were introverted.

“My dad would play guitar in our shed,” Charlie say. “I’d go out there and make-up ridiculous songs and mum would film me. Dad showed me the basic chords of guitar. They had a huge collection of old-school pop music and I devoured it all.”

Similarly, Josie has been playing music, be it violin, piano or guitar, as long as she can remember.

“My dad taught me my first three chords when I started playing guitar. It was only later I realised they were the chords to Enrique Iglesias’ Hero,” she says, laughing. Soon after meeting at the callow age of 9, they began writing and singing together. “We’d sit in a little music room at recess and sing,” Josie says. “We’d work out really strong harmonies and write songs,” adds Charlie.

Meanwhile, by age 16, Josie had attended a pile of rock shows. She was hooked.
“I grew up obsessed with pop music. Mum and dad would play the Beatles, Stones, the Bangles and Blondie. I knew this is what I wanted to do.”

Sensing their own potential, the two applied for a Buzz grant in Year 10 that afforded them the opportunity to record a demo. It was this demo that would end up in Barry Palmer’s hands. When the Hunters & Collectors veteran received the disc at a Christmas party, he swiftly signed the girls to his own label, Gigantically Small.

The duo began playing open-mics in Fitzroy. Still at high school, they needed fake IDs just to get on stage. “We’d go home from school and practice endlessly,” Charlie says, “and Google the places in Melbourne we could play. The responses were great which surprised us a bit.”

At the beginning of year 12, they hit the studio, recording five tracks with Palmer and Cat Empire/Kram producer Andy Baldwin. A deal was cut with Mercury/Universal to license their debut album.

“The girls had grown up playing and singing together so the studio became a natural extension of that,” Palmer says.

Instead of joining their mates at “schoolies” , they headed to Noosa for ten days to finish writing the songs for their debut. After earning their studio tans for a few months over summer, they hit the road with their acoustic guitars