Simple Life

Between iEverything and vintage LP's is a pocketful of soul called Wild Violets. With their debut project, Simple Life, this break-out husband and wife duo skipped forming a band in the garage and went straight to releasing the album. Simple life is a crossover between indie and alternative with hearty acoustic instrumentation and poetic lyrics. Growing up on classic rock in a factory town of Southeast Wisconsin, Kim & Mark Albrecht were paired (soprano & bass) as part of a high school a capella caroling ensemble a'la Charles Dickens. This melting pot at the mouth of the Root River watered their musical souls and their young love. Mark went on to earn an advanced degree in Piano Performance studying with J Earl Lee and Ozan Marsh (a disciple of Rachmaninoff and Horowitz.) Kim hopscotched states and college majors to be at his side. Their formitive years were chock full of Led Zeppelin, Tom Petty, Eurythmics and the genesis of MTV - which they watched huddled around the TV on a college dorm room floor. Several careers, church pews, children and a poodle later, music is the tie that binds. Mark digs Aerosmith and Rachmaninoff, and he plays Steinways, Telecasters and a Fender fretless bass. Kim loves fingerstyle guitar ballads and the vintage sound of a dobro. After years playing around a campfire, she got serious and began to study guitar with Kenn Fox (Spiritone Records, a Wisconsin-based label specializing in the development of local artists.) She steps out of Mark's musical shadow with the release of Simple Life, spinning honest lyrics about life and the common good. Kim's lyrics come from a place of compassion, the choice to hope, and the common good. People relate to loving someone through hardship (I'm on Your Side), feeling like life is driving you instead of you steering it (Simple Life) or leaving the familiar behind to pursue adventure (Chasing the Light). This is music with a story. Some tales are simple like 'A Place in the Sun' which was written in the dead of a Wisconsin winter at their home. Set up to write in the dining room, Kim found herself moving the chair to keep up with the brief afternoon sun's movement. Other songs like the poignant 'Under the Onion Dome Sky' describe a personal experience. The lyrics were taken from the couple's journal entries penned on a train winding it's way through the heart of Russia in the wintery Spring of 1994, as they traveled to meet two toddlers and become a family through adoption. 'Kick off your shoes, sit for awhile...' and treat yourself to a forward thinking paradigm accompanied by Wild Violets.