Dash & Will Biography
Dash & Will are an amazing new duo of 18-year-old singer/songwriters from Melbourne. Their real names are Charlie Thorpe [Dash] and Josie De Sousa-Reay [Will]. Dash & Will is actually what the two girls would have been named if they were born boys.
In some ways, from Dash & Wills perspective, it feels like it's taken forever to finally release this debut album. After all, it's been six years since they started performing, nine years since the pair first met -- literally half a lifetime ago when you're only 18. But in lots of other ways, things have happened so quickly and so naturally that it's almost as if their path and music career together was predestined.
Indeed, Dash & Will would have had a record out a lot earlier if it wasn't for the small matter of finishing high school first. But like all the great acts throughout the history pages of rock and pop, from the very first time Charlie Thorpe and Josie De Sousa-Reay started playing music together, whoever heard them knew they had something very special.
To take their story up from the very start, Charlie and Josie first met way back in early-1999. The two nine-year-olds just happened to both start fourth grade on the same day at a new school, the same new school -- an alternative arts-based college in inner-city Melbourne. And as both girls will happily admit, they didn't really like each other much at first. In fact, quite the opposite.
"We hated each other for quite a few years," Josie recalls with a laugh. "Seriously, we were not friends. Some days we would be best friends and then we would be enemies the next day. I don't even remember what we fought about. It was really pathetic."
Charlie seems to remember there was a long-running argument about who was the taller, but it's all so long ago now. "We didn't like each other very much," Charlie agrees. "We've always had a bit of an intense relationship. We're actually pretty different people. A bit of chalk and cheese, but for some reason we connect on some level together, and with the music as well. It works."
Indeed, their musical connection was magical from the very first moment it happened. Josie clearly remembers that moment like it was only yesterday. "In Year Seven, Charlie had started playing guitar and I was getting dad to teach me, her dad was teaching her, and we just started playing together," Josie says. "I saw Charlie one day in class and it was like, 'Oh wow, that looks like fun.' THIS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE - WHAT LOOKED LIKE FUN?? - IF IT'S GUITAR, JUST ADD IN ".... CHARLIE PLAYING GUITAR ONE DAY IN CLASS...."
"We were singing in school groups, there would just be five of us. We did that and then I don't even really remember the exact time, but we started writing songs. I think probably Charlie came in one day and said I've written a song, or I came in and said I've got something. And it just started from there.
"The school had these small music rooms and we'd go in there at recess and lunch and just play together. I think we started out singing Michelle Branch songs. I remember we'd do 'Amazing Grace' as our warm-up song. We've just always done harmonies. I remember in the car, I'd never sing the melody to a song, I would sing the harmony. So when Charlie would sing something, I automatically would go to harmony. That's how we got the whole harmony thing started. Then we just started writing our own songs."
Being an arts-based school, Charlie says their teachers went way beyond the call of duty in encouraging the duo to pursue their music, believing they had a natural gift that should be nurtured and shared.
"Our teachers almost worked harder than me and Josie to get us where we are," Charlie says. "They were obsessed with us getting somewhere and we'd take a lot of time off school when we were doing the recording and showcases and stuff. They were awesome. They worked more than they had to get us through and help us catch up."
It was the teachers that helped the girls apply for a Buzz grant, a Victorian government initiative to support young talent. So while still in Year Nine, Charlie and Josie were awarded a small financial grant to record a professional demo of their original songs. Charlie's father, also a teacher but at another school, just happened to be working with indie country queen, Barb Waters, who also runs a recording studio in Melbourne with her husband.
So Charlie and Josie got to record a five-track demo with Barb. "We'd skip school," laughs Josie. "Like, we skipped so much school to do all these things. In Year Nine, we'd just take days off and go into the studio with Barbs. We did what we thought were amazing demos in a cute sort of home-demo sounding thing."
In fact, everyone thought the demos were amazing. The following year, Year 10, armed with the five-track demo, the girls entered Music Oz, a national band competition for unsigned acts, and came in second overall.
At the end of that year, 2005, at the school Christmas party, Josie's dad was talking to the father of one of the girl's classmates, just happened to be Barry Palmer, the legendary Melbourne-based producer and former guitarist with Hunters & Collectors and DeadStar.
Her dad told Josie to go grab a CD and give it to Barry. Days later, Barry called the girls and asked if they would come into the studio for a chat and a quick live performance. A couple of days later, Barry was on the phone again -- how would the girls feel about signing to his music production company, Gigantically Small?
"We were freaking out," says Josie. "It was hilarious. So many screams. That was the end of Year 10, so Year 11 was a lot of writing, open-mic nights in crappy venues around Melbourne, that sort of thing. Then at the beginning of Year 12 we recorded the five-track demo with our new songs with Barry and then shopped that around to companies and did our Year 12 exams alongside doing showcases for major record labels."
Barry sent copies of the new demo to record companies around Australia. The disc quickly caused a stir in the local music industry. Such was the instant reaction that every major label immediately expressed their interest in signing up the girls. Dash & Will would eventually sign to Mercury Records through Universal. But first, Charlie and Josie had their exams to think about.
With school finally out of the way late last year, Dash & Will threw themselves into their music. They got a rocking backing band, played more and more live shows and started concentrating on recording their debut album with Barry. Work officially began on January 3 of this year at the Gigantically Small studios in Melbourne, and wrapped up in early March.
Since then, Dash & Will have been constantly out of the road, playing live shows all around the country. Already in 2008, Dash & Will have played gigs everywhere, supporting the likes of Ben Lee, Matt Costa and Faker's Nathan Hudson. In May and June, they headlined the Rock The Schools tour across NSW.
And now, finally, the long-awaited release of Dash & Will's debut album,
UP IN SOMETHING, featuring the duo's instantly infectious debut single, "Pick You Up".
Dash & Will's Up In Something might have been half-a-lifetime in the making, but we hope everyone will agree that it's been well worth the wait. Youthful, beautiful and multi-talented -- when they sing, Charlie and Josie's very distinctive vocal styles magically blend into one and soar, producing the sort of tight, angelic harmonies you normally only hear from famous singing siblings.
Acoustically or backed by a full band, Dash & Will have already proven themselves to be a new natural musical force in the Australian music scene.
Now, with the release of their debut album, Up In Something, it's time for everyone to hear why there's already so much excitement surrounding Dash & Will. Although they've been singing together for virtually their whole lives, Up In Something marks just the beginning for Dash & Will.
