2 1/2 Lounge

The calendar is empty.

It’s not your dad’s folk music, but it might be your brother’s. The brother who grew up listening to Alice in Chains, Pink Floyd, and Soundgarden, and now throws around the occasional John Gorka, Elliott Smith, and Chris Whitley. The brother who discovered the Beatles after they broke up and picked up as many albums on wax as he could. The brother who is sick of sloppy guitar work slathered on tired love songs. 2½ Lounge would appeal to him.
-----------
Michael Dowd and Neil Seas, two students at CUA in Washington, D.C., met in McMahon Hall waiting to take a Spanish entrance exam in 1994. Soon thereafter, they realized they lived in the same dorm, had similar hair density, and shared an affinity for music. They continually lunched together after Spanish class, and founded a relationship that was based on deli meats and used many irregular verb forms.

They began to conjoin musically and perform locally. Notoriety among fellow students encouraged one such student, Bonnie Burke of Connecticut, to commission them for songwriting and performance in a play she had written: "The Square Root of Truth." After the show's run, they were urged to record the songs from the performance. Verily, they began to do so in April of 1998 under the name 2½ Lounge.

An ample portion of the production and the mixing became the lot of Bill Turney, an engineer at One World at the time. Bill turned a deft ear to their music. He allowed their best ideas to manifest and their worst ideas to be recorded for the comedic interest and stark horror of all posterity. Bill appreciated their ability to collaborate musically without actually speaking to each other, and began to contribute to the group through adroit bass performances, unique hair color, and long, long silences.

The sessions lacked direction however, and Neil eventually moved to New York City for career reasons. After a brief pause in the music, Mike and Neil began to collaborate long distance and occasionally record with Bill at his studio in Alexandria, Virginia. These recording sessions were wrought with much more focus than before, and an album of their worth was planned. Mike eventually moved to New York, excited about the prospect of electing Congressional representatives who could actually vote on the House floor.

2½ Lounge is based in Brooklyn, NY. Their first album, "You Already Know This," is available at www.cdbaby.com/cd/212lounge.

They still haven't recorded the songs from Bonnie's play.