By Mara Dobyns
Photos Courtesy Giant Eye Photography
Davis, California based folk-rock duo, Misner and Smith, released their new album, All Is Song, on April 12th, 2024. The duo, Sam Misner and Megan Smith have a long history of creating beautiful music together. Read about how they met, partnered up as artists and as a couple, their inspirations, music and the power of it all below.
Q: I understand you’ve been playing together for over twenty years now. Wow! How did you guys meet and how did the band and music form from there?
Sam: We actually met in 2002 while working as actors at a big outdoor Shakespeare festival in Berkeley, CA. At the time we were both pursuing careers as actors, working mostly in live theater, doing plays all around the country at different regional theaters. In 2004 we were both cast in a play about Woody Guthrie, called “Woody Guthrie’s American Song” at a theater up in Nevada City, CA, right in the heart of the Sierra Nevada foothills. That experience was truly life changing for a number of reasons, but most of all because it’s what got us together, both as musical partners and as a couple.
Megan: The show is filled with four and five part harmony singing, and some really beautiful arrangements. Early in rehearsals we were working on a moment when the rest of the voices dropped away and it was just our two characters singing two lines of a song in harmony, with no instruments. We sang it for the first time and kind of looked at each other and said “Wow, we have a really nice blend together. Maybe we should keep doing this.” We came back to the San Francisco Bay Area after the run of the show ended and juggled both acting and music for a number of years, which is not an easy balancing act.
Sam: Our focus is more on music these days, but our history and connection to theater and acting has been as much of an influence on our music and songwriting as our favorite bands and songwriters. When it gets down to it, they are both storytelling, and both depend on the audience to complete the circle.
Q: Are you both from Davis and if not what drew you to the area?
Megan: I grew up here in Davis, and Sam grew up outside of Petaluma in rural Sonoma County. We moved to Davis from San Francisco while working on a play in Sacramento in 2008. We were thinking it would be temporary, but one thing led to another and here we are still. It’s been a great place to live for us. Not far from the bay area, we have room for a garden, and it’s pretty central in terms of touring. It’s a college town, too, so there’s a lot going on, but it still has a small town feel in a lot of ways, and we really feel part of the community.
Q: When did you know that music is what you wanted to pursue in life? When you look back is there a specific moment that you see where you were like “Yep! This is it.”?
Sam: We’ve both been singing and playing instruments since we were young, though our journeys to get to where we are now as a band were pretty different. Megan studied music and acting at University of Oregon and was totally immersed in that intensive conservatory style of music training. That was on top of the rigors of a degree in theater. I studied acting at UC Santa Cruz and was mostly self taught musically. Of course, I say that, but the truth is I learned from the people I was playing with, too. I’d written songs and performed them, mostly solo, but it wasn’t until we started playing together as a duo and a band, singing original songs, that the idea of pursuing music felt possible.
Q: How do you keep your passion for the music alive? What fuels it?
Megan: That’s not an easy thing to do all the time, that’s for sure. And having done it now for almost 20 years there have definitely been low points. I think
having each other to sing with is a huge part of what keeps us passionate about the music. When you’re singing so closely with someone else, and aiming for a sound that is one voice, not just two voices singing together, you have to reach outside yourself to the other person, and, in a way, pay as much attention to what the other person is doing as you are to what you’re doing yourself. It’s like dancing, really. And we do the same thing with our instruments. We look at what we do, especially with the blend of our voices, as something that is more than the sum of its parts.
Sam: Another part of what keeps things fresh is that we’re constantly looking for ways to grow in our approach to singing and playing together, in our live shows as well as in the studio. In our songwriting, too. Every chance to perform is an opportunity to learn and get better. You pick up so much from an audience, and the exciting part of performing is connecting to them in ways that are hard to put into words. But also, because so many of our shows are as a duo, we work hard to fill that sound out as much as we can with two voices and two instruments. It’s a challenge and a gift to find ways to express the songs as fully as we can, even when we aren’t able to play every element that might be on the album versions of the songs.
Q: What can you tell us about your upcoming album?
Megan: It was a long time coming, that’s for sure. We were scheduled to start recording it in March of 2020, but like just about everything else in the world at the time it was put on an indefinite pause. The silver lining of that time for us was that we ended up getting to spend a lot more time with these songs before getting into the studio to start recording them. We also pivoted to doing livestream shows from our living room the night after our first show was canceled. And then what had started as just a whim that first night became a weekly two-set concert every Saturday night for almost two years straight. It became a kind of community that we could connect with weekly, and those shows were like a beacon for us, keeping up our chops and our connection with our fans and friends. The new songs grew during that time, and we got to know them in ways we wouldn’t have otherwise. We could chat with the audience in real time and get a true sense of what they were connecting with in the music, and especially the new songs. These shows, connecting to people in the ways that we did, really reminded us of the healing power of music. They gave us a renewed sense of purpose heading into the studio.
Sam: There is a lot of imagery on the album about light and dark, and about looking for hope in the natural world and everyday things. Looking for ways we can reach down within ourselves and simultaneously out into the world to find that hope. Or at least trusting that it’s there, somewhere out there. We knew that once we got into the studio we wanted to stretch ourselves on this record, too. There is a wide spectrum of songs on the album in terms of style and feels, and we wanted to lean into the unclassifiable aspect of our music.
Megan: We knew that we wanted to flesh the songs out to an extent that we hadn’t before. But not just because we could, but because from when they were written these songs were conceived as more than acoustic duo songs. Our music has always been that way, but I think we’ve reached a point in our career where we felt more strongly about going there. Drums became a big part of the growth, and finding an incredible drummer who was able to play the spectrum of styles we were asking for made a huge difference in the way the process developed.
Sam: I played all of the electric guitar parts, in addition to the main acoustic parts. Megan’s main instrument is the upright bass, but when one of the songs really called for an electric bass, she picked it up and learned it. We approached each song on its own terms. We constantly asked ourselves “What does the song need? What are the lyrics telling us?” We never added things just because we thought they’d sound good, they had to reinforce what the song was saying, what the lyrics were expressing. We wanted everything to reflect back on itself. We wanted the album to be more than the sum of its parts, too.
Q: What does your creative process look like?
Megan: Sam is our main songwriter, but when it comes to arranging it’s a fully collaborative process. Adding the bass and the harmony, whichever one of us is doing it, comes next, and then we work out the dynamics of everything from there.
Sam: Megan’s ear for harmony is incredibly unique, and that is really where the songs start to take off to the next level. She’s said she uses harmony almost like a sculpting tool, to draw out the stories and the emotions in the songs, and the characters, too. The studio allowed us to go even deeper with the arrangements, both with our vocals, their intimacy and connection with each other, and instrumentally, too. It’s all about telling stories, and fleshing them out as much as we could.
Q: How would you describe your sound to someone who’s never listened before?
Megan: I think we’ve spent the past 20 years trying to figure that out, but we often say that our music ranges from folk to rock to americana, but essentially it’s vocal harmony driven storytelling.
Q: If you could only recommend one song by Misner & Smith to listen to, which song would it be and why?
Sam: That is a tough question to answer, but I think it would be the song we chose as the first single off this new album. “Anthem” is emblematic and encompasses a lot of what we do. It has elements of what we’ve been doing since the beginning, but also our evolution. It’s a song about finding hope, celebrating in the midst of darkness, and the way a melody or a song can lift us up when it feels like not much else can.
Megan: The song represents so much of the variety that is in our music. It’s a story about a character, and the lyrics are poetic and full of metaphor. We use two voices to tell that story with harmony. There are departures to unexpected places in the arrangement, too, and the tight vocal blend highlights all of it.
Q: What’s your favorite part about being on the road?
Sam: Our favorite part of being on the road is getting to see so much of this beautiful world, and to get to share something so universal with people. We’ve toured both in the U.S and overseas, and there is always something magical about showing up in a place far from home and being able to share an experience like live music with strangers and friends alike.
Megan: Seeing and experiencing new places, that’s really special and keeps things interesting. We feel incredibly lucky to be able to do that, and if there’s anything the pandemic taught us, it’s not to take any of it for granted.
Q: What’s your least favorite part?
It can be hard to be away from home for long stretches at a time. There is also a certain level of uncertainty that comes with it, too, and that can wear on you sometimes.
Q: Do either of you have a favorite performance memory you’d like to share?
Megan: We had the opportunity to do a three-week tour in Bulgaria a few years ago, putting on free shows for communities in different parts of the country. It was a kind of cultural exchange, and the concerts featured a few American songwriters and poets, as well as some Bulgarian musicians. We’d never been to Bulgaria, and knew almost nothing about it before we went, but we were blown away by how beautiful it was, and by the long and incredible history of the country. We were also reminded once again of how powerful music can be in connecting people, even when there isn’t a shared language. We performed in many different kinds of venues while we were there, but some of our favorites were the ones that were off the beaten path, in communities where shows like this one were not the norm in any way. Their genuine welcoming and appreciation for us having traveled so far to be there was truly heartwarming and humbling, to be honest.
Q: What is your favorite song to perform live and why?
Sam: At the moment I think it’s “Sadie’s Song”. There is something magical that happens when we play this one live and people are really tuned in. There have been moments where we can really feel that everyone is hanging on every note and word, and we can almost sense people sinking into their own memories and experiences, almost the way the flow of a river can stir up silt from deep down below and mix with the current of the song.
Q: Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Megan: Do we have to choose one? Ha! We love Jesca Hoop’s music. Dr. Dog is one of our favorite bands, too. Boygenius is another group we’re big fans of.
Q: If you could open for any artist of your choice, who would it be and why?
Sam: There are a lot of artists on that wish list, but one that comes to the top would be Paul Simon. His music has been a big influence on both of us for just about as long as we’ve been listening to music. He’s inspiring in terms of the way he writes such poetic lyrics that still retain a relaxed flow in the phrasing, and that his music is so rooted in melodies and harmonies.
Q: What words of wisdom would you pass on to someone that wants to be exactly where you are now?
Sam: Be curious. Be interested. Listen closely. Listen to the music that inspires you and try to figure out what it is they’re doing. Learn from what you love. So much of playing music is about listening and responding. Approach it with joy. It’s called “playing” for a reason.
Q: How do you feel the internet has impacted the music business?
Sam: That’s a big question to answer, and the truth is I think it’s what all of us musicians and songwriters are trying to figure out how to navigate. As with anything, there are positives and negatives. It’s certainly made music more accessible, and more easily shared. But the internet has also helped devalue music in the sense that it’s been commodified and relegated to “content”. You can get it for free so easily that people take it for granted because it’s everywhere.
Megan: There is a disconnect between the consumption of it, and the reality of what it takes to write and produce it. Of course, that isn’t just the case with music, the arts in general are affected in the same way. Music just happens to be one of the more intangible art forms.
Q: If you could change anything about the industry, what would it be?
Sam: I think it would be the focus on pigeonholing into genres. Pushing artists and listeners to think of music in terms of classification instead of promoting creativity and uniqueness.
Q: What’s next for you guys?
Sam: For the most part we’ll be promoting the new album. We’re working out album release shows at the moment, and some tour plans are in the works, so we’ll see where that all takes us. We’re mostly just thrilled to finally be able to share this music that we’ve been working so hard on for so long.
Q: Is there anything you’d like to add?
We’ll be playing several album release shows in Northern California including:
May 2nd – Freight & Salvage, Berkeley, CA
More info: www.thefreight.org
June 8th – McCloud River Mountain
Music, McCloud, CA
More info: www.mccloudmusic.com
To listen to Misner & Smith’s music, view tour dates and more,
please visit their website: