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All Music Guide:
Born in western Massachusetts, Deb Talan started classical piano and clarinet at an early age. At ten, she began writing and composing her own music, and by high-school graduation had composed a score to the local production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. After graduating from high school, she moved west to Portland, OR. In Portland, she formed a folk-pop trio, Hummingfish, which performed throughout the Northwest for over five years. The band released two albums, Hover and Love Traktor, and garnered much acclaim. But near the band's end, Talan began focusing and writing material for a solo career, and after the group disbanded in 1999, she returned east to Boston.
Upon arriving in Boston, she entered the studio to record Something Burning, which was released in the fall of 1999. The album won Acoustic Guitar magazine's Homegrown CD Award as well as earning three Boston Music Award nominations. Her growing fan base also led to performances at prestigious folk festivals, where Talan shared the stage with Suzanne Vega, Sarah Harmer, and John Prine, among many others. Talan's songs have been featured in television shows such as Felicity and Dawson's Creek. Her songs have also been part of compilations featuring Bruce Springsteen and Aimee Mann. In 2002 she released her second album, Sincerely. Talan is also part of the folk-pop duo the Weepies, with Steve Tannen.
Wikipedia:
Deborah Ruth "Deb" Talan (born January 27, 1968) is an American singer-songwriter. She is best known for being part of the folk-pop duo The Weepies.
Early life and career [edit]
Born in suburban Massachusetts outside of Boston, Talan grew up in the small town of Pelham, Massachusetts and attended Amherst Regional High School (ARHS). She later attended Brown University, where she was a member of the Chattertocks, Brown's oldest all-female a cappella group, before moving to Oregon, where she was a member of Hummingfish, a Portland band, for six years.
Talan's recurring lyrical motifs include celestial objects, birds, nature, and various historical figures (e.g., Marc Chagall in "Painting By Chagall," Amelia Earhart in "Thinking Amelia," and Vincent van Gogh in "Vincent").
Jonathan Lethem’s novel Motherless Brooklyn inspired Deb Talan to write "Tell Your Story Walking". This song appears on the 2002 album Songs Inspired by Literature (Chapter One), a benefit of the organization Artists for Literacy. "Tell Your Story Walking" was the winner of Artists for Literacy’s 2002 songwriting contest.
In addition to The Weepies' albums, Talan and Tannen collaborated with singer/actress Mandy Moore on her 2007 album Wild Hope. Together, they wrote and recorded five songs with Mandy — the single "Extraordinary," the title track "Wild Hope," "All Good Things," "Few Days Down" and "Looking Forward to Looking Back."
"Forgiven" played over the closing credits of the 2001 movie Lovely & Amazing.
Personal life [edit]
Currently, she resides in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and musical partner Steve Tannen and their three sons, Theo Samuel (b. October 2007), Alexander (b. February 2010) and Nicholas Levi (b. June 2012). Together they are the indie pop-folk duo The Weepies.