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[0:14] Robert Bannon: Well, welcome to the round table, everybody. My name is Robert Bannon, and you're listening to us on the Broadway Podcast Network or on Broadway World or over on social media. And we are excited. Listen, I don't know how people get ideas to be artists, but I love ideas because where in the world would you get a tenor and a cello and you would put them together and make an album of amazing music? See, I love artists because you all are so creative, and they're gonna be everywhere. They play Carnegie Hall, they sell out places everywhere, their music is out, and you can listen to it, and then they decide to get. I'm looking up this press release, and I said, EFFIE is coming on our show? Like EFFIE, like American Idol, like Postmodern Jukebox, like the famous haircut and spelling her face off EFFIE. That's why I love this damn messy show. Cello Voci, EFFIE, welcome to the show.

[1:05] EFFIE PASSERO: That was the best question ever. I'm here.

[1:08] Branden: You all are real people, and you're here.

[1:12] James: We're so happy to be here.

[1:13] Robert Bannon: I have questions. I have a lot of questions for you all. Okay, Brenden and James of the Cello Voci people. If we only know you from streaming your music, who is Brenden and who is James?

[1:28] Branden: I'm Brenden with the fake blonde hair.

[1:30] James: And I'm James with a fake Australian accent.

[1:33] Robert Bannon: Oh, do we all have to have fake accents? Because I would like a fake accent as well.

[1:36] Branden: No.

[1:40] Robert Bannon: So Brenden and James, how do you know each other? And how did you decide let's make music where someone sings and someone plays the cello?

[1:48] James: Is biblically the correct answer?

[1:50] Branden: I mean, I guess. I don't know if this is a weather-friendly podcast.

[1:53] James: We're married, so we know each other very well. We've been together for 10 years.

[1:59] Branden: 10 years romantically and nine years musically.

[2:02] Robert Bannon: Okay. So listen. My husband and I, well, we're not married yet, but we get married in May.

[2:11] Branden: Thank you.

[2:13] Robert Bannon: I love gay married people so much. It makes my heart happy. So I love that man. And I love living with him. And I love when he cooks me dinner. And I love when I get to sleep and cuddle next to him. But working together is a situation.

[2:27] James: Oh, it can be.

[2:30] Branden: It can be. We try to remind each other to be good to each other at all costs, even if we're having a stressful moment.

[2:39] James: Like we can be stressed, but it doesn't take away from the idea that we should always respect each other and put our love first.

[2:46] Branden: So we do that as often as possible. And if we have a moment where we're not climbed up on that same page, we're very quick to resolve it and apologize and be like, you know what? I'm so sorry. But that always makes the point that we genuinely like to hang out together. Like we really like spending time with one another.

[3:05] James: If we were not married, we'd be great friends.

[3:07] Branden: Just anyhow. So like spending all this time together, like literally all of it, is not a problem because we genuinely like being around each other. We're like very, very connected. It's almost frightening. We're very similar people and have very similar taste about everything and sensibility.

[3:27] Robert Bannon: I love that so much, and I joke and kid about Darius, but he's my best friend. So I and he sings, but he doesn't sing professionally, he's not out on the road. But if he played the cello, I would be like, You're gonna be the cheapest musician I could find because I'm married to you, so get that cello and get to playing. I like this. That's how I pictured it all happening for you guys. And then so I and so it and so EFFIE, when we look at you, and we know you, you're LA, Mexico singing, American Idol, but belting your teeth out literally for millions and millions of people on television and touring this country. How do you know these two crazy guys?

[4:06] EFFIE PASSERO: So we actually met in Puerto Vallarta about four years ago, and we just kind of fell in love with each other's personalities, and obviously the creativity was spontaneous between the three of us, and we started doing virtual concerts during the pandemic, and then I just kind of kept organically growing and growing, and now they're stuck with me. I'm never leaving.

[4:34] Branden: And now she's never and now they're just a thruple touring the country together.

[4:40] James: We need to each other cello dolce, just a thruple.

[4:43] Branden: Yeah, just a thruple, but a cool name, yeah.

[4:46] Robert Bannon: I love it, and I you know, all the Puerto Vallarta is where all the cool gays go to party and vacation. So I'm I love that you were all there. Effie, I don't know if you know this, but like you have like a hundred thousand listeners a month over on the Spotify, and people are listening to your voice and listening to your music. What and I'm sure people ask you to sing and you get asked to sing and offer to sing on a whole bunch of records. Why these gentlemen? What about what they do makes you feel like it's part of your realm of your art?

[5:16] EFFIE PASSERO: Honestly, the music came second. I think it was the friendship and the gelling of our personalities and me. I'm such like a lone wolf kind of girl, usually. So I like to observe what's happening around me before I kind of dive into anything in life. So when we kind of started hanging out for the first couple virtual concerts we did together, it was like, man, this friendship is gonna be so great. I could tell it was so natural and easygoing and earnest and beautiful. And so as the music got more serious, and the arrangements that we started doing got more serious, I got more serious into my investment into this thruple. So yeah, I mean, the music that we create is so beautiful now. Imagine, you know, in the next couple years as this project keeps growing, it's just gonna be nuts.

[6:13] Robert Bannon: So Brenden and James, your album is out right now, and I want people to be able to listen to the album and know that wherever you're streaming the album, you can absolutely get listen to wherever you listen to music, and all of this music is out and things you I have questions. So I'm a musician as well. Well, I sing, and so I guess that means I'm a musician kind of so my question to you is I'm obsessed with arrangements because if you know you're taking covers, there's songs on here, and no everyone loves a mashup. Everyone wants to hear two songs that we don't necessarily think we're gonna put together, and you have a bunch of bangers on this album that are so unique. So, who makes the arrangements? Who is the one that puts them together?

[6:58] Branden: Look, I'm the people give me credit for the arranging, but what I do is the nuts and bolts thing. I gotta give these two the credit mostly for the big ideas. They are phenomenal artists who are able to play or sing something and then think, oh, this would be a really great thing with that, and then I'll like kind of table it as it were, and then I'll be like, Oh, yeah, what about this? And then you know, we kind of mix it. It's usually a collaborative. Effie came to the brought to the thruple a backlog of a bunch of mashups already that we've kind of taken on board and we always work to give the cello a voice. So in the kind of working out of our trio, we kind of are always thinking about how to incorporate the cello in that way. But yeah, while I might be the guy that writes the dots on the paper for other people to perform with us, and so I'm the arranger in that sense, I would say that these two really are the big idea people.

[7:57] James: Um, and often it's their brainchild that kind of gets us moving in a certain direction.

[8:06] Branden: It might be our brainchild, but if we had to write the dots on the page, which he does very neatly, ours would look more like a children's coloring book.

[8:13] James: Yeah, doctor, yeah.

[8:17] Robert Bannon: I was gonna say Dr. Matter, but Raccoon is well, there's 11 tracks on the album, so you're talking about songs like Happy Days Are Here Again and Get Happy to Hallelujah to I Put a Spell on You and House of the Rising Sun, and this the lead single was The Prayer and Imagine. But like I'm talking about, like you're talking about Chasing Cars in the Rose, or you're talking about Bésame Mucho and Hotel California, like their songs you know, but they're done in a way that you have never heard of them before. When people speak to you three about their music, your fans, the people that come to see you in concert from Carnegie Hall to literally around this world. What do you hope your music elicits out of the listener? Like, are we supposed to vacuum the house and listen to it? Are we supposed to have a date night on a Friday? Like, where do you want us to do while we listen to this album?

[9:03] Branden: Oh, I feel like a nice bath with a glass of wine, that's a nice one.

[9:09] James: Oh, cooking a fabulous meal at home.

[9:11] Branden: Yeah.

[9:12] James: Yeah.

[9:14] Branden: Or driving, um, I don't know, people a lot of people listen to our music while they're driving.

[9:19] James: Driving, yeah.

[9:19] Branden: Um, if you're having a breakup.

[9:19] James: Oh yeah, definitely we got the music for breakups.

[9:24] Branden: I bring most of those to the table.

[9:30] Robert Bannon: So what was how are you both the singers of the group no shade to cellist of the extraordinaire but the singers of the group how do you approach singing like you're talking about The Prayer, the single that came out so how do you approach singing you know a legendary vocal that is very iconic of it's Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion or you're taking Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand or you're taking they're they're iconically solidified in our brain so how do you as a singer get in the booth and not feel like you're gonna do a rendition that's compared to what we all know how do you bring yourself to those songs?

[9:28] EFFIE PASSERO: I think the biggest thing that you already said is like just have it in your mind to compare yourself and don't drive yourself crazy thinking oh there's no way I'm gonna sound as good as Celine Dion, but try to think of it as breathing new air into a song and making it fresh and introducing, you know, just your true self into this piece of music and it's been covered by pretty much everyone on planet earth, but that's because it's a song that doesn't need to be changed, or you know, it's just a perfect piece of music.

[10:37] Robert Bannon: So, um, all you can do is bring your genuine self to this piece. So that's what I had to do because I was nervous. I absolutely absolutely understand. So when we go see you in live when that you're touring with this album, and when you're out there together, what is a live show like? Like, is it just the cello and the voice? Are there other instruments that join you on stage? Is what kind of evening do we expect? What's the set list like?

[11:03] Branden: Um, our shows are very piano heavy. James and EFFIE and I all play piano in performance. So that's kind of, you know, makes us—we always thought about calling our shows musical chairs because we're constantly switching places and doing things. We also use a fair amount of orchestral tracks that we custom make and record or have producers record for us. Um, and then there's a lot of comedy and variety in the things that we banter about too. Uh, speaking to EFFIE talking about our friendship, we never have—some people have called us the three stooges on stage because we just kind of are stupid and muck around and act like fools. Um, which, you know, is a nice contrast to a lot of the serious slow sad songs that can present themselves um in a CelloVoci show.

[11:55] Robert Bannon: I think I'm obsessed with the whole idea of what you all do and what goes on on stage and your style of music. Do you get pushback from the business of music? Because it's unique. What you're doing is not what is done on necessarily—you're taking classic songs, you're putting them in a semi-classical style, you're putting out music that necessarily is classics, they're for people who love music. So, what do you say to people who maybe want you guys to be something that you're not? Or say, do you get pushback about the tracks you picked? Do they want you to be anything that you're not? And this is who you all are. You're such original artists, all of you.

[12:37] Branden: Yeah, this is our first record together, uh, which we just released, and really our debut concert as CelloVoci is tomorrow night in Carnegie Hall. I don't know, what wasn't supposed to timestamp it, sorry about that. Um, because I'm not sure when this is airing, but uh I guess the truth is that we don't know if we're gonna get any pushback yet. So far as we've performed as Brenden James with special guest EFFIE PASSERO, we haven't met anything like that before. I hope we won't in the future, but it's kind of—we're still in the experimental stage and really crafting and finding what our sound is.

[13:13] Robert Bannon: How do you all feel about playing Carnegie Hall? Now I know we timestamped it, and I know this is gonna air next week, and it's a week after the show, and I'm sure the show was amazing, and there were standing ovations and reviews, and there were so many encores, you guys had to come out and sing happy birthday. I know that my question to you all is how do you feel about playing Carnegie Hall?

[13:46] EFFIE PASSERO: Um, that's a good question. I think the way that you said Carnegie Hall is about how I embodied it. That was—that's pretty much how I'm feeling about it. I don't know, it's kind of a huge pinch-me moment because it's our names on the marquee, it's our show, and it went up there as part of something else, and that feels just like an achievement in itself, and then um we've sold it out, and that also feels like another level of achievement, and also um a little bit overwhelming because I know how much great energy is gonna be in the room and how much love and support. Like we've got family coming from all over, and it's just gonna be so much fun. In fact, I couldn't think of a more perfect way to craft an evening at Carnegie Hall than the way that it's panned out with so much love and support from all over the place coming for it.

It's just gonna be, I know it's just gonna be fun. I'm not even like nervous about making a mistake or anything. It's just I just know that it's gonna be fun, and I'm gonna be there to have fun, and I think that's—I mean, that's kind of why we do this anyway, right? I'm gonna try to suck up every moment. I'm already sad that it's gonna go by so fast.

[15:02] Robert Bannon: Yeah, it's gonna be quite the emotional evening. Absolutely, and I want you all to know like we get the receipts, everybody that they all bring, besides this venture, and we know EFFIE's receipts because we talked about them, but I want people to know. Firstly, Brenden, you released a memoir in 2020 that was out on Amazon Books, like a number nine release. This is not, you know, a salacious romance novel. This is not a political, juicy autobiography. You put out a book that charted on the Amazon charts about music, about what you do. You have all—some of you perform with people like Idina Menzel and Olivia Newton-John and Bernadette Peters. You've been raved about—people, like this is not just people in their garage that picked up a cello and decided to sing Andrea Bocelli. You guys have each individually created this giant career on your own and worked on your own, and then it's like Captain Planet when your powers combine.

[15:54] Branden: Yes, Captain Planet.

[15:56] Robert Bannon: Thank you. I feel really good right now. So it's important for us as artists to hear that, you know, we spent our whole lives honing our craft, and I really appreciate you recognizing that because sometimes I forget myself.

[16:09] EFFIE PASSERO: Absolutely.

[16:09] Robert Bannon: So what is different about this album that Chasing Dreams was an album in 2020 and had people like Shoshana Bean on it, and you guys were picked from as like the best unsigned artists in North America. So what have—what has changed from your sound and your experience from 2020 to a new album out? What have you learned from the last release?

[16:29] Branden: Well, recording albums are really tricky. I never like the way personally that I sound when I hear myself back on a recording. Um, it's not very gratifying to sing into an empty room without any acoustics. Um, it's completely unforgiving. But with that, so the recording process is always tedious and not that much fun. But I would say that what's different about Happy Days versus Chasing Dreams is you can—you learn so much along the way, mostly in live performance, about what kind of emotion to put into your music, and because a recording microphone picks up every single nuance there ever was. Um, you just—as you get older and wiser, you kind of—I don't know, you learn to roll with the punches.

[17:17] EFFIE PASSERO: Yeah, yeah, and you know what to do when you want to do it. You learn so much from one recording project to another, and having EFFIE lending her voice to what we do has created this elegance and this sort of shine and sheer that wasn't in our sound before, and I really—I'm kind of obsessed with it at the moment.

[17:40] Robert Bannon: Well, EFFIE, I'm obsessed with it, and EFFIE, I'm gonna go home and switch for my bathroom, and I'm gonna play this album with my husband while he cooks. And it's EFFIE, you say that you're a musical theater baby and that you have projects and ideas lined up, so we're ready for like more full EFFIE albums, theater pieces, cabaret shows, one-person show. Like, we need all of that.

[18:01] EFFIE PASSERO: Yeah, I have—you know, we all have some ideas for things in the can, but I definitely—I'm writing a Batman musical, and I really want to finish that one. I want that to be like my opus. Um, it's a Batman drag show, so that would be amazing.

[18:22] Robert Bannon: A Batman drag show, yeah.

[18:24] EFFIE PASSERO: I will go to Puerto Vallarta and I will stay on CelloVoci's couch to catch that.

[18:28] Robert Bannon: I—this—when I—when Dan Fortune, who has helped book this interview, told me about this. I listened to all of your music, and then I told Dan that we would only do this interview if the three of them showed up at my wedding in New Jersey in May and played my reception and my ceremony for free. So thank you.

[18:46] Branden: Wow, yeah, I didn't mean the day where we're calling it.

[18:52] Robert Bannon: So we might be able to make it happen. So thank you for agreeing to that as the terms of this 18-minute interview. And I—and I—no, what I'm telling you is everybody listening right now, no matter what you're doing, no matter what's going on, you should stop what you're doing and you should listen to this beautiful album. And please listen to it from beginning to end. Don't just listen to a single because they put a lot of effort and time into recording each track and the story that the album tells. So I'm a big proponent of let's go back to the day where we would listen to something from the beginning to end and really take the journey that you guys painstakingly put us on.

[19:23] EFFIE PASSERO: Like Beyoncé does.

[19:25] Robert Bannon: Like right. You can't just listen to one of those tracks, you have to listen to the whole album takes you on a journey.

[19:30] Branden: We want the whole journey.

[19:31] Robert Bannon: Well, I want you all to break legs. Congratulations about Carnegie Hall. I'm sure it's going to be amazing. You can follow them all. The links will be below us. So you can follow everyone on social media so that you can stay up to date on the next projects, where they're going to be around the world, and you can get the music. And wherever the music is, you need to stream Happy Days right now. The album is out. Look at this. Is the happiest thruple I've ever seen. I never thought—I never thought they really work, but this might be it.

[19:57] EFFIE PASSERO: If we could tell you the stories about that photo shoot, thank you all for making time and spending time with us. We're so happy and grateful we're doing what you're doing, and thanks for being here.

[20:08] Branden: Thank you so much, brother.