Without music, how many would never have fallen in love? Without love, how many songs would have never been written? And yet two musicians in an intimate relationship sounds like romantic chaos. Not so for respected local low-end specialist (sousaphone/bass) Matt Perrine and wife Debbie Davis, best known for her interpretations of songs by the Boswell Sisters and Andrews Sisters as a member of the internationally renowned Pfister Sisters. Together and apart, Perrine and/or Davis perform almost daily, playing everywhere from Late Night with David Letterman to the New Orleans Public Library. Their fairy-tale musical journey together begins at Jazz Fest 1997, but perhaps really takes off during one of the couple’s first serious collaborations at the now- defunct Warehouse District bar, the Mermaid Lounge.
“Debbie, I, and Davis Rogan did the music from Tommy live, one night only during Jazz Fest,” Perrine recalls, “with very minimal staging, and with Davis Rogan as the Pinball Wizard. It was ferocious. In the movie Tommy, the mother throws a champagne bottle into the television and out come these baked beans and chocolate, and Ann Margaret has a psychedelic freak-out, rolling around in all this on the bearskin rug. When it got to that point in our show, Debbie actually stepped down off stage into this kiddie pool. The band is riffing and Debbie’s rolling around in the beans and the chocolate. That was the end of the first act.” …
“I then had to go out back and get hosed off,” Davis interjects. “And now I am nominated for OffBeat’s Female Vocalist of 2010.”
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