Julia and Danny St. Pierre never thought they would release an album of original songs – much less one that chronicled their journey of getting divorced and then remarried.
Husband and wife duo Danny and Julia St. Pierre of Santa Monica regularly perform around Southern California as part of the Tom Petty tribute band, Petty Theft. When COVID-19 shut down the world and they suddenly found ample time on their hands, the couple got into a recording studio with producer and guitarist Ed Tree and put songs together in the mix of Americana, country and rock that reflects the musical upbringing of their Texas roots. Once they started recording the songs, Julia said, they realized they could not avoid writing about their marriage and reconnection – and the band’s first album, “Luck and Gravity,” was born.
“That became the theme kind of by accident,” Julia said. “Once we started writing songs, then you realize what you're writing songs about.”
One of the scariest parts of releasing the album, Julia said, was being open to sharing her and her husband’s love story. The couple originally married in 1990, later divorced and then remarried in 2017. In making an album of original music for the first time, Danny said that performing songs written from the heart is more vulnerable than performing someone else’s music.
“We were absolutely terrified,” Danny said. “We’ve done a couple shows where we’ve done five or six of the original songs, and it is terrifying. People don’t know this material. … It’s very different than playing Tom Petty songs for a crowd of people yelling ‘Free Fallin’.”
The couple worked with Tree at The Treehouse recording studio in San Gabriel. Between Danny and Tree, the couple had a significant collection of guitars at their disposal, including Telecasters, Rickenbackers, Gretsches and Gibsons.
One song that particularly resonates, Julia said, is “You Steady Me.”
“I’m afraid that when I sing the bridge, I'm going to get emotional, because it just says, on the last line of the bridge, ‘I am so glad that you are here,’ and for him, it’s true,” Julia said. “I think the best performances of songs are when you mean the words.”
But more than anything, Danny said, he hopes the songs will stick in people’s head and give them music they can dance along to with a deeper meaning as well.
“If you sing a love song that somebody else wrote, versus singing a love song that you wrote about the person standing next to you on stage and sharing that with everybody, you feel very vulnerable,” he said.
But after taking the leap of releasing original music, the lyrics have resonated with people.
“The opening line of the song called ‘Taking Me Back’ is ‘30,000 feet above the Texas terrain, and I can’t believe that I’m leaving again,” Danny said. “Somebody just sort of said that back to me after, after we performed it.”
Saint Pierre will release “Luck and Gravity” on Oct. 17 and hold their album release concert at TRiP Santa Monica on Oct. 18, a local bar and music venue located at 2101 Lincoln Blvd.
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By SAM MULICK