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Josh Max: Lead singer/guitars/songwriter

Musician. Journalist. Raconteur. World traveler. Interfaith Minister. New Yorker Josh Max has packed continual adventure into his life like passengers pack an A train in rush hour.

Max moved to Manhattan after high school and began performing on the subway and in Washington Square Park. He soon landed a corporate sponsorship and was hired to play more than 200 shows playing Irish music in Irish bars in the 5 boroughs of New York City over a year and a half---but abandoned the Irish tunes after a patron accused him of being a phony. Instead he switched his repertoire to straight rockabilly---the Sun Records period of Elvis, Eddie Cochran, Carl Perkins and screaming audiences never let him turn back. He was asked to perform three shows at the U.S. Olympics in Atlanta Georgia and subsequently sold 5,000 copies of a cassette he made in his bedroom of original songs titled "A Fat Lot O'Good". He met singer Julie James shortly afterward, they teamed up and here they are with their second album.

Max was the 1999 recipient of a grant by Jim Beam’s “Emerging Artists” program. Max is also a journalist, writing car and motorcycle reviews for various national magazines and newspapers. He is currently Auto Correspondent for the NY Daily News.

Julie James: Lead singer/percussion

"Iron-lunged vocalist..." The New Yorker

"The classically trained Julie James can go from guttural to operatic in nothin' flat." MurphGuide

Julie James roars like a tigress, whispers like a bird, and posesses the enviable talent of spontaneously shushing audiences when she opens her mouth to sing with or without amplification.

After attending Cincinnati and Boston Conservatories, New York City beckoned in the 90s and Julie found herself living a few blocks from Times Square. Having begun her career on the legitimate stage, appearing in productions at concert halls across the country in both opera and musical theatre, she joined the Outfit in 1998. Julie decided she liked being out front, and quickly developed her onstage persona of an unapologetically voluptuous woman with a voice that can be heard across all boroughs with no microphone.

Currently she is frequently heard singing parody songs on the Howard Stern show such as "Vending Machine" (spoof on Abba's "Dancing Queen) and "Artie Loves Pancakes" (Bonnie Tyler's "It's a Heartache") as well as dozens of bits, jingles, and voice-overs galore at red-hot Sirius Satellite Radio. Julie's vocals snagged a 2006 New York Festivals' World Gold Award for "Martha Stewart's Bohemian Recipe".

And everyone else? What of them?

Right now we are really digging Regina Spektor, The Bird and the Bee, Rufus, & Amy Winehouse. Other obsessions include: Beatles, Zeppelin, Hank Williams, Gershwin, Berlin, Porter, Chuck Berry, Ella Fitzgerald, Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps, Elvis P. and C., Hanna-Barbara, Dwight Yoakum, k.d. lang, Mel Torme, Rhino's Brain In A Box, Nuggets I, Yes, Puccini, Verdi, Bugs Bunny, Ray Charles, Al Jolson, Jeff Buckley, Floyd, Neil Young, Esquivel, Squeeze, Sara Vaughan, Nick Drake, Louis Prima & Keely Smith, Ravel, Debussy, Inara George, Roy Orbison, Mamas & Papas, Sondheim, Ultra-Lounge, Beck.. Oh honestly, just too many to name. We become obsessed with some strange and often obscure piece or artist, fixate on it for a while, only to leave it behind when distracted away by the next one. We are also oddly fascinated by really bad music.

A Rockabilly guitarist with Gershwin at heart met an Opera singer who could belt her lungs out and decided to make music together.

Swipecat Records