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Tyro Marks puts to song the common experiences that touch each of us on our own journeys from child- to adult-hood. Sometimes bittersweet, sometimes joy-infused, Tyro Marks’ universal lyrics come from a place of solitudinal nostalgia. When you hear Tyro Marks, you’ll feel like you’re curling up in the backseat of your parents’ station wagon, driving five hundred miles on a family road trip; you’ll remember how it felt to lose your first love; you’ll realize that special feeling of meeting someone new, like floating down a placid river under a full moon.

The raw creativity of Tyro Marks takes place in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a long way from home. Steven Cohen, guitar teacher, singer and classically-trained musician, packed his van some summer morning three years ago and drove the long 2,500 miles to Brooklyn from Arizona with the love of his life. Stopping in dusty old towns along the way, on warm quiet nights under the Western stars, he would sit with his guitar, his notepaper and pencil and sketch out his retrospectives on life and the lives of others who have touched him. So much of what he wrote would become the inspiration for Tyro Marks three years later.

While Steven was making his way out to Brooklyn, Laura Torma, opera, folk, gospel and a-cappella chameleon, was packing her car in a small suburban town in Maryland. She drove, singing all the way, with her two cats, karaoke machine and a bottle of kimchi in tow, with a dream to bring her melancholic but pure voice to New York City.

Steven and Laura, having played together since November, 2007, have a down-to-earth collaboration that’s winning over audiences who’ve described spending an evening with Tyro Marks like “taking a road trip with your friends down memory lane”.