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In 2021, when singer-songwriter Danni Lee Parpan recorded her album Truth Teller, she invited her friend, composer and artist Caroline Shaw, to join her in the studio to add some harmony vocals. By all accounts, the session was rough going, and for a very simple reason, according to Shaw: “I fell in love that day.”
“Caroline had schoolyard church giggles,” Parpan remembers. “I was totally oblivious. I was like, ‘What’s wrong with this person? I thought she was very good at music.’”
The session was eventually a success. But perhaps the most important outcome of the experience was that it kickstarted a romantic relationship that brought Shaw to Portland and the creation of Ringdown, the pair’s musical project that released its debut album, Lady on the Bike, last Friday.
Just as their voices dovetail so beautifully together, the new LP smoothly brings together the two circuitous musical paths that the couple was, and remains, on. Shaw is best known for her contemporary classical compositions that have, over the years, earned her a Pulitzer Prize and multiple Grammy Awards, while Parpan’s work, anchored by her ukulele, sits comfortably in the modern folk zone.
For the couple, working together at first as Ringdown, the goal was to, as Parpan puts it, “make something that is unlike any of those things.” They looked to projects like Sylvan Esso and Tune-Yards for inspiration and reached out to a more electro-pop vibe as heard on the pulsating “My Turn” and the club-ready “Two-Step.” But eventually, their singular voices started to poke through their collective efforts. “It’s still unlike what we do individually,” Parpan says, “but heavily influenced by both of our backgrounds.”
Even though other artists were involved in the making of Lady on the Bike, including members of local band New Body Electric and the ensemble Sō Percussion, there’s an intimate quality to the album. At times, it’s as if we’re peering through an open window as they create this music from scratch around the upright piano in their shared home. Neither Shaw nor Parpan were surprised to hear me describe the album in that way, recounting a disagreement they had about the chorus of “Reckoning,” one of the first songs they wrote together as Ringdown.
“I wanted the chorus to be, ‘I love you/of course I love you,’” Parpan recalls, “and Caroline was like, ‘You can’t give that all away up front like that!’ But I think that was the Band-Aid ripoff. This is going to be vulnerable and authentic, and we’re not going to play games.”
Being unguarded with one another also extends to the difficult work of getting a song into shape through writing and rehearsal. They’ve had to learn how to give and receive constructive criticism with one another and, for Parpan at least, be willing to go out on the proverbial limb when playing live.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever done a show with Caroline where she hasn’t added something wild that we’ve never heard before to at least two of the tracks,” she says, “where I’m like, OK! Keeping us on our toes!”
There’s also something to be said about the confidence that comes with making music with a loved one, or at least a collaborator whom you trust implicitly. There’s a willingness to take chances and scurry down avenues that may not yield anything usable, knowing that someone’s got your back every step of the way. And as Ringdown has been busy promoting this record with big-ticket gigs at South by Southwest and the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn., that level of trust can extend to the audience as well.
“Onstage, we’re doing slightly different versions of the songs with just ourselves and the instruments we have there,” Shaw says. “There’s a real honesty to being like, ‘Hi, we’re humans and we’re making this for you and with you.’ People seem to have been really responding to that. It feels important to make music that way. I’m all in favor of human imperfection these days.”