“Whatever element that attracted people to come to the theater tonight, whether they heard us on the radio or have heard us (live) before, it goes beyond just fan and artist. There is something deeper here that is really hard to put your finger on, but it is very emotional and very gratifying to have this kind of support,” says Cilette Swann, one-half of the husband and wife musical duo, Gypsy Soul.

 

I met with Swann and Roman Morykit, the other half of this congenial twosome, about an hour before they were going to perform at Seattle Washington’s The Triple Door. Gypsy Soul has managed to succeed and flourish in an environment where so many fail. Independent artists, especially those who defy genre labelling and simply do not fit into commercial radio’s nice, tightly packaged formats regularly wither and die on the music industry’s version of heartbreak ridge. Gypsy Soul, on the other hand, regularly sells out major venues across the country and their legions of fans are eagerly awaiting the release of their ninth CD. To date Gypsy Soul has sold more than 100,000 CDs and their fans have downloaded in excess of 1.5 million of their tunes from MP3.com. The music of Gypsy Soul has aired in fourteen different countries. Major film and television studios have nodded in their direction, with the inclusion of Gypsy Soul’s music on TV’s Providence, Felicity, Roswell, The Young & Restless, MTV Specials and Movies of the Week. The duo’s music has also appeared in the major motion pictures Quick Sand and After Sex. It therefore, prompted this journalist to ask, how they have been able to become so successful, even though their music cannot be categorized and they do not have a major music label’s marketing machine behind them.

 

“Essentially, we had no plan B and we said that we were going to have to make this work. We went out and found where the audiences were, at a time when theaters didn’t know who we were and wouldn’t hire us. We went and we did art and wine festivals,” says Swann.

 

Swann says, “We did a swap meet (flea market or marketplace) in LA where there are thirty thousand people every weekend.

 

“We used to play at shopping malls, which is how it all started. In those types of environments, you are playing for people who absolutely are not there to hear your music. They are not interested (in you) and we had to figure out how to get people’s attention, without being that (he mimics a circus tune) circus act,” says Morykit.

 

Swann elaborates, “It wasn’t busking, because we were somehow affiliated with the venues. We would set up our equipment, sing live, sell our CDs and talk to people. We would do this for ten to twelve hours per day. “

 

“We would go to wine festivals where there was a jury process just to get in, but then you would set up your booth along where all the other booths were. We would be there on the corner, play our CDs, meet people and sign CDs. That is basically how we built our audience along the west coast,” says Morykit.

 

They indeed built their audience along the west coast of the United States as on this evening, there was not an empty seat at The Triple Door and Gypsy Soul’s fans lined up for more than an hour after the concert had ended, to get autographs, buy their music, shake their hands or simply say hello.

 

Swann describes those early years of their careers as gruelling and tells how they would travel upwards of forty thousand miles each year. “During the past five or six years we have just done theaters. We mad that commitment and thought that we had enough fans that we had garnered along the way, that we felt we could fill theaters now and that is what we have done,” she says.