Singer/songwriter couple makes concert film with Tecumseh Center for the Arts

TECUMSEH — Drew DeFour and Kin Curran are a husband-and-wife singer/songwriter team who have toured the world for the past 10 years together.

The couple recently made a 90-minute film in collaboration with the Tecumseh Center for the Arts. The film will be online until June 30 and the cost is $20 for the family. The film can be accessed as many times as the viewer would like until it is no longer online.

To purchase tickets, go to www.thetca.org/tickets.html or tecumsehcenterforthearts.vbotickets.com/events. Direct questions to the TCA at 517-423-6617.

They chose the TCA because of the friendly nature of the director and staff.

“There’s just a real strong friendship with the director of the theater, the staff, everyone there that we don’t really have with anyone else in Michigan or even the Midwest,” DeFour said.

The bulk of the couple’s work has been playing covers of other songs in piano bars. The pair has also secured a record deal in Japan and has put out its own releases. This was an opportunity to get their music out into the world. DeFour has been working at piano bars since he was 19 years old.

“For the past 20 years, I’ve been in piano bars mostly where you’re not really building a name for yourself. You’re just the ... I usually refer to it as the tall guy in the piano bar," DeFour said. "I’ve played about 100 piano bars across the country, but I’ve also released a lot of records and made a lot of original music. So my wife and I have been trying more and more to go the route of singer/songwriter venues and really start to play our original music.”

They got a chance to do some during the pandemic when everything was shut down. They livestreamed about 200 concerts from their basement. Doing so, they got a sense of which songs were well received.

“That's how we stayed afloat, and we actually did quite well with that thanks to the support of a lot of friends, family and fans,” DeFour said.

Hailing from Detroit, DeFour and Curran had played at the TCA previously in dueling piano shows and got to know the staff very well. DeFour said he was so close to TCA executive director Kelly Jo Gilmore they shared pictures of their kids with one another. That relationship as well as the couple’s relationship with the remainder of the TCA staff led them to choose to make the film in Tecumseh.

“It was like family and it didn’t feel like that distance you have with most business relationships or venues," DeFour said. "You can tell a lot about a place by the way that they meet you when you pull up and the way that they treat you when you just try to do basic things. They just want you to give your best show and therefore they are absolutely upping their game in trying to accommodate what you need.”

Gilmore began to ask the couple about their original songs.

“I would say we put on some of our best shows live there when we played the dueling piano shows,” DeFour said. “But after that Kelly Jo was just asking us about our original music a lot and it’s something that a lot of people were turned onto with the music videos we had made with our own original songs.”

Gilmore and the couple had planned a live concert at the TCA and then COVID-19 hit and it was placed on the back burner.

As things became better with the vaccines being introduced to the public, they began planning the concert again, but then the delta variant became dominant.

“We actually signed contracts and we were going to perform, you know, Drew and Kin, playing our music and as misfortune would have it, once delta started rearing its ugly head, we decided it would be safer maybe not to do a live show,” DeFour said. “So we canceled the show and she (Gilmore) asked if we would like to do other virtual shows, a streaming show. And I said, we’ve done over 200 of these we’re kind of burned out on the streaming shows.”

The couple had recently paired up with a production company and made a feature film. It is a fictional narrative taking place in a piano bar drawing on the couple’s experience playing in piano bars. The film has 30 original songs.

“The idea is when you make a film you have these advantages that you don’t have when you’re there live. For instance, you can get 2 inches away from my hands on the piano or you can get right up in someone’s face and show their emotion when they’re singing,” DeFour said. “You can design light schemes that reflect the emotion of the songs. You can get perspectives and change the angles to suit the song. This is what makes film making an art form apart from the live theater experience.”

The couple asked Gilmore if she would be interested in a film incorporating these elements.

“So she and the theater, they got sponsors and money together to hire us and a film crew to put together this 90-minute production,” DeFour said.

The film crew and the couple tried to form interesting concepts to make every song a little bit more special than a couple of people singing music to a camera.

“So we have some interactive development with a virtual crowd," DeFour said. "We have tango dancers performing in one of the songs. We have really, really cool setups that we’ve created like we have our rocket rolls setup, grand piano setup, this misfit theater prop set that we made and also got an awesome painting from the Tecumseh Center for the Arts. We talked a lot about optimism, we talked about hope. We made it a thematic piece instead of 100 songs. I stayed away from anything that was political, anything that was too lovey dovey, which is fine, but let’s pick pieces that the theme is hope and optimism and uplifting. Fun was another concept. We need entertainment.”

At a glance

WHAT: "Drew & Kin: Alive in Tecumseh" concert film

WHEN: Streaming online until June 30

COST: $20 for unlimited viewing

BUY: www.thetca.org

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Singer/songwriter couple makes film with Tecumseh Center for the Arts