Lead Vocals and Rhythm Guitar: 

Alaina has performed for decades with jazz, blues, rock/punk/garage groups, learning from musicians and coaches while living and working in cities like Tampa, Lincoln, Chicago, Moscow, Perm, Prague, Nashville, Ann Arbor/Detroit . . .

The singing started in the car: radio ads on the roads up the Gulf Coast, up North through the mountains, then West to Nebraska.  Public school there offered hours every day of musical training:  jazz swing choir, classical concert choir, musical theater, madrigals . . . (after school, punk mix tapes).

In Chicago, Alaina recorded and performed  with garage/punk band Barbie Army (vocals and guitar), and sang in city bars and churches with the Hyde Park UC  Jazz Ensemble.  

She recorded her own originals with the jazz ensemble Con Alma, singing jazz and blues standards with them in Moscow in a Friday  residency with the Arbat Blues Club.  In the city of Perm,  she performed and recorded with the folk-rock group Dom.  

On Bass: 

As  a teen, Denise was drawn to the 1980s underground music scene in her hometown of Phoenix, AZ.  Fascinated by bass, she tried to play along with her favorite cassette tapes but didn’t play seriously.  

Much later (like, decades) Denise crossed paths with Alaina, and her ears perked up when Alaina said she was seeking a bass player for So Say We All.  So Denise picked up a bass and got serious!  

Today she is psyched about playing any songs where she can bring in interesting and distinctive bass lines.  

On Lead Guitar and Vocals: 

Paul saw hippies play guitar on trains and the streets of San Francisco as a little boy in the 60s. A little girl sold him an acoustic for $13.50. He taught himself to play off the Beatles records he'd grown up knowing by heart. Flash forward to The Specials, Iggy Pop, U2, Joan Jett, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Billy Idol, and the Psychedelic Furs, just some of the groups that came through a nightclub still talked about even though it closed in 1983: Merlyn's, in Madison, Wisconsin. 

Merlyn's acts Paul caught in his Madison student days were Black Flag, Bow Wow Wow, Jack DeJohnette, Stanley Jordan, Stray Cats, Thompson Twins, Violent Femmes, and X. He's played and sung with bands in Madison, Moscow, and Washington, D.C., before coming to Ann Arbor to cofound So Say We All!