Strange & the Familiars
Stephanie Strange – Portland Songwriter and her band
It’s been a hard year and a half for this world.
A virus and senseless deaths because of it.
A divided country.
The rich getting richer and… well, you know the drill.
So what’s a person to do? Maybe create a new world? Reinvent yourself while facing some cold hard truths? Add stories with a healthy dose of fantasy, a heaping cup of cats, and a big pinch of magical realism? Do that, and you get the album Strange World by Portland native Stephanie Strange and her band, Strange & the Familiars.
As with all of us, the last year and a half squeezed Strange hard. A huge bag of horrible, horrible things. Lots of pain. Misery. So she decided to write a new story. She reinvented herself. She used to be folksy. She wrote love songs, real drinking music – music people would dance to. But she grew tired of this and it didn’t fit what was happening now.
So she started writing stories of a magical world. A world of metaphors and fantasy. And we don’t mean tarot card magic. The magic is in the way Strange writes about hope and surviving. About getting through the hardest stuff, with drive and a direction. Her songs are about expelling the poisons in life. She claims she doesn’t do it perfectly, or even very well, but we feel she has her pulse on how to do it just beautifully.
Spend three and a half minutes listening to the ethereal musings of her song Pie and we think you’ll agree.
Pie
lyrics
You said, Keep on keepin’ on, baby.
You said, Keep on keepin’ on, my friend.
You said, Keep on keepin’ on, darling,
We’ll get there in the end.
Oh, it will come sooner or later, yeah
Oh, it will come sooner than later, yeah
Well life is sweeter than candy, yeah.
Life is finer than the finest wine, oh yeah.
Life is a bowl full of cherries.
Life is sweeter than pie.
And pie’s pretty hard to beat.
So, keep on keepin’ on, baby, yeah .
Just keep on keepin’ on, my friend, oh yeah.
Keep on keepin’ on, Darling,
We’ll get there in the end.
Oh, it will come sooner or later, yeah
Oh, it will come sooner than later, yeah
Cause life is sweeter than pie,
And pie’s pretty hard to beat
I think we all know that pie’s pretty damn hard to beat.
Strange & the Familiars Band Members
Stephanie Strange – Singer / Songwriter
Tim Karplus – Percussion
Mark Bowden – Lead Guitar
Owen Hofmann-Smith – Cello