Wilshire

“We called the album New Universe because it represents us taking charge of our own music after years of playing backup for everyone else,” says Lori Wilshire, one half of the singer-songwriter duo Wilshire (rhymes with “fire”). “We were trying to make our thing happen on the side, but it wasn’t accepted because it was pop music and we happened to be in Nashville. So we packed up everything we owned and moved to L.A. We had no idea how we were gonna pay the bills, but we had this dream inside of us.”

At first listen, the New Universe track “Nothing Left To Lose” — which features the lyric “Standing on the edge of my new universe” — sounds like a woman gamely trying to pick herself up after being knocked down by love gone wrong. But beneath Lori’s heart-wrenching vocal is a pointed reproach to doubters.

“We knew what people were saying,” Micah Wilshire remembers, “that we’d never have the guts to leave town.” Adds Lori: “When I wrote the lyrics for that song, I was thinking about how our apartment looked when it was empty. I took one last look around and thought, ‘Wow, I wish those people could see this place now. We are gone.’”

This sense of triumph was quickly tempered, however, when the pair began to realize just how difficult it is to “make it” in Los Angeles. Songs like “Special,” the driving first single off New Universe, speak to that struggle.

“When we got to L.A.,” Lori explains, “we started working as extras. ‘Special’ was a picture of our life. We’d be in traffic every morning on the 405 freeway going to these soundstages. After a while, it was the same old grind. We needed something to keep us going. The words ‘looking for a hallelujah’ in that song are about finding your purpose, finding freedom, and joy.”

The pair sought their purpose at Los Angeles’ many open mic nights. Though Lori admits to being “terrified” at their first such performance, she says, “We played ‘I Know What You Did,’ and it went really well, which gave us confidence.”

Lori and Micah also plied their trade on the West Coast college circuit, driving five or eight or 10 hours for maybe $100 a show. Along with their L.A. performances, these bare-bones gigs helped the pair determine which of their songs were worthy. “If you can pull it off buck naked — just the two of you and your guitars,” Micah declares, “then the song works.”

For Micah, understanding when a song works may be genetic. “My main musical influence is my dad, who’s also a songwriter,” he says. “Most of my guitar licks are exact rip-offs of stuff he taught me. The first band I ever played in was with him — on drums, when I was 10.” After high school, Micah moved from Roanoke, Virginia, to Nashville, intent on becoming a session ace. In fact, he was earning a living playing guitar and singing when he happened to see Lori perform one night. He recalls: “She started singing, and I was, like, ‘Holy crap!’ I was just floored by her voice.”

Born and raised in Houston, Lori studied vocal performance at Nashville’s Belmont College. She says of her earliest musical inclinations: “When I was a kid, I’d record myself singing these songs in my bedroom and then play them for my family at the dinner table; it was, like, ‘Here’s what I’m working on.’ Then I saw this gospel group perform. They were so soulful, and they kind of rocked. I’d never seen anything like it, and I said to myself, ‘I’m gonna be a rock star!’”

Micah introduced himself to Lori the night he heard her sing, but the two didn’t start getting to know each other until they found themselves working on the same studio project. When Micah subsequently attended one of Lori’s shows, she invited him onstage. “The moment we started singing together that night, we both knew our solo careers were over,” Micah says.

They began their professional lives together singing covers — the two share a fondness for classic soul, Top 40 pop and The Beatles — but soon began performing original material.

During that year and after they moved to Los Angeles in May of 2001, Lori and Micah recorded demos of their songs. Somehow, the work sustained them during months of sweating out the rent payments. “What kept us going,” Micah confides, “was people telling us how much a certain song meant to them, how it encouraged them. It’s funny, because we were writing those songs to encourage ourselves. We’d walk away from a show going, ‘Wow — what we’re doing matters to people.’”

Then they wrote “Special.” Micah relates: “I was messing around with a song idea, playing these minor chords that felt like angst, and Lori just started singing, ‘I’m looking for a hallelujah …’ We did a quick drumbeat and started laying it down. We recorded the vocals, and when we finished, I hit ‘stop,’ and we just looked at each other. You know how people say you gotta have that one song? Well, Lori was jumping up and down, saying, ‘This is the one — this is gonna do it!’”

The demo of “Special” Wilshire recorded that day — in 30 minutes in their tiny apartment — is what actually made it onto New Universe (augmented by live drums and remixed by Tom Lord-Alge). “We did try re-recording it in the studio,” Micah says, “but when we did that demo, we managed to bottle lightning, and you can’t recreate that.” (“Nothing Left To Lose” and “I Know What You Did” are also enhanced demos.)

“Special” did seem to do the trick, and in August 2002, Wilshire signed with Columbia Records and began recording New Universe, co-producing with David Tickle (U2, Prince). The album was mixed by Joe Zook (longtime engineer for producers Jack Joseph Puig and the team of Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake). Basic tracks were recorded at Hollywood’s Sunset Sound, with some overdubs added at Paramour, set in a restored 1920s mansion atop a mountain in L.A.’s Silverlake district. The record was completed on Kauai, Hawaii, at Tickle’s home studio.

Though recording in Hawaii may have felt like the defining “look how far we’ve come” moment for Wilshire, that was actually reserved for their string session with arranger/conductor Paul Buckmaster, renowned for his work with Elton John and The Rolling Stones, among countless other artists. The love song “In Your Arms” and “Tonight” — inspired by letters from soldiers to their wives during World War II — bear Buckmaster’s imprint.

“That session was overwhelming,” says Micah. “I’ll never forget when the musicians set down the first chart, and Paul cued them and they started playing the intro — we just welled up with tears. We both went back in our minds to all the open mic nights and the college shows and everything we’d done trying to get our music going. To hear this 20-piece string session at Capitol Studios playing our song … ” Surely, this was a new universe.

“I think everybody’s looking over the horizon for a better place,” Lori ventures, “looking for their destiny. What’s important is what you go through along the way and how you do it. You always have to struggle to make something great happen. But when you look back, you realize that’s the most exciting part.”