About Us
Duchess Leo was conceived over a series of lunches starting in September 2007. Todd and I would meet and discuss different projects we wanted to start and ideas that were inspiring us. It was about this time we began making music together, though we’d met some 14 years earlier in NJ. We grew up in the same neighborhood.
As Duchess Leo began Todd contributed his knowledge of electronic music and DJing, while I contributed the skeletons of songs I’d been writing for 10 years. We wrote and recorded for a year resulting in a ton of material. Out of it shone the five songs that would be our first release, The Duchess Leo EP. The EP was completed in late 2008 and released in the spring of 2009. Everybody loved it. We were pleased.
In ‘09 we started playing shows and working towards a full length album. Todd was taking piano lessons and I was learning how to record music. It was here that our roles in the band began to overlap.
With the help of friend and producer, Daniel Whitt, we completed recording on our first record. Pre-production was done at home in our studios in Brooklyn. Then we headed to Daniel Whitt’s wonderful studio, Metaltern, in Alabama. Recording was completed there mid-June. We mixed in Brooklyn with Godfrey Diamond and then Daniel Whitt digitally mastered it.
Our first record, Golden Gray, was released on Whale Heart Records on January 25, 2011. Everybody loved it. You can read some of our press here, here, here, here and here. Click here to watch us perform Bloom, track two from Golden Gray, live in our studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Available now are These For Those, volumes 1 & 2. These For Those is a free two-EP set of songs recorded between the release of our first EP and Golden Gray.
We are currently recording our next record.
Thanks. Without our friends to party with, there wouldn’t be a party.
