about

Effie Zilch is not an individual. Effie Zilch is an idea, a muse, a guiding light - it’s also a rock and roll band. Band members Steve Wyreman and Evanne Barcenas have been making music together since they were teenagers living in Northern California. Though they are children of the 90s, they entrenched themselves in the sounds of San Francisco in the 60s - everything from Jefferson Airplane to Jimi Hendrix to The Staples Singers infiltrated their stereos and young minds. Throughout their formative years, music had always been lumitive in their lives: by age 8, Evanne was given her first guitar and Steve was sneaking into his older brother's room to practice on his. While Evanne nearly gave up playing guitar after realizing she wasn’t instantly as good as Bonnie Raitt, Steve meticulously listened to Hendrix songs and learned to play them by ear. After years of honing his craft and developing unquestionable talent, Steve began working with artists like Leon Bridges, Rihanna, John Legend and Jay-Z and spent years touring with The Rolling Stones, Richard Ashcroft and Mary J. Blidge. By 2019, Steve became a Grammy-award winning songwriter for Leon Bridges’, Bet Ain't Worth the Hand (and nominated again this year for Bridges’ 2021 Gold-Diggers Sound album). Evanne took a more circuitous route, diving instead into tech and teaching jobs. Luckily for Steve, after about ten years of putting down the pen, Evanne returned to her first true and tortuous love: music. Playing guitar now feels like a meditation, a release. 

The product: an unapologetically authentic collection of songs that are insouciant to what is deemed conventional. Gone is the notion of concern for how the art will be perceived. For Steve and Evanne, it’s about the song at that moment and where they want to go with it. It’s this quiet confidence that transcends through each song, with messages of healing, motivation, love, loss and other themes of nature and climate change, dwelling underneath the blanket of “spirit.” Born during the pandemic, the creation of this album acted as a way of freedom from captivity, resulting in the outpouring of creativity during a time when the world felt trapped. The debut single, “Cut Through,” sets a sultry tune to introduce the duo, with the undeniably fitting message of following your passion. Singing, “There’s always plenty of room in the sky,” the duo joins forces with Miko Marks on ‘Room For Us Fall” – a song with an important reminder that vying for the top only keeps you at the bottom. “Ship Has Sailed” presents a funky, upbeat tune to the principal topic of climate change. “Holy River” brings rebirth to life, touching on nature’s great power to heal, written at the shores of the Laurel River deep in North Carolina’s Smoky Mountains.

Throughout the entire 10-track album, Effie Zilch has the ability to not only deliver incredibly crafted songs, but also pack powerful and well connected messages that captivates it’s audience. If there is one thing to be said about the duo, it’s that they are indefinitely unparalleled in nature. Dancing to the beat of their own drum is second nature to them and this release encapsulates that flair. As sung on the introduction to the album, “Every Kite has a twisted tale / built to rise, but tethered underneath,” Evanne and Steve’s time to rise is now. Trinity Vol 2 is set to release in September 2022.