When the pandemic first hit, Billy Brandt, Elaine Schoendorf, Kerry Gluckman and Raquel Salaysay unexpectedly found a silver lining during a dark time.
The two couples and musical collaborators experienced a burst of creativity and formed Voxanna, a new acoustic folk-rock band from Metro Detroit.
“It’s something amazingly positive to do,” said Brandt, one of the band’s vocalists and a guitarist, banjoist and autoharpist.
“It started with Kerry, Raquel and me—though I had met Elaine right before the pandemic. We trusted each other, and for some reason, we had an instinctual feeling that we’d be OK if we gathered to play music, so we did.”
At the outset, Brandt gathered with Gluckman (percussion) and Salaysay (bass, vocals) to jam outside the couple’s house and started recording their performances.
“We videotaped everything, so everything was a performance … and that worked very well in our favor. People really enjoyed seeing us from their lockdown homes or whatever apartment they were living in,” Brandt said.
“This live music seemed to get 100, 300, 500 and 1,000 likes every time we posted, so we built a small online community that’s very different from an in-person community. We had good responses, and it kept us going.”
That momentum prompted Brandt to bring Schoendorf (tenor guitar, vocals) into the fold after the two had started singing and harmonizing together in 2019.
“We had been working our thing concurrently with Kerry, Raquel and I working out this trio—this rhythm section thing,” Brandt said. “But we were missing one thing and that was three-part harmonies, so we eventually put it all together.”
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