The mechanics of sounding natural

Old friends Micah Rabwin and Sean Ogilvie left their native California just under four years ago. They don’t know what drew them to Portland other than they didn’t know much about the city, and that was attractive.

“We kind of wanted to move somewhere that we both had never lived before,” Rabwin says over the phone while driving to Kansas City. “Initially I hadn’t known anything about [Portland], but now it feels more like home than anywhere I have ever lived. It’s more my speed than any other city I lived in California.”

A lot has happened for the two since they settled into town and started up what has now become Musee Mecanique. They have constructed and recorded an album, which was released last month.

“Basically we recorded the album before we started to figure out how to translate the recorded songs into live songs,” Rabwin says.

They also gathered a solid group of musicians to complete their operation, and have headed out onto the road spreading their music across America.

Almost done with their current tour, Musee Mecanique doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.

“The tour has been really great so far, we only got two days left and we are all ready to be home,” Rabwin says. “Sean and I are also going to be touring with Laura Gibson as her backing band for the next couple of months, and possibly doing a couple of shows as a duo. And we will do another Musee show in the spring.”

Musee Mecanique’s sound incidentally matches their name, taken from a museum in San Francisco exhibiting old-time novelty machines. You know, the kind you stick a nickel in and you watch a show on a flipbook, or a mechanical piano plays a song.

“The main thing we take from the idea of it is the fascination with technology and with the early days of simple machinery that something can be so fascinating and so human but yet a machine,” Rabwin says. “It’s mostly just what we find around [instruments and sound]. When we moved to Portland, all we really had was a guitar and a keyboard. We started scouring garage sales and Goodwills. Every time we find something, we are inspired by it and put it in there.”

However, it would be incorrect to say the Musee Mecanique is solely a product of Rabwin and Ogilvie. Matt Berger, Brian Perez and Jeffery Boyd complete the group adding their talents on various instruments.

The three weren’t easy to find as Rabwin and Ogilvie searched Portland, asking friends and placing ads in order to locate what would become the rest of Musee Mecanique.

“Sean and I didn’t know these guys before hand. Once we started looking for people we started reaching out on MySpace and Craigslist,” Rabwin says. “We had our weeding-out filters, but we definitely didn’t pick the first people that came along. They are all great musicians and we have all kind of become like family. Been best friends over the past two years. We work really well personally and we work really well musically.”

With a critically acclaimed album (Hold This Ghost) under its collective belt and another on the way, it’s safe to say that Musee Mecanique is reaping the rewards of their collective efforts.

Another year of success like this and the band will be even harder to pin down in their evermore appreciative hometown as they take to the road and display their music to a fast-growing nationwide audience.