The Bylines
The Bylines are a Portland based band created by husband and wife team Reece Marshburn and Marianna Thielen, who write and perform sophisticated, jazz-inspired, story-driven pop music on piano, harmony vocals and single snare drum.
The Bylines exists in a unique musical plane, at once grounded in the Big-Band past of glamorous pop performances and rooted in a present realm of intricate and highly addictive songwriting. With a focus on grand live spectacle--a facet of music often lost in the digital age--the group is equally at home in velvet-curtained jazz halls, large rooms and intimate venues.
Their unique pop confection draws on decades of influences, as if Cole Porter, Carole King, Dusty Springfield, Freddie Mercury, Paul Simon, Rufus Wainwright and Regina Spektor combined forces and filtered their unique compositions through classical maestros and film composers, then sprinkled it with a keen pop sensibility and a commitment to putting on the most involving, charismatic and personalized live shows this side of the Copacabana.
The Bylines have used their unique-yet-familiar sound to play to audiences large and small throughout the country, and have released both a studio (self titled, recorded by Bob Stark at Kung Fu Bakery) and a live album (The Bylines Live, recorded at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, OR). The Bylines are proud alumni of the Johnny Mercer Songwriting Project (where they met Randy Newman), and have had support from the Regional Arts and Culture Council.
In addition, they have produced a run of concerts featuring their original work in collaboration with Third Rail Repertory Theatre, written two mini musicals for Live on Stage as part of the Fertile Ground New Works Festival and have written three musicals for Northwest Children’s Theatre (and won two PAMTA awards as a result). In both 2018 and 2019, they worked with the Oregon Symphony on the Carnegie Hall created Lullaby Project -a project that pairs mothers experiencing homelessness with songwriters to create lullabies for their children.
Whether performing as a Thielen/Marshburn duo or with a larger band, the result is a blend of butter-smooth melodies, densely layered songwriting and powerful vocals. Most importantly, though, The Bylines musical cocktail goes down easy, and emphasizes something that is so often forgotten when such prolific songwriters present their craft: listening to music is, above all, supposed to be an experience… and a fun one.
