Dana and Alden

Brothers from Eugene, Oregon, Dana and Alden have brought together a small group of multi-instrumentalists to develop a musical voice at the crossroads of jazz, folk and indie pop. Their music draws on a childhood shaped by an unconventional family environment and vivid memories—summer days in orchards and quieter evenings—which translates into supple melodies, acoustic arrangements and a taste for contrasts between intimacy and motion. Dana and Alden build the project around Dana McWayne’s saxophone and Alden McWayne’s drums, taking an approach that favors nuance, measured tempos and a form of musical storytelling without heavy-handed effects. Alden, the younger of the two, studied at Berklee College of Music, while Dana is also based in Durham, North Carolina. In this expanded-duo format, Dana and Alden let jazz language, songcraft and textures inherited from American indie converse in a register that is melodic, understated and collective.