Faust & Fox

Anyone worried about the future of Marin music can sit back, relax and enjoy “White Gold Tear,” the debut album from Faust & Fox, a brother-sister duo from Corte Madera with the potential to become the next big thing in power pop and soft rock.

Young singer-songwriter Trevor Marcom, who holds a degree in performance from the Boston Conservatory, wrote the 11 hooky, melodic songs on the ballad heavy album, handling lead vocals in a crooner’s voice that recalls Michael Buble or Peter Cincotti.

On the album’s first single and video, “Sweeping the City,” a dark-hearted mid-tempo love song, sister Kate Marcom’s breathy vocal shadows her brother’s with such sensitivity and precision that it sounds as if they were singing in one voice.

Marcom’s heart-throb vocal soars above an ensemble of acoustic guitars and a four-piece string section on “Angel My Love,” another pretty love song on an album full of them. The strings bring an orchestral majesty to “Is It Us,” yet another big ballad, this one with obvious influences from the Beatles in its rich vocal harmonies and dramatic dynamics.

Marcom shows he can rock as well as swing on “Where Was I,” a hand-clapping R&B-influenced party tune in which he laments being “across the bridge in Brooklyn” instead of by his lover’s side.

“White Gold Tear” is a slick, polished first album featuring some of Marin’s finest musicians, including Mill Valley ace Jimmy Dillon on electric and acoustic guitars, former Robert Cray drummer Kevin Hayes and longtime Van Morrison bassist David Hayes. Michael Matson conducted the four-piece string section and the Marcom’s father, Roy Marcom, plays keyboards.

Faust & Fox have youth, talent, engaging songs and extraordinary voices. What else is there? They have it all. - Marin Independent Journal

After studying performance for four years at the Boston Conservatory, touring nationally with the musical “Freedom Train” and living in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village with a woman who would break his heart, Trevor Marcom returned to his Marin County roots ready to write and record his debut album.

He had been down this road once before, signing a development deal with a major record label to write songs when he was still a teenager, but he had been too young and inexperienced then to make much of it.

Now that he’s 30 and has all that musical training and life experience behind him, that would not be a problem this time out. Performing with his 25-year-old sister, Kate, as the duo Faust & Fox, Marcom will introduce songs from his first album, “White Gold Tear,” at a CD release show Saturday night at the 142 Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley.

Reviewing the album last week in the IJ’s Press Play, I wrote that anyone worried about the future of Marin music can sit back, relax and enjoy the 11 hooky, melodic songs on the ballad-heavy album from a brother-sister duo with the potential to become the next big thing in soft rock.

I sat down one recent morning with Trevor and Kate and their parents, Roy and Deborah Marcom, for a free-flowing interview in their Corte Madera home.

“We grew up here, so this album is very Marin-oriented,” Trevor said. “It was inspired by me coming back here, coming back to the West Coast.”

In my review, I compared his smooth vocals to the young crooners Michael Buble and Peter Cincotti. As it turns out, he began developing the style during his freshman and sophomore years at the Branson School in Ross, when he sang Sinatra tunes and played trombone with Branson’s big band. He transferred to Tamalpais High for his final two years, studying theater under instructors Susan Brashear and Ben Cleveland in Tam’s excellent, student-run drama department.

Like her big brother, Kate began taking singing lessons with Michael Matson at the private K-to-eighth-grade Mount Tamalpais School in Mill Valley, where their mother, Deborah, is a longtime member of the performing arts staff.

“We grew up singing together,” Kate said, noting that she sang the lead role in a school production of “My Fair Lady” and her brother starred in “Bye Bye Birdie.”

“That’s really where all this began,” she said.

She went on to study ballet at City Ballet in San Francisco and acting at A.C.T. After pursuing an acting and modeling career in Los Angeles, she came back to Marin to join her brother in launching Faust & Fox. They came up with the duo’s name by combining their middle names.



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Many of the songs on “White Gold Tear” came from Trevor Marcom’s experiences as a young performer in his 20s living in New York. Until they broke up, he and his girlfriend shared an apartment near Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. He describes her as “my post-college, almost-like-marriage relationship” and dedicates the album to her.

“Many of the songs are rooted in that heartbreak,” he explained. “They’re filled with longing and loss.”

The first single and video, the ear-worm ballad “Sweeping the City,” comes from a place that other young artists have been known to find themselves as they search for direction and focus in the chaos of Manhattan.

“That song is about the confusion of being in New York in your mid-20s,” Trevor said. “We were sleeping late, riding the subway, drinking a lot. It was fun, but it was empty, too.”

As influences, he cites some usual suspects, Radiohead, U2 and Coldplay, and some unusual ones, like jazz trumpeter-singer Chet Baker and the music from the movie “Amelie.” But he says no one is more important to his musical development than his dad, Roy, who many in Marin may remember from the 15 years he played piano for shoppers at Nordstrom in the Village Shopping Center in Corte Madera. He also wrote soundtracks for many of Chris Hardman’s Antenna Theatre productions, and he introduced his son to Marin guitarist Jimmy Dillon, who put together the crack local band that backed Faust & Fox on “White Gold Tear” and will be on stage with them Saturday.

After the CD release show, they’ll be looking to put together a touring band of musicians their age to, in their words, “take this music across the bridge.”

And after that, the future lies straight ahead. - Marin Independent Journal