Aug 8, 2014 3 min read

AUSTIN, Texas – On any given night, a concert by either pop singer-songwriter Aimee Mann or indie-punk rocker Ted Leo at a local nightclub would be a hot ticket and a fair guarantee of a good show. Now, they’ve teamed up in a band they call The Both.

Born of mutual respect and a willingness to transcend individual impulses for the creative spark of collaboration, The Both took root two years ago when Leo opened a tour for Mann. That led to a self-titled album, which came out in April and was one of this year’s most pleasant surprises. Leo’s dynamic guitar playing and punchy songwriting combine with Mann’s alluring vocals and pointed lyricism to create a whole that’s not only greater than the sum of its parts, it carves out a whole new territory for the two artists.

“We’re trying to actually make the best collaboration that we can, in service of a better song,” Leo said, explaining any early concerns about singular visions evaporated once they saw the results of being all-in. “It became very fun to actually lay your preciousness about your first idea aside, and just kick the ball back and forth to see what else you could come up with.”

Both Leo and Mann were aboard for a telephone interview, in and of itself a symbol of how much they consider The Both to be, well, both of them. “Part of the experience of writing with Ted is learning to set your own ego aside, and learning to accept other people’s ideas,” Mann said. “It’s easier to do with Ted because I have so much respect for him.”

Though they first met in 2009, they’d been fans of each other’s music for many years before that. The late Scott Miller, leader of the alt-pop bands Game Theory and Loud Family, gave Mann a copy of a Ted Leo & the Pharmacists record in 2001, sparking her interest. Leo said he was a fan not only of Mann’s mid-’80s breakthrough band ‘Til Tuesday but also of its early-’80s predecessor, the Young Snakes.

The two agree it took time for them to reach a point where working together made sense. Though she liked Leo’s music when she first heard it, “I probably would have thought that our styles were maybe a little too far apart,” she said.

“I think I didn’t really know how to blend those two elements in the way that Ted and I do now.”

Leo concurred. “Had the idea of this collaboration with Aimee come up at an earlier time, I don’t know that I would have been ready to do it, either temperamentally or musically,” he said. “It kind of landed in both our laps at a perfect moment in both our lives and our careers.”

When they toured together in 2012, it became clear the time was ripe, thanks in part to a song Leo had written called “The Gambler” that seemed especially suited to both of their sensibilities. Leo was performing it in his sets, and Mann asked if she could sit in with him. The Both was born.