Denise Marie was born with a gypsy soul. She was raised among goats and wild flowers in upstate New York playing piano and guitar and writing songs about frogs. At 16 she moved to the wild west of Santa Fe, New Mexico where she befriended hippies, cowgirls, Indians and studied jazz guitar. When she learned to finger pick the blues, a whole new universe opened up. At a young age she played regular gigs around town as a solo artist and in bands with musicians that were older and more experienced and welcomed “kid sister” with open arms.
In 1995 she moved to the center of music on planet earth, New Orleans, where she was encouraged to perform the original songs she had hidden in an old shoebox. There she embraced trumpets, saxophones, accordions and just about everything to do with music, BIG HUG. She recorded with such legends as Johnny Vidacovich, James Singleton, and "Sunpie" Barnes, and musical wonders such as Beth Patterson, Sam Price, William Terry and worked with a long list of talented musicians.
By 2005, she had toured in Europe several times and was there when hurricane Katrina blasted old New Orleans. As a result she stayed in Europe for a long year. While playing in Den Haag in 2007 she was introduced to her music partner Marcel Koster.
He was born with drumsticks in his hands. In school he often found himself tapping on his desk and legs, with pencils and hands flying, driving his teachers mad. He played snare drum in the marching band for ten years and finally got an entire drum kit up in the attic, driving his father mad. When he picked up the accordion and began to croon old Dutch classics he was accepted as the musician of the family. Well, that's the drummers cross to bear.
Denise and Marcel fell under the spell of a hoodoo moon in New Orleans and brought back the laid back, on track, feel good slack to The Netherlands where they now live. They released a new CD “Trees” together in 2021. They work as a duo and play in several bands as well as playing solo gigs.
Denise Marie plays acoustic, electric, slide and tenor guitars, sings, writes songs and plays the riq (middle eastern tambourine) and dabbles on the piano and ukulele. She’s a nature lover, tree hugger, gardener, bike rider and environmentalist who supports anyone who is doing anything to stop climate change and save our mutual mother, planet Earth.