Lissy & Paul

We've got a wide range of classic jazz standards and pop songs, as well as contemporary music! We think our list of instrumentals can liven up any event- but if you're looking for a bit of singing too, say no more! Paul is a singer too!

With enough post-booking, we would be happy to learn specific songs for your occasion! Just give us a chance to put our spin on it and you won't be disappointed!

Lis Craft and Paul Haasch met in early 2014 while collaborating on Haasch's project, a now defunct folk band called Love Letters. The two have continued to collaborate on several records and performances since, and find it difficult to imagine being as creative without one another. From performing original songs together at venues like the illustrious Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles, to playing on huge stages at festivals and fairs, there is no shortage of experience between the two of them!

about Lis...

From the hot valley of Sacramento, CA, playing violin was on Lis' agenda since she was 3-years old. She persisted, and there her life-long love of music making started and continues to this day. She grew up in the classical music tradition but when she reached her late teens, she sought new ways of playing and therefore discovered traditional styles of fiddling - Old-Time, Bluegrass, Cajun, Balkan, etc.

Folk music became the way she expressed herself on her instrument.

Lis then decided to move to Boston with her fox dog. She earned her Bachelors of Music at Berklee College of Music - where she studied jazz violin, as well as Contemporary Writing & Production, which honed her composition and arranging skills.

In Boston, she performed with an Boston-based music troupe called Cirkestra, lead by Peter Bufano. Cirkestra was a "circus pit-band that ran away to join the world"! She recorded on the album "The Hairless Woman". Lis toured parts of the United States with Cirkestra, performing numerous shows in and out of the circus setting - including performances at The Kennedy Center, The Seattle Art Museum, and The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (which was her favorite place to play because it is her most favorite museum in the whole world!)

Lis spent some years delving into composition and worked for several film composers in the Los Angeles area, such as Richard Gibbs, Carlos José Alvarez and Philip Giffin. However, she always found herself (and her fiddle) on the other side of the microphone, recording demos and cues for her film scoring mentors. Her violin playing appears in Of Mind and Music, scored by Alvarez.

She made the move back to her home state of California, where she loves living in a mini apartment on a little street in a little neighborhood in a BIG town. Lis performs with LA based folk bands, such as The Battlefield. She plays private (and public) events as a violinist in whichever conjugation that is presented. She loves finding new ways to collaborate and create.

She also teaches early childhood and elementary music, for an internationally recognized leader in music education, Lynn Kleiner.

Gratitude is mainly what she feels for the musical life she has lived so far and is excited for what's to come! In Lis' precious free time, she most certainly is drinking coffee, learning new fiddle skills, propagating succulents, picking flowers while walking alleyways with her dog and practicing yoga!

about Paul...

Raised in the 80's, Paul was lucky enough to be surrounded by a diverse amount of music growing up, from The Police and Genesis to Lovin' Spoonful and The Mamas & Papas. He can still remember my mother singing harmony as she played through cassette tape after cassette tape of nearly every Beatles record. A chorus singer up until she graduated from a small college in Wisconsin- her passion became his. You can find little hearts and circles scratched clumsily in pen on the vinyl records she passed down to him from her own childhood. Consequently, it would have been a sin not to at least pursue a career in the arts, if just for her.

Having parents who nurtured and supported his love for the arts, he started early, from middle school choirs to high school show choir and local musicals. As a sophomore in high school, he took part in the local “Channel 8 Rising Stars” competition just outside of Richmond, VA and was a runner-up out of several hundred finalists. he finally knew he could be good. Following the rage of the time, Paul was briefly in a boy band called Up Close and a 50's a capella group called The Chorduroys, but when he graduated high school in Midlothian, Virginia he knew he needed to leave home to hone his craft.

The four years in Coral Gables at the University of Miami were the best in Paul's life, and the Frost School of Music was no slouch. That's where he met a fantastic professor by the name of David Ganon, who taught “Songwriting 101” and opened up his world. While he had written vague and jumbled excuses for songs before Paul never truly had a format, nor did he have anyone to listen to and critique them. Professor Ganon gave him just that- cultivating his ear and his pen. Suddenly the more he listened to music the more he understood what he liked or didn't like- and why. At that moment, he knew he would write his own songs...

After graduating with a Bachelor's Degree in Music Paul moved to Los Angeles and did the acting thing. Because that's what you do, right? Eventually, he settled back into his first love-music. Starting at open mics, he quickly found himself with a full band behind him at places like Room 5, The Viper Room and Hotel Cafe. In 2010, he released a solo EP called "Secure Heart Borders" that he is extremely proud of, and from there he had the pleasure of being a part of several different musical outlets. Paul performed with his best friend in a comedy rock band Paul & The Kir, releasing a full album called “Take over the Universe”, then in a folk duo called Love Letters, where they debuted a self titled EP in 2014, and finally in a folk duo The Fair Wells, which has released an EP titled "Hurricane".

He currently performs at weddings and private parties as a soloist and with another musical theatre-bred singer, Janelle DeJohn, and regularly teams up with film-makers/composers to aid their projects with his musical talents. Some Wednesdays you can even find Paul on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica busking his butt off- so come and say hi! If there is one thing he's realized after all these years of making music, it's that he simply loves performing it. Music is his soul food...

We've got a fantastic PA sound system for a medium/large space and several smaller amps if the setting is intimate. We can plug in OR even have a battery powered amp if electricity is a problem and spontaneity rules the day!