There are a lot of people who spend decades trying to figure out what to do with their lives, reinventing themselves as they go. And that may well be the case for Gabe Burdulis and Thea Grace, but that's not their plan at the moment.
Burdulis and Grace have both been focused on their music from a very young age - making them seasoned veterans, though they’re barely out of high school. Burdulis is from Wisconsin and Grace is from Illinois, and they comprise the duo Future Stuff. They’ve shared bills with the likes of Los Lobos and Doyle Bramhall II.
The duo met when Grace was 13 and Burdulis 16, each in different bands during a competition. For years they stayed in touch, but eventually Grace made good on her promise for them to form a band. "I never met other people my age that were taking it as seriously as I wanted to or that were really that invested into music," she says. "And I just saw Gabe and I was like, this guy also really wants this the same way that I do so I think it would be really awesome for us to be in a band together."
Now playing and writing songs together for just over a year, each song takes significant strategy from start to finish since Burdulis lives in Nashville, while Grace remains in Illinois.
"The way that we do our music that I'm slowly coming to appreciate is whenever there's something burning that has to be written, then we write it. We make a way to finish it," says Burdulis.
One of the best parts of sharing their music, he says, is the different ways it reaches to people. "That's one of the beauties about songwriting, is that if it's the right song, a lot of people will take it a lot of different ways, and in their own ways."
A few songs from Future Stuff's in-studio performance:
