Big Harp

Stefanie Drootin and Chris Senseney—the married parents of two who have been the core of the band Big Harp essentially since they met two decades ago—are music lifers. As a teenager in the San Fernando Valley, Drootin committed to the DIY scene early, joining bands as a bassist before she could drive and bailing on high school with only a year left in order to tour. Though perhaps less romantic, Senseney’s story is one guided by sound, too. As a kid in Nebraska’s wild Sandhills, his mother would lift the needle from the turntable and explain the words they’d just heard; his father was an old-time picker who could build instruments from most anything. When college in Omaha didn’t go as planned, he fell in with the city’s legendary scene and became an in-demand player. He met Drootin on the road in 2007. A month later, they accidentally moved to California together, got married, had their first kid, and then started Big Harp. Never mind, then, the decade that has passed since the 2015 release of Waveless, the third—and, it seemed from the outside, final—Big Harp record. Drootin was still touring hard. Senseney never stopped writing songs in their Los Angeles home; he simply stopped sharing the songs quite so much. They even started a slanted rock duo called Umm. Their return as Big Harp was an inevitability waiting on the right life and creative circumstances, where inspiration dovetailed with a chance to set aside some studio time with Pierre de Reeder (Rilo Kiley).