On the September 4th, 2024 episode of Atherton On Air, Lorelai Bowman (11) performed an original song titled “January” for the show’s Tiny Desk segment. The song was the result of a collaboration between Bowman and fellow Atherton student Reese McCarty (11) under the project name Pluviophillic.
“Mitchell Smith (12) actually reached out to me,” Bowman said. “He’s in the same IB film class as Reese and I think she mentioned to him that we do music. He thought it’d be a good idea for an AOA segment so he reached out to me.”
Bowman said she remembers being nervous about the experience.
“I remember carrying my guitar into school and being like, ‘everybody’s looking at me,’ which it’s ridiculous because people bring in instruments all the time,” Bowman said. “But I got a bunch of compliments. People talked to me about it after and it was actually really cool and I’m very grateful for the opportunity.”
Bowman began singing at a young age, gaining experience from both her church choir and performing in musicals in the 4th and 5th grade.
“I started realizing how much I loved singing. I took piano for a while because my brother did, but I always wanted to play guitar so I asked my mom to do guitar lessons instead (and basically forgot most of the piano I learned).”
She began writing her own songs in middle school, which was also the time she began collaborating with McCarty.
“She sent me a poem she wrote in eighth grade and I was like, ‘this is good. Do you mind if I write music for this?’ and she was like, ‘oh yeah sure go ahead,’ and I sent it to her and she said, ‘wait I have an idea because I have 13 other songs that I just wrote…and you could just write all the melodies for them and stuff,’…that’s just kind of how we’ve operated.”
The song Bowman performed, “January,” developed from this collaboration style. McCarty penned the track, and Bowman came up with the melody and chords.
“I was sitting on my couch and my cat likes it when I play a repetitive thing on my guitar because he’s weird, and I just started playing like four chords. I was like, ‘oh I like that,’ and I wrote a melody for the chorus and I really liked it and then I just kinda hit record on my voice memos and I improved the melody for the verse in the bridge. Then I sent it to her and she said, ‘hey this is like my favorite thing you’ve written so we need to write more immediately.’ I think that was actually our first song that we wrote that we were like, ‘oh this is actually good”
The track was one of three featured on Pluviophillics debut EP The Orphic Oriole, which was the product of a spontaneous recording session between Bowman and McCarty during a sleepover. Due to the difficulty of using the recording equipment at her dad’s house, the three songs were recorded and mixed on the app Garageband.
“It’s definitely not the most professionally recorded and we’re planning on using my recording equipment for more music that we have coming out, but it was definitely a spur of the moment thing.”
The more music coming out includes an album inspired by Greek myths, as well as various other album ideas.
McCarty is not the only student Bowman has collaborated with. She also helps friends in class who like to write by helping with melodies and lyrics.
“Some of my favorite things that I’ve written have been for other people that I’m not in a
band with.”
Bowman says she’s found a community here at Atherton of those who attend and perform at local music shows.
“We have such a sense of community in Atherton and I feel like we find each other…I feel very happy to be in a place where I talk to all sorts of different people who do different things to express themselves, and I find it really cool that I am a person that has the ability to share what brings me joy,” Bowman says.
Check out Pluviophillic’s EP The Orphic Oriole here on Spotify.