Spencer Owen

Spencer William Maxwell Owen was born 1984 in Los Angeles, CA, where he was raised by Laura and composer/pianist Sandy Owen. (Sandy's most recent album "One Late Hour with a Steinway" is one long continuous take at the piano.) At a very young age, Owen was introduced to the works of Laurie Anderson. Along with the Residents and the Boredoms, Anderson has been an enduring contributor to Owen's musical life.

Quite the auteur, Owen arranges all the compositions and performs all of the vocals, instruments and production himself for his home 6-track audio-cassette recordings.

Owen produced the music of his formative years under the pseudonym "Trigger Goldberg."

Owen's vast catalogue of original material is augmented with cover albums on each of which he covers every song from another artist's album to make it better. These albums include "Black Tie White Noise" by David Bowie and "Out of the Cradle" by Lindsey Buckingham. One of Owen's most accomplished albums was produced through a perversion of this process. "Meredith: A Pseudo-suite for the Love and Loss Borne from the Relationship Between One Fictional Character and One Actual Young Man," is comprised of original songs that are each exactly the same length as a song from the Beatles' self-titled White Album.

Owen briefly studied art at UC Santa Cruz and lived/recorded at The Shop before moving to Berkeley, CA in 2005.

Owen has also produced original music for theater and film. Some of this work can be found in the films "Long Gone Daddy" and "The Word of a Salesman" by Kalen Egan as well as many videos by Jamie Burkart (in which Owen frequents onscreen appearances).

Owen has performed as a member of:

The Spencer Owen Karaoke Machine
(Owen solo with backing tape)

Bird by Snow
(Fletcher Tucker)

Goodbye the Band
(John Acquadro)

The Archbishops
(with his brother, Alec Owen)

The Spencer Owen Initiative
(Owen backed by the Archbishops instead of tape)


Owen currently lives in Berkeley, CA with John Acquadro (Goodbye the Band), writes about music for West Coast Performer magazine and works for the social music networking website Mog.com. He will tour the west coast with Bird by Snow in fall 2006.