Crow and Gazelle

"To see “Crow and Gazelle” perform together on stage is to see, hear and feel true love unfold before your eyes, through song. His razor sharp wit and road wisened perspective are softened and balanced by her genuine tenderness and strength. Her sweet, lilting voice brings a fresh depth to his tried and true catalogue of Americana standards, as well as to the new songs they’re creating together, for a show that leaves all in attendance spellbound and breathless. “
— Dallas Burrow - owner of The Redbird Listening Room

Crow and Gazelle, the name and banner for the musical partnership of Mike McClure and Chrislyn Lawrence, is a hymnodic, moving collaboration borne out of the connection between two people healing, loving, and growing together. Their songs—built around their entangled close harmonies and sparse, reverent acoustic instrumentation—are wrought out of the love they have come to find for themselves and for each other. Their debut outing, As Above Now So Below, which will be released on April 26, 2024, is an album centered on acceptance and growth in the face of pain… and on embracing the sacred nature within each and every one of us.

Though As Above Now So Below is their first official release as Crow and Gazelle, Mike and Chrislyn’s musical (and personal) histories go back decades. They first met at a concert near Fort Worth, TX back in 2003, experiencing “an instant ancient connection, at the cellular level” from the first time they talked. Mike had made his name as one of the progenitors of the Oklahoma Red Dirt Country scene, producing early records for Turnpike Troubadours, Kaitlin Butts, Jason Boland, and Cross Canadian Ragweed. Because of this, he was a staple of the music scene touring around the region at that time. Chrislyn, who historically has lived as an artist in behind-the-scenes support roles, was even at one point Mike’s booking agent. Though circumstances kept them from pursuing their initial connection, they drifted in and out of each other’s lives over the years as friends. But, as fate would have it, they crossed paths by chance in 2018 and “that was that.”


“Our mission is to deconstruct the idea of separateness… we are not separate from divinity, nor are we cast out of “heaven” for being human. We are all anointed. We are all holy. We are everything, and we are infinite.”

Both Mike and Chrislyn were raised in small conservative towns, where religion was foundational. But for them, the messages of original sin, and the lack of women's voices—let alone power—never quite felt right. The ongoing deconstruction of those messages, of spirituality and of truth, has inspired many of their songs together. While the record is steeped in traditionally religious imagery, honoring the musical ancestry that informs the duo’s sound, the themes of As Above Now So Below take that language and tease it away— towards a kind of openness that looks within, rather than without, for purpose and meaning. In its raw vulnerability, the record approaches letting go (of control, of dangerous and unhelpful dogmas, and fear of the unknown) as the path to redemption and liberation. 

“I am letting go
Of whatever it is that does not serve my soul.
I am letting go
As above, now so below.”

- from “As Above Now So Below”