Holcombe Waller

Holcombe Waller is a singer, songwriter and musician living in Portland, Oregon. Sporting a four-octave vocal range and a lyrical gift for wit and whimsy, this talented multi-instrumentalist combines pop, jazz and folk elements within an inventive and ambitious song architecture.

His musical career effectively began just shy of age three, when his parents noticed young Holcombe mimicking his older sister's piano lessons on his plastic Mattel toy piano. They quickly enrolled him in his own piano classes and he embarked upon a course of classical piano study for the next 12 years.

Perfect pitch and a fertile musical mind compelled him to venture beyond the confines of classical training, learning (by ear) and embellishing upon a wide array of musical styles to which he was exposed, from George Gershwin to Dolly Parton and then some. This propensity for improvisational interpretation, however, did not sit well with his piano teacher and thus his formal training ended at age 14.

Undaunted, Waller shifted his focus to jazz saxophone, which he had picked up in school four years earlier. Meanwhile, he had taken an interest in MIDI instrument programming and was writing and arranging pop-format songs with a synthesizer and a drum machine. He began singing along and secretly taping the "fully produced" songs on his boom box; this is how he learned to sing.

That year, Waller submitted a tape to a song competition sponsored by Alesis, the well-known studio electronics company, and placed within the top 20 of thousands of submissions from novices and professionals alike. His efforts won him a sponsorship from Alesis in the form of home studio equipment. With these new tools at his disposal, Waller began to pick apart hit pop arrangements and incorporate what he learned into his own material. His style was also influenced by his jazz studies and saxophone performance, for which he received numerous awards, including best soloist at the famed Monterey Jazz Festival's high school invitational.

In 1993, at age 18, Waller deferred admission from Yale University to record a CD for Cabana Boy Records in Los Angeles. A year later, Holcombe moved to New Haven and began his studies. While at Yale, he began performing live, both as a member of a nationally acclaimed a cappella group (Holcombe won the award for Best Male Soloist at the National Collegiate Acappella Festival at Lincoln Center) and as a guitar-based solo performer at cafes and coffeehouses, scatting with the vocalese of a jazz singer (Holcombe had learned to play guitar by then, as well). He also found the time to produce two full-length albums for the New York City-based band "Project Nim."

Upon graduating in the Spring of 1998, Waller commenced recording and producing a second album on his own, "Advertising Space," released in 1999 on his own label Napoleon Records. The acclaimed follow-up "Extravagant Gesture" was released in 2001.

In 2005, Waller released "Troubled Times," a personal as well as political album which had a more stripped-down and tender sound. It followed with Waller's relocation to Portland, where he is now based.