Stephie Coplan: I actually started out as a sketch artist.  By the time I was 8, I had taken lessons for five years and I was no better than the day I started so I decided to try something else.  I actually came very close to being a tap dancer (this is a DELI EXCLUSIVE fact - I have close friends and ex-boyfriends who don't even know this about me) but fortunately, I ultimately decided on piano lessons.  We had a piano in the house - it was the one that my mother had learned on when she was little, although she didn't play very seriously - and I guess it was part boredom, part curiosity, and part convenience that drew me to it.  I was immediately hooked.  

SC: Awww, thank you!!!  What an awesome compliment - I really appreciate that.  I have never taken formal voice lessons.  I was in a few plays and musicals when I was very little, but I really started singing for the first time when I was 20.  I learned to sing by listening closely to singers whose styles I admire, like Amber Rubarth and Jenny Lewis, and imitating them.  I was pretty terrible at first, but my friends tell me I've gotten much better.  (Thanks, guys!  Hey, wait a minute...)  I have so many songwriting influences, but my biggest ones are probably Ben Folds, Adam Schlesinger (of Fountains of Wayne), Paul Simon, Randy Newman, John Mayer, and Jason Robert Brown, who is actually a Broadway composer.  I always write the music first by noodling on the piano until I figure out a chord progression or hook that I like, and then I figure out what to write about.  It's sort of like creating your own crossword puzzle, and then filling it out.  Incidentally, I also really like doing crossword puzzles.  

SC: Ooooooh! Great question.  There are so many good ones.  Let's see...my favorite "Futurama"  episode is "Godfellas," written by mathematician Ken Keeler, where Bender becomes the god of a small village.  I was a philosophy major in college and the episode raises a lot of questions about life, existence, and religion that fascinate me.  My favorite "Simpsons" episode is an oldie - it's the one where they go to the beach for the summer and Lisa deceives a bunch of popular kids into thinking she's cool.  I was about 12 or 13 when I saw that episode, and I was (am) painfully uncool so it really resonated with me.  I also love all the Sideshow Bob episodes because I'm a huge Kelsey Grammer fan.  I dearly love and admire both shows because they strike a beautiful balance of humor and poignancy, which is something I try to do in my music.       

SC: I live in Hoboken now, but I lived in Somerville while I attended Tufts University.  I found out about it from the guy I was dating at the time, who was a local musician.  He raved about it.  He said that the audience was always quiet and attentive, and Tom Bianchi was really supportive of even the most nervous and inexperienced artists, and that the level of talent was unparalleled.  I wrote four songs, threw my hat in the ring, and won.  I was totally shocked and very, very grateful for the support - that competition did a lot for my self-confidence, and it enabled me to meet some fantastic people in the musc community who I am still very close friends with even though I've moved to New Jersey.  

SC: There are so many.  I love Will Dailey - he's one of my favorite artists in general, not just locally.  I'm also a huge fan of Christian McNeill, the Baker Thomas Band, Cilla Bonnie, Dan Blakeslee, Dietrich Strause, The And Company, Brothers McCann, Danielle Doyle, and Liz Vaughan.  And Samantha Farrell is one of the best singers I know.  But really, this is an impossible question because there is so much talent in the Somerville/Cambridge scene - it would take me forever to list everyone on my iPod.  

SC: I am very passionate about education reform.  I love reading books and articles and watching movies about why our school system is so broken.  I shake my fist at the newspaper.  I'm also into photography, which I've noticed is a common interest among a lot of musicians - Ben Folds posts gorgeous photos on Twitter that he develops in his own darkroom.  I've recently discovered Harry Potter.  I am currently halfway through the seventh book.  Can that rightfully be considered a "passion?"  Or am I just grasping for passions?  Is it a fake passion?  A faux pas-sion?  Oh yeah, I am also passionate about making bad puns.  

SC: Our bass player, John Hebert, thought of it.  We all marched to Chipotle with the express purpose of brainstorming band names.  Shane Considine (drums) and I tossed out a bunch of bad ideas while John came up with a ton of great ones, and I liked "the Pedestrians" because it had a double meaning - none of us have cars, and our tastes are simple and unrefined.  Which explains why we went to Chipotle.  John and Shane are two of the most talented musicians I've ever met, and I'm not just saying that because they're in my band.  They have taught me so much about feel and rhythm and they are very supportive of my songwriting.  Their work ethic is superhuman - if I send a new song to them on Tuesday, they already know it perfectly by the time we get together on Wednesday and have fourteen ideas about how to play it.  I really lucked out.  

SC: The scenes are like night and day.  It's much easier to get people to come to your shows in New York because going out to see live music is sort of the norm.  It always felt like pulling teeth in Boston.  I would also say that the stakes are higher in New York.  Many of the musicians that I met in Boston weren't trying to become famous on a national level - they were happy being locally successful.  In contrast, a lot of people move to New York specifically to get noticed by a major label and become the next John Mayer or Regina Spektor or whatever.  It was sort of a shock when I moved here and was immediately offered a record and development deal with an indie label, but as time went on, I realized that that sort of thing is much more common here than it is in Boston.  The market is oversaturated not only with talent, but with people trying to make a dollar off of you any way they can.  You really have to have your wits about you and learn how to be a shrewd businessperson.  In Boston, you can focus more on the music.  

SC: Oh boy.  I have been a huge fan of theirs since "Utopia Parkway" came out in 1999 and a friend put "Denise" for me on a mix.  I was very happy for them when "Stacy's Mom" blew up, but I was sad knowing that they would be forever stigmatized as a bunch of fratboys when they've written some of the best pop songs of the last 15 years.  Middle America's opinion of them is unfair.  Their bass player, Adam Schlesinger (who wrote "Stacy's Mom" and a bunch of other songs, like the song from "That Thing You Do" and "Music and Lyrics") saw my YouTube channel and liked it, and we became acquaintances.  Then, nothing happened for awhile.  Then, I posted a cover of their song "Someone to Love" on my YouTube channel and they posted it on their website.  I guess you could say it's sort of a modern-day Justin Bieber story.  The whole band is incredibly nice and invited me to hang out with them at their recent show at Maxwell's in Hoboken.  I felt like Homer Simpson in the episode where he goes to rock n' roll camp.  Oh!  Also, their tech guy, Kevin, has a Futurama tattoo sleeve.  See how that Simpsons/Futurama question came full circle?