Amanda Palmer is gushing over Evelyn Evelyn

The story of the conjoined twins' discovery, early life in a chicken coop, and obsession with Tegan and Sara

By Erin Lyndal Martin
Published: May 1st, 2010 | 12:00pm

It's not uncommon to find two talented musicians in one family. But to find them both in one body is a bit more noteworthy. But that's exactly what happened when the Dresden Dolls' Amanda Palmer and musician Jason Webley discovered conjoined twins Eva and Lyn in 2007.

Palmer recalls the story of first finding the twins, both of whom prefer to answer to "Evelyn," online. "Jason and I were on tour together in New Zealand and found the girls' MySpace page, and we were just blown away by the really rough demos they put up. So, we wrote to Evelyn and Evelyn and asked if we could help them make a record," Palmer says of the girls' self-titled debut that was just released in March. "They were scared at first, especially of Jason because he has a beard. Fundamentally, they made this record because they saw other musicians on MySpace who had hundreds of thousands of friends, and they were hoping that if they made a record—they too could be really popular."

This idea was especially appealing to the twins given their early lack of socialization. After the death of their parents, the twins lived in a chicken coop where their only interaction was brief encounters with a figure they knew as "Chicken Man" before they entered the circus. "Evelyn and Evelyn are pretty much self-taught," says Webley, whose former days were spent as a busker in Seattle. "They were handed a ukulele at some point in their early teens and took to it pretty quickly. They play piano, accordion, and guitar. They don't have a knack for woodwind or string instruments though. We gave them a clarinet and they were very frustrated by it."

Their unique upbringing has led the twins to feel removed from pop culture. "They look at pictures of Lady Gaga and other pop stars and feel completely mystified. It's like they're on another planet. If Jason and I are on Earth and Lady Gaga is on the moon, then Evelyn and Evelyn are on Pluto," Palmer analogizes. Still, Evelyn and Evelyn find some resonance among popular musicians. "They really like Tegan and Sara because they're in awe of how much rapport Tegan and Sara have with the crowd. So they've been watching YouTube clips of the sisters and admiring how they can just talk and talk and talk. I also caught one of the Evelyns singing a Laurie Anderson song," says Palmer.

Unbeknownst to Webley and Palmer, many people have found the project exploitative of differently-abled people. According to Webley, the possibility of a backlash had never crossed their minds while helping Evelyn and Evelyn make their album. "A lot of the criticisms that people have had are very valid. A lot of that was our fault early on in our ways of promoting the record. Still, it was kind of a blindside. I didn't think of this record as something that could be mocking. Conjoined twins [have been used as] a metaphor and an archetype to convey things both about relationships and isolation, alienation from society. It just seemed to me like a familiar archetype and we were playing with it."

Ultimately, Palmer thinks the twins' needs—like everybody else's—are simple: "I think they want to be understood the way every human being wants to be understood." And for Evelyn and Evelyn, that unifying connector comes back to the form of expression that has always defied the differences among us: music.

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Evelyn Evelyn official Web site

Evelyn Evelyn MySpace page

Eleven Records