Fun with Jenny and Johnny

L.A. LOVEBIRDS: In the world of sweet-voiced, guitar-toting female folkies, Jenny Lewis has long been queen. Since busting onto the indie scene with Rilo Kiley’s debut, Take-Offs and Landings, back in 2001, Lewis has expertly walked the line between hipster messiah and bona fide musical megastar, even making the jump from band to solo project (and back again) without a hitch. It makes sense, then, that she’d eventually find her king in singer/songwriter Jonathan Rice. The part-time Virginian, part-time Scot has been making the rounds in and around Lewis’s L.A. hometown since the release of his debut album, 2005’s Trouble Is Real. And, as all good rock ’n’ roll love stories go, met Lewis by way of another musician, Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst. Since then, the pair have been touring and collaborating together, even teaming up to assist on Elvis Costello’s Momofuku in 2008.

Nowadays, these two music-making lovebirds have not only shacked up together; they’ve launched a band all their own. As Jenny and Johnny, the pair delivers a take on the male/female dynamic that’s as buoyant as it is personal. And their debut album, last year’s I’m Having Fun Now, is just that: Think rollicking guitars and lyrics that run the gamut from snakes (“We live in the woods, so we walk around in the hills a lot,” explained Rice) to afternoon naps. Better yet, Rice’s gravelly speak-sing and Lewis’s sometimes breathy, sometimes boisterous deliveries play fantastically off each other, creating something that’s part saccharine sweet, part in-your-face rock ’n’ roll.

“We definitely wanted the vocals to be the center point,” Lewis told me recently via phone from the pair’s L.A. pad. “At the core of this record are the harmonies, so we wanted that to be very prominent.”