Lace and Lee on Rockport, Penn Station Strawberries and Writing Their Own Myth
It’s a duo that arguably started with a single paragraph in a book. Caroline Lace McPherson was reading a fantasy novel on the subway when a minor character — on the page for less than a page — started the imagery for what would become the first Lace and Lee song. The folk-rock duo, made up of Olivia Lee Ondrasik and Caroline Lace McPherson, met while studying musical theater at NYU Tisch and started writing together in 2024, turning a friendship into a sound built on ’60s and ’70s storytelling, bard-like prose and Celtic-tinged harmony.
They’ll open for Five for Fighting’s String Quartet Tour at the Shalin Liu Performance Center on October 3, ahead of a busy fall: their new single “RoadKill” arrives September 12, with their debut EP, “Mirror Mirror,” following on Black Friday, November 27. Lace and Lee caught up with Rockport MA Guide to talk about the moment two friends realized they had a band, the myths and mischief behind their songs, and what it means to earn an audience on their own terms.
Earning It on Their Own
John Ondrasik (of Five For Fighting) has said that when Lace and Lee first started opening for him, Olivia specifically didn’t want audiences to know she was his daughter — she wanted the reaction to be about the music, not the last name.
Rockport MA Guide: Where did that instinct come from, and has it changed at all now that you two are developing your own identity?
Olivia: It’s still that way, especially in a new place. It’s something my dad has always honored. I think it comes from how I was raised, and it’s carried through everything I’ve done artistically — I’ve always wanted the freedom to see what actually resonates with people on its own terms. Listen, nepotism is great — I’m aware I was born into a really fortunate situation. But keeping that space is the only way I can really know that what we’re doing is working, and that it’s honest.
Caroline: I have to say, the way Olivia’s dad engages with our music pushes us so much harder. When I talk to my parents about it, it’s, “Oh my gosh, honey, this is all so amazing.” When we talk to her dad, there’s no sugarcoating — it’s, “Okay, you’ve got to work on this and this.” He’s on our side completely, but he hasn’t gone easy on us out of love. That’s a gift.
Olivia: And he won’t volunteer anything — I really have to pull it out of him. He’s respectful about giving us our own space. But he also wouldn’t have us open for him if he didn’t think, on some level, that we were doing something right.
Two Friends, Then a Band
Rockport MA Guide: You two met at NYU Tisch studying musical theater and started writing together in 2024. At what point did it stop feeling like two friends writing songs and start feeling like you might have something real?
Caroline: For me, it clicked when we started talking about hypothetical band names.
Olivia: I was thinking the exact same moment. We were sitting in Caroline’s apartment in New York, just playing around, and it was all fun and games — “what would we even be called?” Caroline threw out our middle names, the ones that came down through the women in our families: Lace and Lee. There was this air of prophecy to it, even though she said it as a joke.
Caroline: It’s become a bigger part of our lives since then — a business, honestly, an investment now. But the spark of those first few months, writing just for ourselves and sharing it with almost no one, is still there. We keep checking back in to make sure we’re writing for us first.
Finding Their Sound
Lace and Lee’s music has been described as ’60s and ’70s storytelling filtered through bard-like prose, Celtic and Irish folk harmonies and acoustic rock — an unusual combination for two performers who trained for the stage rather than the studio.
Rockport MA Guide: How did you arrive at that particular sound? Was it something you went looking for, or did it emerge naturally once you started writing together?
Caroline: It emerged naturally, from those first writing sessions right up through today — we write what we’re feeling. We pull from bluegrass, from something dreamier, all kinds of flavors, especially across the EP. It’s become this world of ethereal mysticism mixed with our ancestry and our love of ’60s and ’70s storytelling.
Olivia: What we create is such a product of what we devour musically. Caroline and I have so much crossover in what we listen to, even with our differences — she knows bluegrass far better than I do — but we were raised on the same influences and moved by the same mystical, ethereal quality in music. A song like “RoadKill” is very bluegrass, while “Mirror Mirror” is almost jazzy folk-rock — they’re different, but the through line is that they’re both us. This EP is really a collection of the songs we made along the way. The next one will have more cohesion.
Myth as a Way to Be Honest
Many of Lace and Lee’s songs read as stories rather than conventional pop lyrics — “Oh, What a Weapon,” for instance, follows a bard and a king rather than a first-person confession.
Rockport MA Guide: What draws you to characters and mythology rather than writing directly about your own lives?
Caroline: I love this question! I think it’s the theater background — four years at NYU drilling into us how to understand human experience through a specific lens. We still use the acting exercises we learned back then when we write. But every story we write about a character is really about us. Every single one.
Olivia: Mythology has always resonated with me because it gives you a way to express a truth almost the same way acting does — you’re accessing something very real through something that isn’t. It lets me be uncomfortably vulnerable in a way that feels disguised. That’s the oldest trick of theater and storytelling: sometimes you can only become truly honest through something completely unreal.
Caroline: Growing up as theater kids, that was our outlet — we could say things through characters that we couldn’t say as ourselves. Writing about yourself directly is arguably far more vulnerable than what we used to do, so in a way, bringing in mythology and archetype puts a little of that boundary back.
A Minor But Powerful Inspiration
On “Oh, What a Weapon” specifically, the two say the song — their first ever written together — began with a single paragraph in a fantasy novel by Sarah J. Maas that Caroline was reading on the subway on her way to what was supposed to be a casual hangout at Olivia’s Harlem apartment. A minor character who appeared briefly in the book stuck with both of them, and the two decided to build a song, then an entire world, around her. The chorus, they said, came together quickly — they wanted something singable and tavern-like, the kind of song that begs for a rowdier, unplugged version someday.
A Song Born in Penn Station
Not every Lace and Lee song starts with mythology though. “Penn Station Strawberries” — with its image of “fresh bit of sunshine” wrapped in “metal scraps” — grew out of one very specific New York afternoon.
Rockport MA Guide: What is the story of Penn Station Strawberries? Is there a real-life moment behind that song?
Caroline: It was Tax Day 2024, one of the first genuinely warm, sunny days of the year, and we’d decided we needed a picnic in Central Park. I was in charge of snacks and forgot them, so on my way from the subway I ducked into the first store I saw — a Walgreens in the bowels of Penn Station — and grabbed strawberries off a display near the front. That Walgreens closed about a year and a half later, for reasons we can only speculate about.
Olivia: I remember thinking, “the best place for fresh produce” — completely sarcastically. When Caroline showed up with Penn Station strawberries, I said, “now that’s a song,” and we wrote the whole thing in about 15 minutes. It’s very much a New York song, carrying that dark, dry humor that a lot of New Yorkers and East Coasters share — you just grin and get through the day. I came up with the bridge and could barely get it out for laughing when I shared it.
Caroline: That’s basically another acting exercise we’ve folded into songwriting — the “yes, and” of improv. If it’s making one of us laugh that hard, it has to be the bridge.
In the Studio with Mikal Blue
Lace and Lee recorded their debut EP, “Mirror Mirror,” with producer Mikal Blue at Revolver Recordings in Thousand Oaks, California — a studio with credits including OneRepublic, Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat.
Rockport MA Guide: What did you learn in that studio that you couldn’t have learned recording on your own, and was there a moment during those sessions when a song suddenly became something different than what you had imagined?
Caroline: Mikal is one of the kindest people you’ll ever meet, and also clearly one of the best at what he does. What surprised me most is that he’d sit back and just observe while we worked things out, and only chime in when something genuinely inspired him. It felt like an honor every time. I walked in expecting him to hand us a blueprint, and instead he wanted to know how we heard our own music.
Olivia: There’s a real craftsmanship to that kind of restraint. It gave us so much freedom to actually play, which is a hard balance to strike in a professional setting — and Mikal knows exactly how to create that environment while still getting the work done. There are things you can only learn by being in the room: even the stamina is different. Ten shows a week in a musical is one kind of endurance. Being in a studio from 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. is another.
Two songs, they said, changed shape entirely inside the studio: the title track “Mirror Mirror,” and an unreleased instrumental interlude called “RoadKill Jam,” born out of messing around with the ideas behind “RoadKill.” “Mirror Mirror” started as a darker, more folkloric idea from Olivia — a direction that leaned away from the band’s usual bluegrass or folk instincts — before Caroline added an unexpected jazz piano part that pulled the whole song together. It’s a song they’ve never performed live before, and it will debut on this tour, with Olivia on guitar and Caroline on piano.
Family on the Road, and Curtain Up in Rockport
Touring alongside Five for Fighting means touring alongside family — not just John Ondrasik, but his full band and quartet.
Rockport MA Guide: When you’re not performing, do you spend time together as a family on these tours, or does everyone scatter once the show ends? And is anyone playing tour guide once you get to Rockport?
Olivia: Everybody becomes family out here — it’s a unique setup, since openers usually aren’t this involved with the headliner’s world. We have dinners together, and the quartet are some of the most humble, talented, funny people you’ll ever meet. They’ve really looked out for us. Katie, our violinist and one of the arrangers, usually finds the restaurants — she knows all the best spots wherever we go.
Caroline: She’s incredible, and such a type-A brain in the best way. She actually reached out recently asking about the cover we’re planning to play in Rockport — we always like to slip one in — and asked if she could join us onstage for it. That’s not something that usually happens for an opener, so there may be some surprise guests during our set.
Rockport MA Guide also couldn’t resist asking about the Shalin Liu’s signature feature: the two-to-three-story glass wall behind the stage that looks out over the harbor, giving audiences a sunset view during evening shows if the curtain stays open.
Rockport MA Guide: Curtain up or curtain down for your set?
Both: Curtain up! Selfishly, curtain up.
Lace and Lee’s new single, “RoadKill,” arrives September 12, ahead of their debut EP, “Mirror Mirror,” out Black Friday, November 27. Catch them opening for Five for Fighting’s String Quartet Tour at the Shalin Liu Performance Center on October 3 — and stop by the merch table afterward, which the duo swears is where the real job happens.
