Sophomores Lillian Stegen and Isabel Mathes are two young girls who have a passion for music. Recently, the two were allowed to book a gig at St John’s Coffeehouse. The gig took place on Saturday, March 24, and they played for two hours.

With Stegen playing the ukulele and Mathes singing, they make up the group called Happytwobehere. They find joy in playing together, which led to how they came up with their group name.

“We came up with our group name because we are always happy to play music for anyone who wants to listen and it’s a passion for us,” Mathes said.

Their name is spelled as “two” instead of “to” because the group only involves two girls.

“The name came to be because we like play on words. We were deciding on what to call ourselves after playing some music at an open mic thing, and happytwobehere was something funny Isabel thought of. The two is there resembling.. well the both of us, and over all I think the name makes people smile,” Stegen said.

The group has not been making music together for long. After winning Variety Show last year in Spring of 2017, the two girls decided to start working, putting both of their talents together.

“She and my other close friends came over one day and like the instrument lover I am, I started playing the piano. We were all singing but you could tell that is what she could do. She sounded so so amazing, and I played some other songs and it really took off from there. We started hanging out more, which grew our friendship and we started playing music,” Stegen said.

The gig at the coffee shop was their first, and they are excited for many more to come due to how great this one went.

“The gig was great! The coffee shop was full of friends and family, and we made more money than we originally planned to,” Mathes said.

“We had all our supportive friends and family there which made it even better! There were a few times where we ad-libbed, but we know how to work with each other, allowing for a good performance.” Stegen says.

The girls are striving to continue producing more music and have high hopes for the future.

“Isabel and I are excited for what the future holds and can’t wait to see what we come up with. She is a great person when it comes to writing new music because I feel like we can both relate and put our true emotion into each lyric,” Stegen said.

The music that the girls produce together can be found on SoundCloud by searching for their band name.