The Deadly Nightshade Family Singers were a parlor music group from Minneapolis. Drawing from their disparate backgrounds, their music was an mix of folk and pop, punk and ska, klezmer and show tunes, latin and scandihoovian, mountain music and 1920's crooner. Instead of being stylistic purists, DNFS mixed these influences into each song, creating an coherent but unclassifiable sound.


The group formed in 1995 as Randall, Paul and Mark got together to record a few songs. In early 1996 Lisa was convinced to join. Bob was added in the early spring. DNFS went ahead and recorded with Jason Keillor that spring. That session became Krakovia which was unofficially released in June 1996 (a printing snafu caused us to issue a temporary cover) and again with the real cover in July.


The audience continued to grow though bookings proved rather difficult. Maybe it had something to do with the stage show... an acoustic band playing strange little songs around a single microphone in very odd costumes (choir robes, glittered superhero capes, tyvec waste clean up suits we a few favorites) seemed to make venues nervous.


Somewhere around 1998, Paul went off to raise a family. After an extensive search Chris joined the group. With Chris in place, the band recorded Plain Brown Suit in Mark and Lisa's home on 28th Street in Minneapolis. Recording was an extended process and the disc was released in January of 2000. Pulling out all the stops, the cd relase for Plain Brown Suit included two airialists hung over the audience, a live shadow puppet reinactment of Snakehandler, a 16 foot stained glass looking (cardboard and lighting gel) DNFS logo, and our new drummer, Len.


After that, the band seemed to lose it's focus and drifted apart until the demise in September of 2000.
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