Dueling piano players who found love at Howl at the Moon start their own biz, Love Me Duel

Meet Mary and Devin Calderin, the founders of Love Me Duel, a traveling dueling piano business.

• Random requests: “One time I got ‘Please do the Donkey Kong 64 rap.’ That was my favorite request of all time, to this day. And I did it and it was great,” said Mary Calderin.

• Come together: “There’s something wonderful about reveling in that common shared loved of a song that’s such a joy to be a part of,” said Devin Calderin.

When Devin Calderin auditioned for Howl at the Moon — the Center City dueling piano bar with a live backup band — his future wife, Mary, was among the musicians he performed with to test his mettle.

“I had the thought ‘If she works here that would be cool, because then I could work here and we could work together,’” he said.

Devin got the gig and the two became friends, but it wasn’t until several months later when Mary found herself thinking about how nice Devin’s eyelashes were that she realized her feelings for him might run deeper.

So one night, while they were out with coworkers at Barcade in Fishtown, Mary playfully nudged Devin (or heaved herself into him, depending upon whom you ask) as he was playing Punch-Out!!, the classic arcade game. That move gave Devin the power-up he needed to finally ask Mary out on a date.

Six years later, the two are married and now going round for round together on stage with their own traveling dueling piano business, Love Me Duel.

“I feel like Howl at the Moon was a good training for what we do now,” Mary said. “We’re well-versed, pun intended.”

At their show last month at Troubles End Brewing in Collegeville, the Calderins set up their electronic keyboards inside of baby grand piano shells, to give the illusion of the real thing. They began with a classic crowd-pleaser, “Build Me Up Buttercup,” before fielding requests like “Summer of ‘69,” “Rich Girl,” and “Mr. Brightside.”

Even more evident than their love of music was their love for each other. They passed written song requests like high school kids pass love notes, signaled musical segues with mere smiles and glances, and playfully riffed off each other and their audience.

“It’s very shticky up here right now,” Mary said on stage.

As the duo took requests from couples celebrating milestone anniversaries at the show, they also asked for their tips for a long and happy marriage.

The resulting marital advice from the crowd led the Calderins to dedicate a performance of “Brandy” to: “No secrets, Vaseline, and patience.”

That give-and-take with their audience, and with each other, is one of the best parts of their show.

“By the end of it, we’ve kind of bridged the gap between us and them and it’s become this like little community in that span of like three hours,” Devin said.

Devin and Mary, both 31, grew up in the Philly suburbs with musician fathers, who inspired their own love of music.

Mary first started going to Howl at the Moon as a fan and became a member of the band in 2015. Two years later, Devin, whose party trick is “playing anything from Lady Gaga to old John Philip Sousa marches,” was looking for a way to capitalize on his talents and discovered the live-music bar.

“It’s all song-request based, which is really the fun aspect of it,” he said. “Nothing is the same, one show is different from the next. There’s no repeat. There’s no set list.”

As their connection grew on stage, it grew in real life too. Their first date was at South Bowl and in 2019, Devin proposed at Longwood Gardens. The couple had a small marriage ceremony in 2021 and a full blow-out at Curtis Arboretum last year, during which they performed Stevie Nicks and Don Henley’s “Leather and Lace” and Cardi B’s “I Like It,” which has become their staple duet.

The Calderins, who moved from South Philly to Skippack in 2021, left Howl at the Moon in 2019, but still sub in there from time to time. They began playing their own dueling piano shows outside of bars and wineries during the pandemic and had their first official gig as Love Me Duel last year at a brewery near their home. Since then, they’ve played birthday parties, bars, and wedding after-parties.

It’s not a full-time gig (they both work from home for a marketing research company), but it is their shared passion. They keep keyboards near their desks and make it a point to play every day.

Together, their repertoire is vast and they love a good deep-cut challenge. Devin can fulfill your Nickelodeon theme song needs or Queen requests, and Mary has all your boy band songs and Blink-182 deep-cuts. And if you’re feeling saucy, request Cardi B’s “WAP” and see what happens.

“For sure I’ll do ‘WAP,’ but it definitely depends on the crowd,” Mary said. “I’ve done ‘WAP’ in front of my parents, it just had to be done, but sometimes it’s not the appropriate setting for the song.”

If someone requests a song they don’t know, one of the Calderins will pull up the chords and lyrics on their phone and listen to it on Spotify while the other keeps performing. Their harmony runs far beyond their voices; it’s evident in everything they do.

“Some of the best parts about dueling, at least with each other, is we’re just like hanging out and getting to do [what we did when] we met and it’s still a fresh, fun thing,” Devin said.

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