May / June 2006:

keeping up with: jaron Lowenstein

Story by Gerri Miller



With Keeping Up With the Steins, Jaron Lowenstein adds a feature film credit to a résumé that already includes music, TV, screenwriting and producing, mainly in tandem with his twin brother Evan. Both recently appeared on the American Inventor reality show, presenting Evan’s pit and shell-catching bowl design, and are developing a series about twins for a cable channel. They’re also preparing to ink a new record deal and resume the music career that has been “in a controlled ski for the last few years because Evan went off to be a daddy,” he says of his five minutes older brother, now the father of two.

As a teenager growing up in Atlanta, Lowenstein hadn’t yet discovered music but was into baseball and making mischief with Evan. “We were typical class clowns, talking in class. We got kicked out for skipping school but never got into drugs or sex or breaking the law. We didn’t do anything that would hurt us or anyone else. We were pretty sheltered,” he says, characterizing himself as “a spirited teenager, hyperactive, impatient, a smartass. I was fun to be around, more a guy’s guy than the girlfriend type. I didn’t have my first girlfriend until I was in my mid-twenties. I was always that kid with a million friends. I collected people, and I still do now.”

His family (which, besides Evan, includes an older brother and two sisters) attended Shearith Israel growing up and currently belongs to Congregation Beth Jacob. “I go back to Atlanta occasionally but I haven’t been back to synagogue in many years,” says Lowenstein, whose steady girlfriend is non-Jewish actress Kaley Cuoco. While his twin remains Orthodox, “I’m in a state of flux, taking religious inventory. Perhaps in time I'll give it another look with an adult pair of eyes," he says.

He will nevertheless uphold the established policy of never performing on the Sabbath. ”It has cost us record sales, it’s cost us fans. It‘s been an Achilles’ heel for us,” admits Lowenstein. “But Evan is a religious man and he’s my partner and we agreed to it, and we’ll work it out like we always have.”

That commitment has earned the duo respect and role model status, which does please Lowenstein. “Never before had there been a rock band that had a top ten song, toured all over the world and had a video on MTV and didn’t play on Friday nights,” he points out. “If I was a kid I’d think that was a pretty cool thing.”



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