Finger-pickin’ folk duo comes to USU
Life on the road can be hell.
But for Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart – a duo that spent more than 300 days on the road last year playing 272 shows in coffee houses, theaters, amphitheaters, churches, barns, homes, festivals and stores – Logan is just another drop in the bucket.
Friday, the couple will be arriving from Ashland City, Tenn. to perform in the Ellen Eccles Conference Center with a unique blend of musical talent that has combined over the last 11 years into a folk fusion sensation.
Debby Bronson, a member of the Bridger Folk Music Society, was one of the people responsible for bringing the duo to town.
“My husband and I saw Stacey and Mark four years ago at the Rocky Mountain Folk Festival in Lyons, Colo.,” Bronson said. “We just fell in love with her sincere, charming lyrics laced with a bit of a Texas twang that’s so endearing.”
The society, which is a non-profit volunteer-based organization, is dedicated to supporting folk music in its many forms.
“Folk music is our roots, it’s our history,” Bronson said. “It’s what our grandparents listened to and made. It’s all-encompassing, ranging from Celtic, to world rhythms, to acoustic blues, pioneer, hillbilly and bluegrass.”
In 1994, when Earle and Stuart married, they never realized just how close they would become over the intervening years. Performing separately only twice since then, the couple is rarely apart.
“I don’t know, maybe we’re inseparable,” Earle said. “But then, we’re real good as husband and wife giving each other space sometimes.”
Still, for how well they complement each other, Earle and Stuart come from somewhat different backgrounds.
“I grew up in a household with Steve Earle bringing Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and all those folks home with him,” Earle said. “They walked through our door. They slept in our house. So that’s a pretty darn good gift.”
Though she was exposed throughout her young life to these great songwriters, an unplanned pregnancy crushed many of her hopes for the future.
“At 16 – at that time of dreaming when you’re standing there holding shampoo bottles and pretending you’re singing into them – I was heating baby bottles,” Earle said.
It was a fortuitous move to Nashville and work with her brother Steve on his album Hard Way several years later that once again opened her dreams of being a songwriter.
Stuart, on the other hand, grew up with a father playing gigs every week and ever since he began playing in his father’s band at age 15, he’s known the musical life was for him.
“Every weekend I was doing four-hour gigs [and] everything from Haggard to Hendrix,” he said. “I’m 39 now, and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t long to do this.”
Stuart, who sings tenor, has a sound that blends well with Earle’s keen and sprightly voice, which Bronson said reminds her of an early Nanci Griffith.
“She’s been described as the best back-porch discovery since Dolly Parton,” Bronson said. “Her joyous songs are a beguiling blend of innocence and experience, exploring life as a mother, sister, wife and woman.”
The duo plays a variety of musical styles such as jug band, gypsy jazz, country rock, folk and Western swing and perform all their music as acoustic duets.
“Stacey and Mark will do two sets with an intermission between,” Bronson said. “They’re bringing their CDs to sell and chances are very likely that you can even get an autographed copy of any of their CDs and have a real live conversation with them. That’ll never happen at the Delta Center.”
Tickets for the performance are $12 in advance and $14 at the door and can be purchased at Sunrise Cyclery, Accents and all USU ticket outlets. For local concert information, contact Blair Larsen at 792-4996.
-mattgo@cc.usu.edu