Zoe Speaks

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daughters, whom they homeschooled (or vanschooled). If it's a good sign for a marriage that the partners come to resemble each other physically a bit, theirs should be long and happy.

They call themselves "contemporary Appalachian singer-songwriters," but for them a singer-songwriter is not necessarily an interpreter of his or her own songs but simply a performer who places equal emphasis on the two arts. The music of Zoe Speaks draws equally from traditional material the two partners learned from their families and from modern compositions, mostly their own. They play mandolin, clawhammer banjo, and hammered dulcimer along with guitar, and their songs are interspersed with storytelling and clogging. But along with these traditional arts come songs musically distant from the ballads and old gospel pieces they have inherited. They write folk portraits of migrants to the North, songs with rock beats, and even a terrific truck-stop waitress song, "Viola," with a calypso beat.

The mixture of new and old material is unusual enough in a time when traditional music is mostly the province of specialists, but what's really uncanny about Zoe Speaks is the way they've made traditional songs their own and woven them into a presentation that's essentially contemporary and personal. They don't imitate old-time vocal timbres; they sing in natural, conversational voices, with every word crystal clear. And their harmony singing seems to suggest some kind of close communication between two people.