Few husband-wife musical duos provide audiences with the complete entertainment package that Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart dish out in a live performance. Armed with clever acoustic guitar interplay, autobiographical songwriting, lovely harmonies, and humorous storytelling, this couple captivates your attention from the first moment they come on stage. Based in Tennessee, Stacey and Mark draw from blues, pop, country, rock, and more in their heartfelt music. Years of touring the folk/Americana circuit (playing 170 concerts a year) have given them a knack for reaching out to the audience in an intimate “come in to my living room” fashion. Stacey and Mark own their own record label, Gearle Records, and have made eight CDs over the years. Since meeting in 1992 and marrying in late 1993, they have toured the USA, Canada, and Europe repeatedly. They left the environment of pursuing a major label deal in Nashville in 1998 to target small intimate venue crowds in theaters, coffeehouses, festivals, clubs, and house concerts. This has become their home, and they are a recognized fixture on the folk music trail they’ve blazed.
Despite being happily married for almost 20 years now, it’s no surprise that she kept her maiden name. And why not; she is Steve Earle’s sister, and that’s a name that can open some doors when you’re trying to make a go of it in the music business. Stacey grew up listening to her older brother’s jam sessions with the likes of Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Townes Van Zandt, and Lyle Lovett; talk about learning at the feet of the masters. Her first show was on an arena stage in Sydney, playing rhythm guitar in her brother’s band, Steve Earle & the Dukes, on “The Hard Way” tour in 1990. She went on to appear on three CDs released by Steve Earle and The Dukes: The Hard Way, Shut Up And Die Like An Aviator, and Transcendental Blues 2000.
Mark Stuart was serving a similar musical apprenticeship. He started his schooling listening and admiring his uncle’s guitar playing and his Dad’s fiddling. Years were spent learning and listening to the greats such as Chet Atkins, Merle Travis, John Fogerty, The Beatles and many more players and singers of all genres. By age 15 he was a member of his Dad’s band, and found himself playing in the School of Honky Tonks and Beer Joints in and around Nashville. He managed to stay awake in high school after playing late nights polishing every riff and bend and vocal chord, and by age 17 he had formed his own band, made a record, and still found the time to play on the road as lead guitar and vocals for acts like Freddy Fender and more. One of those other bands was Steve Earle and the Dukes, and like Stacey he recalls it as a time of glamour: appearing on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” and MTV. “I had someone tuning my guitar, strapping on my guitar,” he said. “Now we carry our stuff three flights up in the Red Roof Inn.”
A great description of Stacey and Mark is “They have voices that make you like them.” Earle’s Iris DeMent-like voice (once described as “a mercurial marriage of spun-glass fragility and molasses-thick Deep South twang”) and Stuart’s high tenor blend better than most male-female duos; their voices not so much melding into one sound, as many good harmony singers achieve, but each retaining its own distinct timbre while enhancing the other. Stuart’s guitar playing is worth raving about: no flashy, many-notes-per-minute pyrotechnics, but instead impressively clean, satisfying accompaniments and leads–and visually unique. He plays bass lead lines by reaching across the top of his guitar neck with his left hand, rather than fretting the strings in the conventional manner, curling from beneath the neck. It looks different, and, while it shouldn’t affect the sound, it somehow manages to. He maneuvers so smoothly from note to note that his instrument often sounds like a Dobro or pedal steel guitar, even when he’s not using a slide. Reminiscent of Chet Atkins, he’s got down pat the muffled, percussive alternating bass, with the clear-as-a-bell melody line ringing out above it.
Together, their songs are incredible. They are polished, faceted gems that evoke feelings rather than convey messages. The lyrics fall into the “poetry should not mean, but be” category; neither literal storytelling nor a random, arbitrary farrago of words but instead spare, compelling sketches that allow us to fill in the pictures.
