You could say they're married to the music.
Singer-songwriter Chris Masterson and singer/fiddler Eleanor Whitmore are musical collaborators, co-writers and bandmates who have been performing together for four years. They also are husband and wife.
Their alt-country duo, The Mastersons, formed out of their shared love of playing music. Together, they churn out unflinching and emotionally precise songs about inevitability, longing and love. With lush fiddle playing, two-part harmonies and frank lyrics, their sound is spare and straightforward without losing its melodic qualities.
The Mastersons will open for Steve Earle and The Dukes tonight at the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College. They also will perform with Earle in The Dukes, which they have been a part of since 2010.
The duo are preparing to release their second album, “Good Luck Charm,” which is due July 8. Unlike their first album, “Birds Fly South,” a collection of songs they had composed individually, “Good Luck Charm” represents a true collaboration.
“This record is our first record that we've really written together collaboratively,” Whitmore said.
Whitmore and Masterson penned the songs on “Good Luck Charm” while on the road with Earle and The Dukes. It wasn't ideal, they say – songs were written in cramped dressing rooms or nameless hotels. But after recording the album in just 15 days with producer Jim Scott in California, they are pleased with the results. They've had time to refine their sound in the last two years.
“We have a few hundred shows under our belt as a band, which kind of helped shape our sound,” Whitmore said.
Spending so much time in the company of Earle, a widely respected songwriter, hasn't hurt, either.
“I think any time you share the stage and you share close quarters with a musician, you can't help but have some of that rub off,” Masterson said. “I think it's made us better writers.”
Masterson and Whitmore, who were raised in Texas, were accomplished musicians by the time their paths crossed in 2009. Whitmore, the daughter of an opera-singer mother and folk-singing pilot father, began playing the fiddle at age 4, went on to study with legendary Texas fiddler Johnny Gimble and worked with musicians like Regina Spektor. Masterson, meanwhile, was a teen guitar prodigy who began playing blues in Houston clubs at age 13 and went on to play with the likes of Son Volt.
They met at a music festival in Steamboat Springs in 2005. Soon, Whitmore was playing on Masterson's EP, and he was producing hers, and they began to regularly contribute to each other's projects. Before long, they were living together and playing in The Dukes.
One day around 2009, they were talking about how they had each accumulated piles of songs they needed to turn into respective albums. One of them joked that it would be a lot easier just to make one album instead of two – and that got them thinking. What began as jest eventually led to The Mastersons.
They credit Earle, too, for encouraging them to form the duo after they began playing in The Dukes.
“In 2010, Steve Earle said, 'You should get a record together because I'm going to feature you in my show,'” Masterson said.
They heeded his advice. The Mastersons released their debut, a collection of tuneful alt-country songs, in 2012. They've been playing as a duo in Earle's touring show since.
While they sometimes perform with a backing band, they've recently come to enjoy being on stage as just a duo.
In the last six months, Whitmore said, “we hit on something when we were playing. We really got into just playing as a duo. Sometimes it's almost easier to connect with an audience.”
kklingsporn@durangoherald.com
If you go
Steve Earle and The Dukes with opening act The Mastersons will play at 7:30 p.m. today at the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College, 1000 Rim Drive. General admission tickets start at $30, www.durangoconcerts.com.
