Kieran Kane and Rayna Gellert to bring stripped-down throwback folk to central PA venue
Kieran Kane and Rayna Gellert make music the old-fashioned way: two acoustic instruments, close harmonies, and as little technology as possible.
On June 22, the duo will bring their evocative brand of stripped-down throwback folk to the Colerain Center for Education, Preservation and the Arts near Spruce Creek for an outdoor concert. Tickets are $15 and available at www.coleraincenter.org.
For fans of Americana roots and country music, it’ll be a chance to hear a renowned Nashville songwriter and musician. As a member of the O’Kanes and Kane Welch Kaplin, as well as a solo artist, Kane has recorded more than a dozen albums and several Top 20 country hits since 1982, including a country chart topper with the O’Kanes’ “Can’t Stop My Heart From Loving You.” His songs have been recorded by The Judds, John Prine, Emmylou Harris and Alan Jackson, among others, and he co-founded the country music label Dead Reckoning Records.
But for nearly a decade, Kane’s focus has been on writing songs and playing lilting, soulful duets with Gellert, his touring partner and collaborator on three albums. Their latest, “The Flowers that Bloom in Spring,” came out in 2022.
“In terms of playing, I’m having more fun now performing than I have in a long time, and I think for a lot of reasons,” he said recently from his Nashville home. “I do love the music, though I’ve tried not to make any music that I didn’t really like along the way. It’s all been really good music. I’ve been extremely fortunate, over the years, to have worked with great musicians and great songwriters, sharing and learning. What Rayna and I are doing now is an extension of that.”
Gellert brings her own pedigree to the mix. As the daughter of a traditional fiddler and banjoist, she immersed herself in Appalachian music at an early age in Elkhart, Ind., becoming a prodigious fiddler before showcasing American string band music with the acclaimed roots band Uncle Earl. Her career has included touring and recording with such artists as Scott Miller, Abigail Washburn, Toubab Krewe, and Robyn Hitchock.
Back in 2015, she and Kane met at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco. At a friend’s recommendation, she caught the Kane Welch Kaplin set and loved it, especially the Kane component.
“I loved his songs and his singing, but I was really struck by the way he played the banjo particularly, because it was very old-timey, very minimalist, and he played with an aesthetic that felt very familiar to me as an old-time musician,” she said.
So she introduced herself backstage, exclaiming, “Hey, we must listen to the same dead guys!”
For his part, Kane didn’t immediately see a creative partnership, but before long, as their friendship grew, a songwriting team blossomed. Eventually, Gellert wanted to record an EP, which became “Workin’s Too Hard,” and asked Kane to play on it as well as co-produce. He had one condition.
“I said, ‘Sure, but I will do this under one rule, that if we record this, you have to sing live. You cannot go back and overdub a vocal. If we are going to record, it’s going to be all of us sitting in a room together, background vocals, everything,’” he recalled. “I think she was somewhat concerned.”
Actually, the idea “terrified” Gellert. She had never thought of herself as a vocalist, having only done a little bit of live singing, and the prospect of capturing a vocal take in one fell swoop was unsettling. But it worked.
“I think they are some of my favorite vocals I’ve ever recorded,” she said. “It was such a great experience. And so that’s the way we work as a duo recording. Everything is completely live, and it’s just been so transformative for me as far as how I think about recording. It’s made me trust the music and my ability to put stuff across, and it’s made me keep the focus on what my musical priorities actually are, as far as what I like to hear in a recording. I like to hear human beings playing music.”
In both their recordings and performances, Kane and Gellert harken back to the honesty and spontaneity of the seminal country and folk musicians who inspire them. Studio cuts are sung live, no headphones, sitting close together. On stage, they eschew banks of monitors and pickups. They just play and sing without frills or tricks, simply two people spinning music and telling stories straight from the heart.
“We both gravitate towards simplicity, towards cutting things back to the bare bones, putting in only what’s absolutely necessary to make it work,” Kane said. “So there’s no superfluous anything going on in the music. We just play it.”
Kane can trace his affinity for unaffected, straight-forward music, and his aversion to self-conscious playing, to listening to Little Richard, Bo Diddley and other early rockers while growing up in Queens, N.Y. A bum chord or note? Who cares? The songs still roared. He retained the lesson through his initial rock ‘n’ roll and jazz bands and then his distinguished career. Don’t worry about perfection; don’t overthink. Just let the music flow.
“That’s very much the tradition we work in now, and for me, it’s the only way that’s sustainable,” he said. “It’s not any fun the other way.”
He speaks from experience. Time and again, he has seen over-producing stymie talented singers and musicians. Recently, he watched Gellert and close friends go into a studio to record a fiddle tune. The producers, however, complicated matters when they separated the instruments.
“They wanted to just hear the banjo, just hear the fiddle, so they spread everybody out into different rooms, and they worked for hours and hours to play one fiddle tune,” Kane said.
“Finally, we convinced them to let us just sit in a room together,” Gellert said. “And then suddenly, it became fun.”
To which Kane added: “It sounded like music.”
If you go
What: In Concert at Colerain: Kieran Kane & Rayna Geller
Where: Colerain Center for Education, Preservation and the Arts, 4072 Spruce Creek Road, Spruce Creek, PA
When: 3 p.m. June 22
Tickets: $15 at www.coleraincenter.org
Chris Rosenblum is a former CDT journalist who’s a member of the Colerain Center for Education, Preservation and the Arts board of directors.
