PORT LUDLOW — PEAR is a country-music pair plus one. Their name is short, so they go for a big sound, as big as Dolly Parton’s hair.
Dolly’s just one of PEAR’s inspirations, just one of the artists the band will celebrate in Saturday night’s Port Ludlow Performing Arts concert at the Bay Club.
The evening of country and pop will start at 7:30 after doors open at 6:30 p.m. at the club, 120 Spinnaker Place. Single tickets are $24, though music lovers can opt for the $132 Flex Pass, which includes six tickets to any show in the Port Ludlow Performing Arts season.
Lynae and Denis Dufresne, now married in life and music, met when they were members of Barrage, an all-fiddle band with players from around North America.
Denis grew up in Medicine Hat, Alberta — “oh, yeah, I’m a prairie boy” — while Lynae comes from Sand Point, Idaho.
“She was planning to go to Tennessee for schooling, but she joined Barrage,” said Denis.
Then she moved to Canada; the Dufresnes of Calgary have been married 15 years now.
After forming PEAR, the couple branched out past their fiddles to sing and play guitar and mandolin on their originals: up-tempo romps such as “This Ain’t a Love Song,” “Never Lookin’ Back” and “A Chance to Change the World.”
As full-spectrum lovers of country and popular music, they do covers of Parton, Garth Brooks and Newgrass Revival songs; “Tennessee Waltz” is part of their repertoire, as is a mashup of the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” and Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.”
With the addition of multi-instrumentalist Craig Bignell of Owen Sound, Ontario, PEAR became a trio and the instrument count rose.
Bignell plays banjo, guitar, djembe and other drums while singing, so it’s “three-part vocals all the way through the show,” said Denis.
PEAR is so named and capitalized, he added, because the band wanted something a little different that would stand out. PEAR is a play on the word pair, of course, and it allows the trio to take a symbol with them wherever they travel.
PEAR does about 200 concerts a year, Denis estimates. They recently finished recording their debut album, titled “Vinyl,” and plan to release it in February.
On Saturday night, concertgoers can also visit the Bay Club Gallery before the show or during intermission to see Port Ludlow Artists’ League member Alan Ahtow’s photography exhibition.
Ahtow has mounted a collection of digital images infused on metal.
To hear some of PEAR’s music, visit www.PEARband.com, and to find out more about the season of concerts at the Bay Club, see www.portludlowperformingarts.com.
