COYLE — High-lonesome harmonies and music from “The Sacred Heart Sessions”: both are promised this Sunday as Kendl Winter and Palmer T. Lee, the duo known as the Lowest Pair, arrive for a matinee concert at Coyle’s community center.
This is the third show this month in the Concerts in the Woods series as presenter Norm Johnson seeks to warm up a long January. As ever, admission to the 3 p.m. performance is by donation and listeners of all ages are welcome.
“I’ve been trying for three years to get this duo to come to Coyle, and we finally found a date that works,” Johnson said of the Lowest Pair, which makes its old-time music in Olympia these days.
With their banjos and vocals, Winter and Lee sound as though they just walked out of the Appalachian Mountains, Johnson notes.
Winter is known for her work with the Blackberry Bushes, a bluegrass band that has played in these parts a number of times. She and Lee have released a couple of albums: their 2014 debut “36¢,” on Team Love Records, and in 2015 “The Sacred Heart Sessions.”
The duo recorded this album at an old church in Duluth, Minn., now known as the Sacred Heart Music Center. It was one resonant experience, Winter told Spin magazine, to sing in a space made for prayer.
While Winter, an Arkansas native, sings her own poetry, Lee plays an unusual set of strings. When he was 19, he inherited a couple of banjos and discovered he could reassemble them into his dream instrument. The Lowest Pair’s sound is a mix of original wordplay and traditional twang.
For information about and directions to the Lowest Pair’s venue, officially called the Laurel B. Johnson Community Center at 923 Hazel Point Road, visit www.coyleconcerts.com or phone Norm Johnson at 360-765-3449. And for more about the duo, see www.thelowestpair.com.
