COYLE — When this guitar man came to rural Jefferson County to play with the band The Fire Inside last year, he gave the gig a good review.
“This is great. This is awesome,” Clayton Kaiser said of the Concerts in the Woods, Norm Johnson’s folk music series at the community center on the Toandos Peninsula.
So when he and singer-fiddle player Kelly Erb formed a new duo and recorded an album, “The Saturday Session,” at Seattle’s Heartgold Studios last fall, they reconnected with Johnson to book a show out here.
The duo, called The Mighty Dreadful, will arrive at 3 p.m. Sunday for a matinee concert at the Laurel B. Johnson Community Center, 923 Hazel Point Road, where admission is by donation and listeners of all ages are welcome.
And as ever, complimentary coffee and cookies are served during the break.
“We’re a bluegrassy, rockabilly, country, swing duo,” Kaiser said in an interview this week, adding that he and Erb dish out “a good mix of originals we’ve come up with together,” plus traditional songs that are time- and road-tested.
These tunes are reworked, according to the Mighty Dreadful Duo’s www.reverbnation.com site, “to satiate two down-to-earth Puget Sound musicians.”
But what’s this Mighty Dreadful stuff?
Kaiser admitted he couldn’t quite recall how they chose the moniker.
“We needed a name,” he said.
Now he just hopes people will see the self-referential humor.
Erb and Kaiser found each other on the www.craigslist.com music listings.
She grew up in Oregon and started her musical life with the classical violin, the Salem Youth Symphony and the Salem Chamber Orchestra.
When not practicing or giving recitals, she could be found listening — for hours on end — to her father’s classic rock and country LPs.
Today, Erb plays fiddle and sings with the Celtic band Jug of Punch while slaking her thirst for stylistic fusion. Using improvisation and an open mind, she likes to erase the lines between genres.
Kaiser, meantime, is also busy with multiple projects: playing with The Fire Inside and with other bands including Winston and the Churchills and the Shrub Steppe Steppers.
To find out more about the Mighty Dreadful and other artists coming to play in these parts, see www.CoyleConcerts.com or contact Johnson at 360-765-3449 or johnson5485@msn.com.
