Along with homemade pastries, sweet vocal harmony will be served at the me and thee coffeehouse in Marblehead tomorrow night, when the Goodhues Band entertains in the final performance of the season. From Stephen Foster to the Grateful Dead, from Celtic classics to "The Mexicali Blues," the Goodhues' arrangements of musical Americana feature several voices singing together.
"A lot of people can sing and play, but not everyone has our harmonies," said Kim Goodhue, patriarch of the band, which includes sons Geoff and Ryan.
At the same time, not every voice in the band belongs to a Goodhue. Fiddle player Trish DeCaprio, who had been playing with Geoff Goodhue in a band called Blackbird, joined the Goodhues following their first CD, "Short Time Here, Long Time Gone," adding lead and background vocals that extended the range and sweetened the sound of their songs.
"I love singing," DeCaprio said. "Growing up, I used to sing on our back porch in Cambridge with my father, who sang in the St. Paul's Church choir."
Ryan Goodhue, Geoff's younger brother, is the one non-singing member of the band. He played hand drums on one song on the first album and now also contributes his skill as a pianist, especially in the improvisational sections of bluegrass tunes. Ryan Goodhue, however, said he is not yet ready to sing in performance.
Harmony hasn't always been easy to maintain for the Goodhues. Indeed, their first CD, which was recorded in January 2005, was supposed to be their last, because Geoff Goodhue was moving to New York to play in a rock band. He plays mandolin and guitar for the Goodhues Band, but has also played rock guitar since his days in Lobster Clinic, a band that he formed at Masconomet High School.
Kim Goodhue wanted to record some of the bluegrass and folk songs he and Geoff had been playing together "before we ended up going completely separate ways," Kim Goodhue said. "People told us we sounded good together," he said.
Kim traces his taste in music to the folk revival of the '60s, he said. He liked Joan Baez, the New Lost City Ramblers and whoever was playing at Club 47 (now Club Passim) in Cambridge. A classmate at the New Hampton School, a private school in New Hampshire, introduced him to the autoharp, he said, and his expertise on this instrument is featured throughout the Goodhues' repertoire.
However, Kim Goodhue said he does not like the topical protest songs that folk music is sometimes famous for.
"I like the language to be poetic, not didactic," he said.
There is no shortage of apolitical folk songs in the band's immense catalogue of 200 songs.
"Poetic" is a good term to describe Celtic songs, which make up about a quarter of what the Goodhues Band plays. The second CD, "Root and Branch," even features a poem set to music, "Down by the Salley Garden," by Irish poet William Butler Yeats. In a circular gesture, this arrangement returns the poem to its roots, because Yeats said the lyrics came from a song he heard a peasant singing in Sligo.
"It's an ancient Celtic air," Kim said of the music to which the poem is set.
If You Go
What: Performance Showcase, with The Goodhues Band, The Electric Farm, John Elliott, Eve Goldberg
When: Friday, May 9, 8 p.m.
Where: me & thee coffeehouse, 28 Mugford St., off Route 114, Marblehead
Cost: $5
Information: 24 info-line at 781-631-8987
