The creative side, writing songs and tunes, is a big part of our enjoyment of music. We don't think of ourselves as primarily singer-songwriters, however. We've always called what we do "traditional acoustic music".
We play mostly simpler tunes and ballads, often from older eras, but don't place much emphasis on historical research, or strict adherence to regional styles. We're more interested in the songs themselves, and the stories they tell, and in our own interpretations of these stories.
The songs we write are often in this older ballad style, even though they may deal with more modern topics.
Many people call us "old timey" or "old time". Some folkies would restrict "old time" to traditional music of the Southern Appalachian region. We do some of that, but that's not all we do. And we think "old time" is a comfortably fuzzy term which can't be frozen into a single geographic region or one musical genre or to a concrete range in time.
Currently Mike's been listening a lot to Stecher and Brislen, Norman Blake , The Dry Branch Fire Squad , and the late Rick Abrams. In times past, he spent quality phonograph time with Burl Ives, The Kingston Trio and Flatt and Scruggs.
Jim looks up to John Prine, Steve Goodman, Gordon Lightfoot and Guy Clark.