by Karen Schafer, Staff Writer
Flutist Kelly Armor devoted her early 20s traveling in Tanzania, learning about that region's musical traditions. Back in the States, guitarist David Sturtevant spent those same years living the life of a "vapid white male" searching for lots of loving.
Despite their surface differences, the Erie, Pa., natives formed the folk duo Armor & Sturtevant seven years ago. They married not long after that.
Together, they have developed a musical style mixing love 'em and leave 'em storytelling, twangy Appalachian folk, with a dash of East African drums and Celtic melodies.
Armor & Sturtevant will perform Sunday night at the Moore Music (In the House) concert series in Rockville.
Although they both attended colleges, they're hardly hoity-toity about it in their music. In his song, "Jersey Grass," the 35-year-old Sturtevant assumes a New Jersey accent and becomes "Jerry," a factory worker who's moving into "Mobile Home Heaven" with a "looker named Linda." Like plenty of country love songs, the relationship sours, and Jerry rides the Greyhound bus back to his old sweetheart, "Jersey Lilly."
And then there is "Sweet August Lady" about a man/boy, two weeks shy of 24, having an affair with a 44-year-old divorcee.
She was forty-four and halfway in the bag
When it occurred to me to ask her for a dance.
He then peers into her eyes and describes her as "a lovely brown-eyed girl going gray."
The songs are "slightly autobiographical," Sturtevant said. "At the time I wrote those songs, I was just out of college, and I was marginally employed." The songs are about a dozen years old, but they still are favorites among the performers' coffeehouse followers. Just two years ago, Sturtevant's gallivanting was immortalized on their second CD, "You Dance Like You Drive" (Tatema Music).
Their easy-listening voices coupled with tell-me-a-story lyrics dominate most songs, giving the listener only a glimpse of their instrumental versatility.
Sturtevant describes the duo as "white kids from Pennsylvania trying to perform African music." But it is American folk music that comes through the strongest in their songs, featuring a mix of folksy chords and twangy West Virginia fiddle sounds.
Armor, 34, never expected to be a folk performer. A classical flutist, she went straight from high school to Yale University to learn music and composition.
She hated the school.
"I wanted a liberal education, but it was too conservative," she said.
Armor heard that Friends World College -- now a part of Long Island University -- had a foreign exchange program, where students could immerse themselves in another culture's music. She nixed Paris and Rome. Instead, Armor said, "I went to Africa to live with families, learn to carry water on my head and sing songs."
During a two-and-a-half-year period, she lived with different families. Armor learned that East Africans have a strong a cappella tradition, singing by ear and often repeating a line of music 100 times with just the slightest change in tonality.
"Unlike most American music -- which is linear, meaning it has a beginning, a middle and an end -- East African music is more circular," she said.
Back in the United States, she wondered how to use what she learned in Africa. A mutual friend introduced Armor and Sturtevant, an aspiring musician. The couple realized that together they could combine their diverse musical backgrounds into a folk duo.
It was a match they both needed. Sturtevant settled down, and Armor found her musical direction. In the CD's title song, "You Dance Like You Drive," written by the partners, they describe how they make their marriage work.
You dance like you drive
You shuck and you jive ...
I got bruises, bumps and rug-burns That can prove beyond a doubt
You dance like you...
Oh, this must be where love and terror meet
Oh, come on baby, do your polka on my feet
You dance like you...
You guessed it: drive.
"The song symbolizes our relationship," Armor said. Then she added with a laugh, "And there aren't any rug-burns."
Armor & Sturtevant perform Sunday, at 7 p.m., at Moore Music (In the House). A contribution of $10 per person is requested. Reservations required. Call 301-309-0983.