Mastersons: Birds Fly South

The Mastersons. Husband and wife, singing and playing together. And they"'re each deft instrumentalists, and they"'ve spent years playing in others"' bands before coming together as a unit. They"'re bound by music and an uncommon depth of companionship, they"'re good enough to make Steve Earle swoon, and all of that sounds quite nice. Both the Denton, Texas-born Whitmore and Houston-reared Masterson have been musicians for as long as they can recall. Whitmore"'s parents were both musicians, her mother an opera singer and her dad a folksinger who piloted Delta airplanes for a living. She began playing fiddle at age four, and she and sister Bonnie (now a touring songwriter) played in the family band as kids, and she studied fiddle with Texas swing master Johnny Gimble. Masterson was playing searing blues in Houston clubs at age 13, and he spent his adolescence as a disciple of blues greats Big Walter Price and TBone Walker. Whitmore and Masterson apprenticed for years with other musicians, she with Regina Spektor, Susan Gibson, Kelly Willis, Diana Ross, Will Hoge and others, he in the bands of Jack Ingram, Son Volt, Bobby Bare Jr. and more. They met in 2005 and each released solo debuts (hers was 2008"'s Airplanes and his was an EP called The Late Great Chris Masterson), but found themselves compelled to write and sing together. ""It all started coming together organically,"" Whitmore says. ""And the songs started to sound like a band, not like a song swap."" To capture that sound, The Mastersons headed from their Brooklyn home back down to Texas, where they worked with a core group of close friends (Grammy-winning engineer Steve Chrisensen, bass man George Reiff and drummer Falcon Valdez) to co-produce Birds Fly South. To capture the harmonies, Whitmore and Masterson sang together, into one microphone With the album complete, Whitmore and Masterson headed back to New York, and in May of 2011 they joined Earle"'s group, The Dukes and Duchesses. Each night on the world tour, Earle moved aside to let his spotlight shine on The Mastersons, whose efforts were met with reviews like ""scintillating"" (London"'s The Telegraph). Whitmore and Masterson remain integral players in Earle"'s band.