Friends since they were teenagers and united by a passion for Irish music, Kate Burke and Luke Plumb have released a new album of groove-based interpretations of traditional folk songs.
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Over Easter the duo, who have been playing together in their current outfit for the last three years, launched the self-titled album back at the place they first met about 20 years ago - the National Folk Festival in Canberra.
Much of the album focuses on instrumental arraignments, with Burke on guitar and Plumb on mandolin and bouzouki.
"A lot of the songs I do with Luke are written by other people or are traditional," Burke said after she finished performing a gig at the festival on Sunday.
"The Irish tradition [in Australia] is a strong one. Irish players came out in the Snowy Hydro Scheme in the '50s and ended up in Sydney and Melbourne, then established strong Irish scenes.
"When we do Irish music we've got a fairly direct link back to Ireland."
Burke is well-known for her work with Trouble in the Kitchen as well as her partnership with Ruth Hazleton and as she has done a lot of singing in her projects she enjoyed the challenging of working on strong lines on the guitar for this new album, keeping pace with Plumb's furious playing.
When Plumb was asked what he wanted the new album to show, he laughed and said "that we've still got it".
"A certain amount of it is celebrating the old material," he said.
"We do contemporary material as well, but the old songs are vibrant and full of life."
His father played records of Irish music while he was young, but Burke did not listen to the style while growing up, saying she got into it by chance after a friend brought a fiddle to school when she was studying in Canberra and said they needed a guitar in their band.
"I got into it because I was pretty shy and it was a great social scene," she said.
"The National Folk Festival was one of my first festivals and I still have a great love for coming here.
"Socialising with like-minded nerds, it's always a great thing to do!"
While she lives in Candelo, Plumb is based in Tasmania. But this kind of arrangement is not unusual for the songstress.
"I've always played with people who don't live in the same town as me," she said.
"You put an album together over the internet then meet up before a festival to tie it all together."
Burke said audiences' responses to Irish music varied depending on where they were performing, but she was happy to launch the album at the folk festival as it was her "home audience".
"In the '90s, when I first started playing, Riverdance had happened and Irish music was popularised everywhere," she said.
"We'd do gigs around Australia and people would know the sounds already.
"It is a bit more different these days, it's probably a little more niche."
The self-titled album was released exclusively at the National Folk Festival, but will be made available for purchase soon. Follow the duo's Facebook page for details.
Albert McKnight
Journalist at Bega District News.
Journalist at Bega District News.
