BRATTLEBORO — Although the Vermont folk-based duo Hungrytown live in West Townshend, Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson have been so busy touring the United States, Canada, and Europe, that they could hardly find any time to spend at home.
This month, however, Hungrytown seems to be everywhere in Vermont. The band peformed only last week at the Brattleboro Film Festival for the screening of “Winding Stream,” a documentary about the American roots music dynasty, The Carter Family.
And the band will join the Demolition String Band for a Woody Guthrie tribute at Jamaica Town Hall on Nov. 8 at 7:30 p.m.
Perhaps best of all, Hungrytown is lined up for a solo concert at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro on Friday, Nov. 7, at 7:30 p.m. (It's a benefit for the Friends of Brooks Memorial Library.)
Mostly performing their own music, Hall and Anderson craft classic, instantly memorable songs, and weave modern themes into traditional song structures. Their deceptively simple compositions are rooted firmly in folk tradition and have been performed by the likes of Nashville songwriting legend David Olney and bluegrass veterans the Virginia Ramblers.
Hungrytown's music has also appeared on several television shows, including the Independent Film Channel's hit, “Portlandia.”
Hall is Hungrytown's lead singer and guitarist, while Anderson sings harmony and plays an array of stringed instruments, from guitar to banjo and mandolin. Anderson also produced and arranged Hungrytown's first two highly acclaimed CDs, “Hungrytown” (2008) and “Any Forgotten Thing” (2011).
On her own, Hall has two well-received CDs, “Rebecca Hall Sings!” (2000) and “Sunday Afternoon” (2002).
“We're lucky to be playing music full-time,” says Hall. “We completely support ourselves by our musicmaking. But to do so we have to tour most of the time, and happily we really love to travel.”
The due say they mainly see themselves as songwriters. “Our strength is expressing ourselves in song,” Anderson explains.
“Ken and I write traditional folk songs, or rather I should say songs written in a folk song structure,” Hall says. “We don't try to imitate early American folk songs but use their influence to create something separate.”
Anderson says his wife, Rebecca, mostly writes the lyrics. Both members write the music.
“But every song is a little different,” explains Anderson.
So far, the duo has written at least 50 songs, “and that's a lowball figure,” adds Anderson.
Hall and Anderson formed Hungrytown around 10 years ago.
“We lived in New York City and had office jobs,” says Anderson. “We hated what we did and figured this was the time in our life to take the chance and do something about it. You know the expression that life is not a rehearsal? So we thought we had better get on with the show. We figured it was our last change, since we were entering middle age.
“We knew we needed to do what makes us happy, and that was music. So Rebecca and I quit our jobs. We already had a weekend home in Townshend, and we decided to move there. We had envisioned it as our retirement home; we just moved up our retirement 35 years.”
The couple soon discovered that this “retirement” turned out to be a lot more work than any job either had.
“It is rather like running a small business,” says Hall: “You learn to wear many hats.”
“But we're never bored,” says Anderson. “We constantly have to develop new skills. And to work we must travel all the time. We perform quite a bit in the UK and New Zealand, which has a circuit of folk clubs.”
But how does a couple living in rural Vermont manage to find work all across the globe?
“You get jobs the same way any contractor would, through word of mouth and friends and past jobs,” explains Anderson. “Building up our successful career has been incremental, and our motivating force was that we did not want to go back to what we did before. Music is now our day job.
“In the music industry, it turns out that art is the least of the work. People tell you to follow your dream, as if money will follow after, as if by magic. Let me tell you that it all is hard work, and you have to learn as you go along.”
“But what we do can't be measured in dollars,” says Hall. “We love making music and we love to travel.”
Before Hungrytown, both Hall and Anderson had backgrounds in music, if not exactly folk. Anderson was a drummer in several rock bands, and Hall performed around Manhattan singing jazz standards.
The duo became interested in folk music with the re-release on CD of Harry Smith's “Anthology of American Folk Music.” This is a six-album compilation first released in 1952 composed of 84 American folk, blues, and country music recordings originally pressed between 1927 and 1932.
She had read an article about “Anthology” in The Nation, and its eccentricity appealed to her.
“The 'Anthology' is a collection of American folk music before the Depression killed off the smaller record labels, which were putting out this material,” says Hall. “Harry Smith was an amazing guy who collected this incredibly sampling a American folk music. He would write remarkable liner notes explaining in detail each song and its singers.
“Smith's 'Anthology' was instrumental in starting the folk revival in the late 1950s and early 1960s. People like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez were inspired what they heard and began to create music like it.”
“Many of the songs on this analogy are very gritty, although not in a self-conscious way,” says Anderson. “They were mostly written and performed by rural Southerners, like the original Carter family, and have an early ghostly sound.”
Anderson says he finds it rather ironic that, in the folk revival, middle-class white kids who liked what they heard cleaned it up.
Hall says she believes that Hungrytown's music differs from both the original songs in Smith's collection and the music of the folk revival.
“We use the folk tradition as a template to create a story,” she says. “In many ways, what we write is more influenced by jazz, rock, and 1960s pop music.”
On their website, www.hungytown.net, Hall and Anderson say their musical influences are artists as diverse as Hank Williams, the Beatles and Billie Holiday.
A hybrid of musical styles all its own, Hungrytown finds itself a little unsure how to answer the inevitable question, “What's your sound like?”
Hall and Anderson are now raising funds to complete their third album, “Further West.”
“We'd like to bring in a few brilliant guest musicians, a master mastering engineer, a CD pressing factory and a great promotional team,” says Anderson. “Only last week we began a capital campaign on Indiegogo, with rewards for different levels of donations - from a signed CD and poster to lunch with Hungrytown itself.
“We set a goal of $15,000, but anything over that amount would be greatly appreciated. Getting out a recording is always difficult in the music industry. What's that old saying, it is easy to be present, but hard to get noticed,” she adds.