BRATTLEBORO — A concert featuring Sparky and Rhonda Rucker will take place at the West Brattleboro house of George Carvill and Ellie Weiss on Thursday, Nov. 5, starting at 7 p.m.
Sparky did many house concerts in the area in the 1970s. Since then he married Rhonda and the two tour the world from their home base in Tennessee, singing songs and telling stories from the American tradition.
The house is small, so RSVPs are required to get the address and parking instructions.
The Ruckers' music includes a variety of old-time blues, Appalachian music, slave songs, and spirituals as well as originals, and they accompany themselves with fingerstyle picking and bottleneck blues guitar, blues harmonica, old-time banjo, piano, spoons, and bones.
The Ruckers also weave American history, traditional storytelling, and humor into their concerts, and they have been featured tellers at the International Storytelling Center and Festival.
Over 40 years they have performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival as well as public radio programs such as “On Point,” “Prairie Home Companion,” “Mountain Stage,” and “Morning Edition.” Their recording, Treasures & Tears, was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award, and their music is included on the Grammy-nominated anthology, Singing Through the Hard Times.