Gone Forever

Step back in time with me, if you will. The year is 1957 and we're in some smoky gin joint with some characters luking in the shadows clutching fiddles and six-string acoustic guitars. Any album that opens up with a rousing "One- Two-Three-Four" gets my vote straight away for chutzpah. Curtis and Loretta sing of sailors, cigarettes, and minstrel boys and they do it all in traditional settings with sparse instrumental backing and perfect harmonies. Favorite spins are the old stalwarts: "Banish Misfortune" and "Carrickfergus."

I first remember meeting Curtis & Loretta at Dulono's in the mid-Eighties. They used to come there to hear me play in the "Eclectic Brothers." Since then, I've emceed dozens and dozens of festivals and shows of which they've been a part (primarily on the "rendezvous circuit" that they and I travel in the summer.) I've sat stageside and listened to them for fifty hours, I'll bet. I've watched them grow as musicians, and it's been a pleasure doing so. I've heard Loretta become a good songwriter. I've watched her learn the Celtic harp, I've seen Curtis add and master instrument after instrument (check out his fabulous rhythm ukulele on "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)," and I've heard them develop and hone their vocal style. A further word about that:

Duo singing leaves more space, which creates more harmonic potential than trio singing does. Curtis & Loretta make liberal use of this; it's become perhaps their most notable trademark. They're a couple of regular songbirds, those two, sometimes flying in synch, but more often swooping around each other in curious and ultimately fruitful aerial maneuvers. They sing stuff in ways one doesn't expect, especially Curtis, who will often take off tramping through the melodic underbrush rather than staying on the trail. It all works very well.

I mentioned Loretta's growth as a songwriter. The six Simonet originals on "Gone Forever" live nowhere near the sprawling Land of Trite Ditties about Predictible Subjects and Endless Self-Absorbed Paeans about Nothing. Loretta writes songs about stuff. Stuff and things. Stuff and things like snowmen and toasters and flying pavement and computer crashes and old blue trucks and big Chevrolets and, well, I don't want to give it all away. Suffice it to say that things happen in Loretta's songs. People go places; they feel sorry for themselves; they rejoice in human companionship; they do dishes; they die. Just like in real life.

"Gone Forever" was recorded by south Minneapolis denizen Leo Whitebird, and produced by him with Curtis & Loretta. Peter Ostroushko, Marc Anderson, Laura Sewell, and Sandy Njoes play just the right amount and type of music on it.

"Gone Forever" is Curtis & Loretta's fifth album, and it sounds it. It's not a first, or even a second, album; Not in quality; not in the song selection, not in feel, not in physical design, not in the looks on their faces on the cover. Nothing about this album jumps up and down and yells, "Lookie here! We made us a album!" Everything about it says, "This is our latest; we hope you like it."

Curtis & Loretta have become mature and comfortable in their musician skins. There is neither anything tentative nor manic on this album. It's a very pleasant passage of fifty-four minutes and twenty-two seconds. The song selection and pacing move one comfortably from mood to mood. "Gone Forever" will please, enrich, and soothe, not irritate, bankrupt, or offend.

Husband-and-wife folksingers Curtis Teague and Loretta Simonet may look and sound as if they've just stepped out of the '60s revival, but their poignant lyrics make the traditional song forms hum. Simonet's vocals are heartrendingly lovely, especially on the title cut of the couple's latest album, "Gone Forever," which poignantly describes her father's Alzheimer's symptoms. Teague's voice is warm and likable, and both musicians know their way around a slew of instruments and styles.

Surely every kind of music is based in personal experience, but none ever seems quite so keening as folk music. On Curtis Teague and Loretta Simonet's new disc, the title song is a celebration of Loretta's dad, who suffered from Alzheimer's, and "Jean's Song," about a friend who died of emphysema. And anybody (which would be just about everybody) who has gone through the same ordeals will share both the sadness and the joy that emanates from these songs. For both remind us that it is for ourselves that we mourn, because we have lost the people who brought us joy.

But don't get the idea that this is all maudlin and weepy, because there are songs that remind the living to enjoy life, too. The opening "Half Empty/Half Full" admonishes listeners to take part in the present instead of losing time worrying about the future, while "Western Star" offers another take on that "greener grass" fable. There are songs about sailors and songwriters, and the longtime Minneapolis couple also indulge their well-known passion for Irish melodies. And how can you resist an album that includes a kazoo? (I've got a cheap one in my desk right now; the good one's at home).

Loretta Simonet uses staunchly traditional folk forms to write intensely personal songs. The warm but painful title track to Curtis & Loretta's new CD, "Gone Forever," about her dad's battle with Alzheimer's, is a perfect example of her craft. So is "Jean's Song," which mates ages-old Celtic harp glissandos with lyrics about grocery stores, broken toasters and oxygen machines. Her husband, Curtis Teague, a prodigious multi-instrumentalist, also chips in a swell new tune about the lure of the ocean, "Don't Keep a Sailor Away from the Sea," and revives the Merle Travis/Tex Williams country classic "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)" -- on ukulele and kazoo, no less.