Names are everything — or, they can seem like it anyway. In coming up with a name for their musical union, the husband-and-wife duo known as The Honey Dewdrops looked on the Internet and all around them. Uncle Dave Macon, aka the "Dixie Dewdrop," was an early star of the Grand Ole Opry. Then, there's The Waltons. On the TV series, the Dew Drop Inn was a club that later came to life in the real world as a bed and breakfast in Scottsville, Virginia.
For Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish of The Honey Dewdrops, who lived nearby, these were reasons enough to adopt the "Dewdrops" portion of their name. The "honey" was added in relation to the pair's matrimony union. It was also reflective of the sweet sounds that the two are capable of conjuring together. The Honey Dewdrops produce layered harmonies that glimmer with acoustic guitars and compatible, harmonious altos.
The couple met while they were in college; on the side they both enjoyed playing music and later found themselves in the same band. Fast forward to 2008 when they were featured on Prairie Home Companion. After starring on the public radio show's "People in their Twenties Talent Show," they began taking a career in music more seriously. Living outside of Charlottesville, Virginia, at the time, the positive reinforcement lured them into further honing in on their craft. Could they establish a music career that went beyond the here and there oddball gigs? Could touring become a full-time job? The answer was yes. It led Wortman and Parrish to quitting their teaching jobs in a risky effort to turn a dream into a reality.
Now, they're glad they did.
Parrish admits that a life on the road poses plenty of challenges. But they wouldn't do anything differently. Just last year, the duo released its fourth studio album, Tangled Country.
This album was unlike past Honey Dewdrops albums in that they featured guest musicians who added more instruments and sounds to the group's more stripped and simplistic soundscapes.
Yet, the extra sounds don't seem to diminish the couple's force as a two-piece. In fact, the recordings seem to capture the sounds that they make as two people without any noticeable flashiness of extra people, places and things.
"We thought it would be really cool to bring the songs alive on the record in a way that would be a little different than we play most of the shows. Our ideas about recordings have really changed with us over time," says Parrish. "At times, we felt like this should be a pure documentation of what we sound like with no overdubs and just the two of us, which is how we tour 100 percent of the time. But with this one we thought, 'Hey let's make the record a little different.' We made it different in a way that's subtle."
In that retrospect, there's pedal steel and a lot more instrumental flare, without any drowning out of the dynamic that the two have going on their own.
Drawn to male/female duets from bluegrass and old-time sounds from Jody Stecher & Kate Brislin, which they listened to often during the early formation of the Honey Dewdrops, Parrish also attributes Ginny Hawker & Tracy Schwarz as strong duet-style voices coupled with guitars who served as encouragement and swayed their sound in the acoustic direction.
These old-time acts introduced the idea of just how profound the effects of a couple guitars and a couple voices can be. They liked stripped down, spare and quiet vibe.
"That's a big part of the music," says Parrish. "It allows the nuances of the song to really come through."
Hearing those details and the powerful force that just two people could have in the music realm convinced the pair to take acoustic music more seriously. They didn't need the frills of a full band and lots of instruments on the road, but they aren't opposed to it in the studio — at least, not anymore.
As former special education teachers who taught at different schools and had limited access to one another after long days, this couple tredged off the typical path of married living.
On "Same Old," the couple touches on that idea of day-to-day life and the feeling that it's getting stale.
"Maybe there's some thought that has to go into why it feels stale and how it might be changed up so that you feel a little better about it," says Parrish. The song, written largely about some friends of the couple and their ballsy move to buy a plot of land and build the house of their dreams, left them inspired. "It's really good that people are doing what they want to do," says Parrish.
Yet, despite the positive outlook there's a tinge of sadness and doubt in songs recorded on much of the band's work. They even admit that, to a certain degree, sad songs make them happy.
"It could be an overtly sad song — like going through break up or loosing a loved one — but it can run the gamit between that far side of being a sad song and being between that and not quite knowing how you feel. Tension is interesting to us," says Parrish. "It's what we're trying to get at. A lot of times it's sort of murky as to what we're trying to get at when the process begins and you go through this journey of figuring out what you're trying to say."
Most often, they look beneath the surface and try to take heavy issues off the chest. The band's "Loneliest Song," is actually a sad song about sad songs. One line in the song reads, "The loneliest songs are the most beautiful things."
Now 35 and 32, respectively, Parrish and Wortman continue to mature in new and exciting ways.
After living in Baltimore, Maryland for the past two years, they've been influenced by the 'Charm City' and by a new lifestyle guided by city life versus their small town living back in Virginia.
"Certainly the riots that happened almost a year ago in Baltimore have been percolating and living underneath the surface," Parrish says in regards to the change in atmosphere and what could, someday, be a source of inspiration behind another song.
