Take two educators, a plumber and an accountant, years of musical experience and a knack for harmonizing, and you’ll get a quartet that produces body-swaying, toe-tapping, pleasing-to-the-ear music.

That’s the combination that makes up Evergreen, a musical group well known to Maine audiences for its eclectic acoustic music. Several of the group’s musical selections can be heard on a recently released recording, the group’s second.

“We call ourselves a democratic band,” said Chris Prickett, who plays banjo, fiddle and accordion, because each member has an equal say in what selections are performed each night. “You have to make sure everyone has some say,” he said.

That democratic process has kept the group together for about nine years and has maintained a friendly relationship among band members Prickett of Cambridge, Steve Chiasson of Wellington, and Joe Kennedy and Nellie Kennedy of Ripley.

Each member is an accomplished musician individually. Prickett, an eighth-grade language arts teacher in SAD 46, is a two-time winner of the Vermont Family Festival banjo competition. He previously has appeared with the Kennebec Valley Boys and several other bands.

Chiasson, a technology teacher in Skowhegan, began honing his singing, guitar playing and songwriting abilities in 1965 when he organized his first garage band. He since has won songwriting awards, and several of his compositions have been recorded and released by independent artists. Chiasson also did the recording for the group’s recent release.

Joe and Nellie Kennedy, husband and wife, produced and promoted the Breakneck Mountain Bluegrass Festival in Crawford from 1984 to 1995. Joe Kennedy, a plumber who first picked up the harp around 1968 and now is an accomplished harmonica player, previously has recorded with the Kennebec Valley Boys and Breakneck Mountain.

Nellie Kennedy, an accountant, has spent considerable time in her career singing and playing acoustic bass and autoharp with the well-known Misty Mountaineers. She recorded three albums with this group.

Prickett and Chiasson originally were members of the band The Greens. When that group disbanded more than nine years ago, the two teamed with the Kennedys and changed the name to Evergreen. Much of the material the group performs is written by Prickett and Chiasson and rehearsed each Friday night in the Kennedys’ living room.

“Steve always brings the cookies and it [the music] always sounds best in the living room,” Prickett said.

While the band members play about 20 gigs a year – many of which they organize themselves – it is the coffeehouses that have their hearts.

“It’s one of our favorite venues to play, the coffeehouses,” said Prickett. “You get an audience that listens well. It’s a performers dream to perform in a coffeehouse because people are there to listen to you and it’s intimate,” he said.

The coffeehouse at the Dexter Unitarian Universalist Church is where you can hear the group perform next at 7 p.m. Jan. 20.

You also can join them at 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 24, at the Union Street Brick Church, 126 Union St., Bangor, for the group’s CD release party and benefit show for radio station WERU.