Independence essential for folk-rock Kennedys

Pete and Maura Kennedy like being their own bosses, but they don’t want to be anyone else’s.

After four albums on Green Linnet, then Rounder, the folk-rock duo started its own Jiffyjam Records album.

“It’s the new paradigm for musicians,” Pete explained. “The large-scale record companies are just marketing big, bankable stars. But that leaves out thousands of creative people. The studio technology is available at such a low cost now. You can build your own studio, record your album, then market it through independent distributors, the Internet and at gigs.”

That said, they have no desire to record and market other musicians.

“You’re investing in them,” Pete said. “You start looking at their music in terms of getting your money back. And we don’t want to do that.”

The Kennedys are back to Maine for the first time in four years, sharing a bill with the Nields at a 7:30 p.m. show Thursday, Dec. 12, at The Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth. The concert is a benefit for community radio station WERU-FM.

“Our whole tour is a benefit tour, our Christmas gift to the folk-music community,” Maura said. “We consider WERU to be a gift to the community. We really appreciate them.”

The Kennedys are old friends with Nerissa and Katryna Nields, whom they first met eight years ago at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in New York.

“We had such an unusual style, not straight-ahead folk,” Pete recalled. “No one else sounded like that until we heard the Nields. We bonded right away, like soul mates.”

Called “the best-kept secret in folk rock” by The New Yorker magazine, the couple met at the Continental Club in Austin, Texas, in 1992. They had written their first song together, “Day In and Day Out,” within 24 hours.

Pete was then playing lead guitar for Nanci Griffith, and the band left town for a gig in Telluride, Colo. After the show, the pair talked by phone and agreed to meet halfway between Austin and Telluride, in Lubbock, Texas. They each drove 500 miles to enjoy their first date, at Buddy Holly’s grave.

Maura joined Griffith’s band as a backup vocalist in 1993. On an extended tour of the British Isles, Griffith anointed the young couple as one of her two opening acts. Since they had only one song written at that point, they set to work in a little dressing room on the top floor of Dublin’s Olympia Theater. The songs they wrote would become their first album, “River of Fallen Stars,” which earned the Indie award in 1995 for “Best Adult Contemporary CD” from the National Association of Independent Record Distributors.

Their second album, 1996’s “Life is Large,” featured guests Steve Earle, Kelly Willis, Nils Lofgrin and Roger McGuinn and was again nominated for a NAIRD Indie award. Subsequent releases are “Angel Fire” (1998), “Evolver” (1999) and “Positively Live!” (2001).

Griffith helps out on their latest album, “Get It Right,” released on Jiffyjam this past June, co-writing “Pearl’s Eye View” with Maura and serving as guest vocalist on “Ride Angel Ride,” the opening track.

“She’s been a mentor to us,” Maura said. “She was very generous when we played in her band. She was like the mama bird pushing her babies out of the nest. She was instrumental in the beginning of our career.”

“We’ve learned a lot about songwriting and performing from Nanci,” added Pete.

Since they have a home studio, the pair takes a different approach to recording an album.

“We see where the songwriting takes us, and let the songs shape the album,” Maura said. “We’ll write a song, then record it right away. Each song seems to call for the next one.”

Arriving home from a recent tour, the couple found themselves with about 40 hours of video that they had shot while on the road. They decided to make several three- to four-minute videos out of that, teaching themselves video production along the way. The result of that side project is their new book, “Make Your Own Music Videos.”

“We want to show other musicians that you can do it yourself,” Pete said. “You don’t have to go to the record company for a big budget.”

The pair has also put together quite a collection of vintage clothing over the years, but they’ve had to curtail that after their recent move from Virginia to a small studio apartment in New York City.

Pete and Maura Kennedy are one of those rare couples that are together 24-7, but they don’t seem to mind the lack of “alone time.”

“All the things we do in our professional life we would spend our time doing anyway,” reasoned Maura.

Tickets for the Kennedys/The Nields concert are $18 for the general public, and $15 for WERU members. For more information, call 469-6600.