The Cantrells - Not quite famous

Emily Cantrell's mouth emits extravagantly beautiful sounds that bring Joni Mitchell to mind. Emily's husband, Al, accompanies that voice with the fluid licks of a former Colorado state fiddle champion. Emily is a Colorado champion, too, he brags -- for her apple pie.

The Cantrells have the easy way of people who are doing exactly what they want to do. Their music, when it can be found, sits in the bins that record stores have christened "Americana." It's acoustic roots music, elegantly natural and direct. Just like Emily and Al.

The Nashville, Tenn., performers aren't famous outside of folk circles, but they have appeared on "Mountain Stage" and other nationally syndicated radio programs, and they've played most of the large folk festivals. Their music has been heard all over the planet via Voice of America. Saturday night it will be heard at Grace Cafe in downtown Cape Girardeau.

Al took Emily's name when they got married years ago in Montana. "Al is a very liberated kind of guy," a laughing Emily says in a phone call from Nashville.

Actually, Cantrell was a better stage name than Al's last name, Ehlers, and the Cantrells fit their partnership.

Montana government officials said it couldn't be done legally, but told him to just go ahead and use the name. "Montana is still the wild, wild West," Emily says.

At the beginning of his musical career, Al was a rock 'n' roll bassist in the Seattle area. Then he decided to return to the instrument he played in high school. "I was trying to rock out on electric violin. In the process of trying to learn, I got drawn away from rock 'n' roll," he said.

He listened to the likes of Jerry Goodman, Vassar Clements and Papa John Creach and began playing folk festivals.

Folk offered possibilities of a working life he wanted. "You could get out there on a low-tech, low-business, high art sort of career," he said.

Emily was born in Memphis, Tenn., and grew up in a small town nearby. She graduated from Memphis State with a degree in English literature. In 1980 she moved to Boulder, Colo., and started a band that eventually included Al. They stayed together when the band broke up.

Though Al writes fiddle tunes, Emily is the duo's primary songwriter. Her songwriting process begins in the right brain, she says. "I reach out into that great world of unseen ideas, words and images... I take my mind off of everything in the working world and look into the poetic world."

Most of her songs are about human relationships, but she uses images from nature to explain them, to give them context. The same could be said for "A River Runs Through It," the Robert Redford film that gave the Cantrells a minute and a half of fame. That's how long their music played in the church picnic scene they appeared in as musicians.

The Cantrells were living in Montana a few hours from the movie location. When they began singing and playing in the casting office, a secretary placed a call and held up the phone. They don't know who was on the other end, but they were hired to play for a party where Redford heard them.

"People seem to be incredibly impressed simply that we met Robert Redford," Emily says, "and for a little folk duo to be on the silver screen in a major movie. I didn't think too much about it at the time."

The Cantrells' most recent album, "Dancing with the Miller's Daughter," was released in 1995. They are working on their next one, to be titled "The Heart Wants."

The life they have chosen, independent singer/songwriters without a record deal or agents or promoters, can be overwhelming.

"It's almost impossible," Emily says. "We spend all our time doing it."

But it's exactly what they want to do in life.

They perform somewhere every weekend, but during the week stay as close to home as possible. "We're very jealous of our free time and relaxation," Emily says. "We're working toward longevity."

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182