FOR close to 30 years, they’ve been partners, with music at the center of their relationship. Yet it’s often been hard for them to find a way to be on the same stage together.
But now, Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams are making their own music a priority.
The husband-and-wife team, who separately or together have supported many a musician over the years — a short list includes Sheryl Crow, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Levon Helm, Hot Tuna and Little Feat — have now found their own stride as a duo, touring behind an eponymous debut album that’s a showcase of Americana and tight harmonies.
“At this stage of my career, I want to be performing with the person who’s most important to me,” Campbell said during a recent conference call. “I mean, I get to hear her sing every night, and what could be wrong with that?”
“Oh, keep it coming, Larry!” Williams said with a laugh.
They’ll do just that when they come to the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton Sunday with their band. Roots rocker Dennis Brennan opens the 7 p.m. show.
The couple splits their time between an apartment in New York City and a house they bought several years ago in Woodstock, New York; they met a little less than 30 years ago in New York City when both were part of the burgeoning country music scene there in clubs like the Bottom Line and Lone Star Cafe, and they married not long after.
But the reality, they say, is that over the years, their careers have often taken them on the road in different directions. Campbell, a multi-instrumentalist who’s known in particular for his guitar work, was a key member of Bob Dylan’s band from 1997 to 2004. He’s also produced albums for many other players. Aside from touring for several years with the late Levon Helm, he produced two Grammy-winning albums, “Dirt Farmer” and “Electric Dirt,” for Helm in 2007 and 2009, respectively.
Williams, a singer and guitarist, has also been involved in theater for years. She created and toured the role of Sara Carter, the lead singer of the folksinging Carter Family, in the musical of the Carters, “Keep on the Sunny Side.” She also appeared as Sara in the BBC documentary “Lost Highway,” and in the PBS documentary, “The Carter Family: Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”
Starting about 10 years ago, though, the couple began spending more musical time together as members of Levon Helm’s band, including playing in the regular “Midnight Ramble” concerts Helm staged in a barn on his property in Woodstock. It was during those years, Campbell notes, that he began composing the songs on the couple’s new album – and where the idea of playing as a duo started to take shape.
“We’d played together here and there over the years,” he said. “But it wasn’t until we were playing with Levon that we had the chance to do it regularly, to get used to being on stage together.”
“After Levon passed [in 2012], we just thought, ‘Why don’t we give it a try, the two of us?’ ” Williams. added “We thought of it as something that was in the spirit of what we’d been doing with Levon — and it’s been great so far.”
The songs on their album — eight written by Campbell, and three covers — reflect both their varied musical tastes and experience, as well as Williams’ roots: She’s a native of the Mississippi delta country in west Tennessee and says she grew up singing in church, at home and at school. Gospel, country, folk and blues have all been a part of her repertoire, she notes.
Campbell, meanwhile, a New York native, has a deep background as a country-oriented guitarist; he plays hybrid style, using a thumbpick, which frees his first three fingers to pluck chords, fingerpick or play double-note leads, a sound you can hear in particular on “You’re Running Wild,” the album’s fifth track. Campbell also is adept on violin, mandolin and pedal-steel guitar.
The songs, many of which the couple honed while they played with Helm’s band in his Woodstock barn, are about evenly divided between acoustic and electric guitar. The ragtime-flavored “Everybody Loves You” is built on fingerpicked acoustic guitar and chiming mandolin riffs. “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed & Burning,” an old country-blues standard, also begins with fingerpicked acoustic guitar, but the couple turns it into a gospel tune with organ, drums and Williams’ powerhouse lead vocal.
On songs like “Ain’t Nobody For Me” and “Bad Luck Charm,” though, Campbell kicks out the traces on electric guitar. The former, the hardest rocking song on the album, features a repeating riff on electric guitar before Campbell launches into a sizzling solo. “Bad Charm Luck,” meanwhile, recalls something of Credence Clearwater Revival with its beat and sharp, roots-rock solo; the chorus includes the pithy line “Honey, you’re a bad luck charm/I can’t roll a seven with you on my arm.”
“I love playing acoustic and electric guitar,” Campbell said. “I can’t have one without the other.”
What’s front and center on the songs, though, are the couple’s close harmonies. They alternate lead vocals, but the harmonies blend their voices to fine effect, particularly on the country-folk ballad “Midnight Highway,” their cover of a song recorded by the country rock band Southern Pacific in the 1980s.
“Singing harmony is just about better than sex or drugs,” Williams joked.
The album, produced by Campbell, includes drums and bass by band members Justin Guip and Byron Isaacs, respectively. Little Feat keyboard player Bill Payne contributes to a number of tracks, and the voices of both Helm and his daughter, Amy, appear on two other songs as well.
Campbell and Williams began touring in advance of the album last year when they traveled with Jackson Browne and are doing a shorter one now; they still have separate musical gigs to attend to, and Williams has been spending time in the last several months with her elderly parents in Tennessee. But the couple relish their time together, they say.
“Couples working together can be a recipe for disaster,” Campbell said. “We’ve seen it happen. But we’ve found such a focus with these songs, and after all the time we’ve had to spend apart, it’s just so great at this point in our lives be up on stage together.”
Williams agrees: “It’s a sweet thing to share.”
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.
Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams perform Sunday at 7 p.m. at the Iron Horse in Northampton. Tickets are available at iheg.com.