It was a bit less than three years ago that Mandolin Orange put out what’s considered its breakthrough record, “This Side of Jordan.” Since then, the country/folk duo has gained national attention, a chorus of critical praise and many new fans — much of it from a stepped-up touring schedule that’s still going strong.
Touring can wear down some musicians. But Andrew Marlin, Mandolin Orange’s songwriter and lead vocalist, says he and partner Emily Frantz don’t mind the travel at all.
“We like the road,” he said in a recent phone call from Oregon, one stop on the duo’s current summer tour. “We’re still hitting it pretty hard. I think we just enjoy the energy of seeing a new place and performing.”
The two North Carolina musicians will be doing just that when they play Gateway City Arts in Holyoke July 28. The concert, presented by Signature Sounds of Northampton, starts at 7:30 p.m. Though Mandolin Orange has played three times in Northampton, most recently in February, this will be its first gig in Holyoke.
Marlin (guitar/mandolin/vocals) and Frantz (fiddle/guitar/vocals) met in Chapel Hill in North Carolina in 2009 and have been playing together ever since; they’ve forged an intimate sound built on close harmonies and a mix of country, folk and bluegrass. There’s an old-time dynamic to their sound but one that can also exhibit a modern sensibility, particularly on the topical songs Marlin has increasingly turned to.
For instance, “Hey Adam,” from “This Side of Jordan,” is an affirmation of gay marriage. On “Blue Ruin,” from the group’s 2015 album, “Such Jubilee,” Marlin describes his horror in the aftermath of the December 2012 shooting in Newton, Connecticut, when a gunman killed 26 people, including 20 students, in an elementary school.
To gentle fingerpicked acoustic guitar, some muted backing chords on electric, and Frantz’s soft harmonies, he sings “I stopped to take a look / At the crook that stole this holiday / Well this Christmas, my only wish is / We put these guns away.”
On “Wildfire,” the debut single from the group’s upcoming album, “Blindfaller,” Marlin looks back on the fractured history of the South — from slavery, to the Civil War, to a legacy of anger and resentment that can lead to events like the horrific June 2015 shooting in South Carolina, when a young white supremacist killed nine African Americans in a black church.
“I was born a southern son / In a small southern town where the rebels run wild,” he sings. “They beat their chests and swear we’re gonna rise again … pride has a way of holding firm to history and then it burns / like wildfire.”
“As a band you’re expected to entertain, so you have to walk a fine line between that and saying something that’s important to you,” Marlin said. “You don’t want to hit people over the head. The best you can do is put [a song] out there and hope it has an impact.”
If a southern sensibility runs through the songs of Mandolin Orange, both musically and thematically, so does a certain strain of melancholy and wistfulness. But there can also be contentment, and there’s often a sense of contemplation, in songs that observe love and loss, life and death, and faith and religion.
“The default mode for me is melancholy,” Marlin said with a chuckle. On a more serious note, he notes that his mother died when he was 18 — he and Frantz are in their late 20s today — and it took him awhile to come to terms with her loss.
You can hear that thread in “Jump Mountain Blues,” an aching ballad built around minor chords, strummed softly by Marlin on acoustic guitar while Frantz adds solos on fiddle. It’s based on a legend of a Native American woman who, rather than give up her true love to marry a man of her father’s choosing, jumps to her death from a mountaintop; her ghost then haunts the peak each night, to her father’s eternal regret.
And in one of the duo’s earlier songs, “Wake Me,” Marlin sings with just an edge of desperation: “Like a rock that came rollin’ down the hill / I’ve been searchin’ for somethin’ to kill / I’m shameless and I’ve aimlessly drawn / I wanna lay down somewhere / I wanna close my eyes / but I’ve a good girl waiting, and if I ain’t back soon she may be gone.”
But then there’s the ode to friendship and taking pleasure in day-to-day life of “Old Ties and Companions,” or the love and sense of renewal of “Little Worlds.” Though Marlin writes the songs and sings most of the leads, he says the finished tunes and their arrangements are very much a collaborative effort between him and Frantz.
“Whether I take a song to her that’s in the middle or mostly complete, we’re always bouncing ideas off each other,” he said.
The duo is promising the next evolution in its sound with the upcoming album, “Blindfaller.” Though the two have incorporated other sounds on past records — piano and organ, electric guitar, banjo, occasional drums — “Blindfaller” was recorded more or less live in a week with four other musicians on bass, pedal steel guitar, drums and keyboards/electric guitar.
“We’ve always tried to record fairly live, going into the studio and doing some takes without trying to overanalyze it,” Marlin said. “In this case, it was a lot of fun to do it with other people — it was kind of a musical conversation.”
Those songs are mostly being kept under wraps until the album debuts, after which Mandolin Orange will open a tour with all the musicians aboard. Marlin and Frantz occasionally play with an expanded lineup — their gig in February at the Academy of Music included a drummer and guitarist — but their Gateway City Arts show will be as a duo.
Marlin says he and Frantz want to stay true to their roots while still leaving room to experiment and grow musically and lyrically. In fact, the first music he learned on guitar was rock ’n’ roll, before he discovered the 1980 Ricky Skaggs/Tony Rice album that steered him to Mandolin Orange’s present sound.
“I still like to listen to rock and other things, so that kind of thing is in my background, it’s in the mix,” he said. But he says he and Frantz will always treasure the depth and vitality of folk and country and bluegrass: “It’s a special kind of sound.”
Mandolin Orange plays Gateway City Arts at 92-114 Race St. in Holyoke, July 28 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 in advance/$18 at the door. Visit www.signaturesoundspresents.com for more information.
“Wildfire,” the new single by Mandolin Orange, can be heard at www.mandolinorange.com.