GROWING TOGETHER
Acoustic Eidolon’s musical partnership evolves into a marriage
Coming up on 20 years of performing together as Acoustic Eidolon, Hannah Alkire and Joe Scott have some amazing chemistry.
That chemistry carried over to them getting married 16 years ago.
Not to mention that the duo has released 12 albums together. The latest being “A Tree Finds Its Voice.”
“Our mantra is to stay busy,” Alkire says during a recent phone interview from the couple’s Colorado home. “We’ve also been working on an upcoming DVD for the album. The story is based on how the instruments that we play — a cello and a guitar — were built from the same piece of wood.”
The duo will perform two shows in New Mexico, beginning tonight at the Outpost Performance Space.
Alkire will play her cello and Scott will bring his guitjo, which has the neck of a guitar and a banjo bottom.
Acoustic Eidolon will celebrate its 20th anniversary in February.
And Alkire says the evolution has been an organic one.
“In the beginning, we started off just as friends and business partners,” she says. “Joe was mentoring me. We started off where he was composing the music and I would just perform on the cello. Over the years, he told me that I needed to sing and get my voice on this endeavor. We started to co-write and I started taking vocal lessons.”
Alkire says Scott has grown more as a composer.
“As we grew, we also grew together romantically,” she says. “We’ve now been married 16 of those years. We’ve raised our boys and find ourselves empty nesters. We’ve had to adjust to a new life. Luckily, music has been a constant in our lives. I don’t know if we ever see ourselves retiring.”
Through those two decades, not everything has been for Acoustic Eidolon.
Scott released a solo record, “Lucky Man,” a few years ago.
Alkire is putting ideas together for a solo cello project.
And the duo’s current tour is special because Alkire’s father is joining them on the road.
“He was trained as a concert jazz pianist,” she says. “He was going to go into music, but eventually went into chemical engineering and doing research for years.”
A year ago, her father called them up and wanted to complete a chapter in his life that never came to fruition.
“He’s a musician in his own right,” she says. “We’ve done a few shows in Colorado with him and it’s been amazing. People don’t realize how talented he is in music. He gets an opportunity to showcase his talent.”