Tracy Grammer and her musical partner, Jim Henry, played in Alaska last night. Despite their time in the great white north, they didn't manage to see a puffin. "There's a boat out of Seward, they say, where you're guaranteed puffins," Grammer tells her audience.
It's your fairly typical Sunday night folk crowd. We've gathered in an old bar in what used to be a Scandinavian village, but is now peppered with Seattle's folkies, young families, and a surprisingly prolific condominium epidemic.


Behind me, in the second row, a woman is knitting a scarf. Next to me sits a man with a rather giant camera.

"This is a Tom Russell song," Grammer continues. She heard it for the first time at the Sisters Folk Festival in Oregon, when she "found [herself] on [her] feet in tears at the end of the performance, and [she] couldn't even remember standing up." The tune, "Blue Wing," is about a man in prison holding onto the faintest bit of hope.

From there, the duo breaks into Dave Carter's "Crocodile Man." As Grammer explains, since Carter passed away in 2002, "part of my thing I do is I sing his songs."

The audience applauds Dave's memory as Tracy continues to explore her former partner's incredible cannon of work. Next on the list is "Ordinary Town," followed by the mysterious "Shadows of Evangeline."

It's been four years since Carter's untimely death, but it's clear that his presence is very much alive in Grammer's life and work. As she sings his melodies, her face occasionally rocks away from the microphone, as if blown by the breath of his poetry.

"We're not exactly sure what this song's about," she explains before "Shadows of Evangeline," "but we like the way it feels."

It's only a matter of time before Grammer's own songwriting bug becomes unignorable. When she plays her own piece, "The Verdant Mile" toward the end of the set, without her introduction, it would be difficult to tell the difference between it and the wealth of Carter's work that she continues to perform.

Intermittently, there are fiddle tunes and emanations from the great Jim Henry, whose voice and instrumental skills fit snugly with Grammer's. Henry's own work is nearly as thoughtful, albeit slightly more humorous, than Carter's, and the synergy between him and Grammer is haunting.

Other highlights of the evening include Henry's song about a Texas country club, Carter's anti-war-machine number "Hey Ho," and a cover of Kieran Kane's "Dirty Little Town." "I have bad news for you, Seattle," Tracy says introducing their cover of Kane's song. "You have smog."

The evening ends, after some humorous deliberation, with an encore cover of Townes Van Zandt's "Poncho and Lefty." Grammer didn't know about Van Zandt until after his death. She was reading through his obituary and was surprised to see mention of so many songs she already knew from other people's versions. Her rendition of the song is so wonderful, you can't help but think that somewhere, Townes Van Zandt and Dave Carter are exchanging smiles.