Both Brodie Jenkins and David Luning hail from rural Sonoma County, but it’s in far-flung, disparate cities that they first made their mark on the world at large. As a member of family country trio The Jenkins, Brodie spent much of the last decade in Nashville recording and releasing singles for Capitol Records under the watchful auspices of producer Rodney Crowell. Fast-forward to last year and Luning, in Los Angeles, found himself thrust into the television eye as a contender on American Idol. Neither were a perfect fit.
Back here in the Bay Area, more pixels are spilled in the service of each singers’ solo careers, but those lucky enough to have caught a rarer performance by their collaboration, called Ghost & Gale, know that the two create an otherworldly haunt. Folk-tinged with a dash of brood, the group conjures some of the greats—Gillian Welch and David Rawlings come immediately to mind—with a natural, eerie onstage chemistry. Utilizing only an acoustic guitar and two interweaving voices, the whole thing could be called a back-to-the-land communion.
With openers Travis Hayes and City Tribe, the duo’s apearance this week at the Brick and Mortar Music Hall is a free show.
