Love and Harmony

Long the heart of Appalachian roots trio Red June, husband-and-wife musicians John Cloyd Miller and Natalya Zoe Weinstein recently released their first album, Equinox, as Zoe and Cloyd. The young Asheville couple’s debut as a duet comes just as they adjust to life as a family of three. 

Last winter, while preparing for the birth of their daughter, Cadence, they recorded the album, which features a lineup of traditional and original Appalachian tunes on fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, and vocals.

The musicians come by their sound as authentically as they do their chemistry. Miller, a 12th-generation native of North Carolina, continues in the tradition of his grandfather, Jim Shumate, a North Carolina Folk Heritage Award winner and bluegrass fiddler who played with Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs. In the last few years of Shumate’s life, Weinstein studied fiddle with him. Her own grandfather, David Weinstein, performed as a professional klezmer and semi-classical musician after emigrating from Russia in 1923.

Equinox pays homage to both family patriarchs: “Lazy Man Blues” evokes the “bluesy, soulful style” of Shumate, played by Weinstein on her former teacher’s own fiddle. “Sheyn Vi Di Levone,” on the other hand, brings together Appalachian and Klezmer musical traditions in an old Yiddish love song often played by Weinstein’s grandfather. Interwoven through the album are a handful of Zoe and Cloyd originals, ranging from a song about a “Groundhog in the Taters” to “Wind River Waltz” about the Wyoming homestead of Miller’s great-grandparents.

Like any good marriage, Zoe and Cloyd’s musical compatibility is rooted in the push and pull of the duet’s complementary strengths. “John likes to tell stories,” Weinstein says. “He always says that it’s not a good song unless you’ve tapped into some emotional core within yourself, so his songs are often really moving and emotive.” Miller credits his wife’s mastery of music theory and classical background.

Though Miller and Weinstein exchange instruments and take turns on vocals along the way, each song on Equinox evokes that of a live show, with only two voices and two instruments. “When you strip down the music to its barest bones, this framework is who we are as people and as musicians,” Weinstein says. Miller adds: “With two people, there aren’t a lot of places to hide.”

Find tour dates and other information at zoeandcloyd.com.