Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin

Stecher was born in Brooklyn on 1 June 1946. He met Brislin, a former member of the Any Old Time String Band, in 1974, and three years later she sang with him on his solo LP Going Up on the Mountain (Bay, 1977), recorded at Bay Records in Alameda, California; it holds the first duet the two put on record. They began performing actively as a duo in 1985 and married on 29 July 1987. Between them they play guitar, mandolin, five-string banjo and fiddle.

Their duo albums began on Rounder in 1989 with A Song That Will Linger, built from traditional songs such as “Red Rocking Chair,” “Will You Miss Me” and “Shut Up in the Mines at Coal Creek,” with Hank Williams’s “Alabama Waltz” set beside a traditional piece, “Wolves Howling.” Blue Lightning (1991) brought in Pete Wernick on banjo and Laurie Lewis on bass, with Brislin and Stecher sharing guitar, banjo, fiddle and mandolin, on songs that included “Lonesome Road Blues,” “Sittin’ on Top of the World” and “Blue Diamond Mines.” For Our Town (1993) they pared back to the two of them, Stecher on guitar, mandolin and fiddle and Brislin on guitar and banjo, and the record was nominated for Best Traditional Folk Album at the 36th Annual Grammy Awards in 1994. Stay Awhile (1995) took in the Louvin Brothers’ “Seven Year Blues” and, on one hornpipe, added the Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser, Avram Siegel on banjo and Steven Strauss on bass.

Heart Songs: The Old Time Country Songs of Utah Phillips (Rounder, 1997) gave thirteen of Phillips’s songs, among them “Rock Salt and Nails” and “Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia,” to the duo’s two voices and two guitars, and it brought a second Best Traditional Folk Album nomination, at the 40th Annual Grammy Awards in 1998. Two more duo albums followed, Songs of the Carter Family (Appleseed, 2000) and Return (2010), the latter with no label credited. Stecher’s own records ran alongside, Oh the Wind and Rain (Appleseed, 1999) and Wonders & Signs (2012), and he shared a 2011 Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album with the Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band for Legacy. As of 2026 the pair describe themselves as retired from touring as a duo but still singing.