Band's music fuses upbeat, melancholy

The Handsome Family's music comes from the gallows.

Their lyrics stand alone as poetic works, artfully twisting tragic tales into epic epitaphs. You could imagine each song as a long posting on a gravestone.

They keep it simple with guitar, bass, banjo and autoharp.

Husband and wife duo Brett and Rennie Sparks perform for free at the Old Town Gazebo Wednesday. Rivet Gang opens the show at 6 p.m.

"We were married for six or seven years before we ever tried to collaborate musically," Rennie said. "I was always writing, and he was always playing music, and we never considered that the two could work together. But then we were in Chicago, and we didn't know anybody, and he said, 'You can play bass can't you?' I think his words were, 'Even a monkey can play bass.'"

Rennie said that when she writes happy lyrics, Brett writes dark melodies to go with it. When she writes tragic tales, his compositions are more upbeat.

"Things are never 100 percent happy or sad," she said. "Bittersweet - it's a good word. That's sometimes how life feels."

Their American Gothic songs have been featured in the film "Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus" and covered by local and national music sensations, like Fast Heart Mart and Andrew Bird, an old friend of The Handsome Family from Chicago.

"He played on some records," Rennie Sparks said. "We always took him on tour with us hoping someone would discover this brilliant genius. He's trying to help us in return by doing some covers. He always does amazing things with our songs. He just kind of reconstructs them in surprising ways so I don't recognize them, so they seem more beautiful in his hands. He uses a lot of loops."

Rennie said their music brings them closer together because they have shared work aside from being married.

"I think that making music and making records of our songs can be very frustrating and a source of great conflict and argument, but a lot of times, it's also really a very satisfying thing to do," Brett said. "It's like the most exciting thing you can do is make a weird, beautiful object that exists outside of you. That's kind of a common thing that people think, that it's difficult or whatever, but I wouldn't challenge anybody that wants to have a kid to sit down and see if they can write a song together first. It takes a special kind of relationship to do that. It's full of conflict, but it's part of the dynamic. We get along fine."

Rennie is sentimental about playing the Gazebo in Old Town because they used to hang people there back in the day. She's not sure if there's an afterlife where these people went to, but she said certain places throughout her travels felt haunted.

"I'm marginally psychotic, but I'm medicated," she said. "You wouldn't like me without my medication. Every time I go off my medication, the first thing I think of is how to cut off the legs of my cat. I wouldn't ever go through with it, but it pops into my head."

Born and raised in Texas, Brett brings his Southern Baptist baggage into the musical mix.

"I kind of carry that with me, and I think that I still embrace certain values and certain philosophies from the New Testament and from Jesus, but, obviously, not in any Southern Baptist kind of way," he said. "I've had some experiences that lead me to believe there was an afterlife. Not like Ouija board stuff. But I don't know what it is. Seventy virgins or whatever floating around clouds playing harps? People who profess to know what it is are probably going to be a little disappointed. Streets paved with gold - what do you need that for?"

Their onstage banter and storytelling is so amusing that it sometimes outshines the music.

He said that, on iTunes, people can buy cropped stories from their concerts.

"Sometimes people think we actually write and rehearse it," Brett said. "We get people to come to the show and they scream, 'Magic balls!' and, like, what? They wanted us to tell the story we told on the CD, the story of the cat litter. We'll go onstage, and I'll break a string, and Rennie will start

telling this wacky-ass story and there are actually people who think we can replicate, repeat those stories. Like they're written down."

It's all a way to keep the shows casual and not too serious.

"We just have fun and try to treat it like people are hanging out with us at home in the living room, just shooting the shit and telling stories," he said. "I'm really serious about the music and songwriting. It's one of the most important things in my life, but you should have a good time on stage. It should be fun."

My Sister's Tiny Hands

We came in this world together

Legs wrapped around each other

My cheek against my sister's

We were born like tangled vine

We lived along the river

Where the black clouds never lingered

The sunlight spread like honey

In my sister's tiny hands

But while picking sour apples

In the wild waving grasses

Sister stumbled in the briar

And was bitten by a snake

Every creature casts a shadow under the sun's golden finger

But when the sun sinks past the waving grass

Some shadows are dragged along

Alone, I took to drinking bottles of cheap whiskey

And staggering through the back woods

Killing snakes with a sharpened stick

But still I heard her laughing

In those wild waving grasses

Still her tiny hands went splashing at the river's sparkling shore

So I took my rusty gas can

And an old iron shovel

I set the woods to burning

And choked the river up with stones

Every creature casts a shadow under the sun's golden finger

But when the sun sinks past the waving grass

Some shadows are dragged along