Annette Neumann

ELIZABETHTOWN — Two separate acts. Two very different takes on folk music. One night.
Annette Neumann of Leitchfield and Bruce Avramis of Elizabethtown will take turns on stage Saturday night at The Mulberry in downtown Elizabethtown to share with local listeners their thoughts and insights with just their guitars and their own personal styles.

From Neumann’s sensitive ballads to Avramis’ edgy tunes, the two performers cover the gamut of traditional and nontraditional folk music. It isn’t hard to tell the songwriters got their starts under somewhat different influences.

“For me, it started at 11,” Neumann said. “I saw Kathy Mattea sing ‘Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses’ on ‘Hee Haw’ and told my parents I wanted a guitar,” she said. “Of course, they’re thinking, you want a guitar like you want to be a helicopter pilot.”

But for her birthday/Christmas gift that year, she got her guitar, and music, from that point on, became her obsession.

“I drove my parents crazy with it,” she said.

She began writing her own songs at about 14, but it wasn’t until the last five to seven years that she believes she started coming into her own.

“I stopped the cover tunes and started to really try and see what I can contribute to music,” she said. “Before I knew it, I had an album. Now, it’s like a

never-ending deal.”

Neumann, 26, now has recorded four albums, the latest of which is called “My Vertigo.” Her style reflects the influences of Kathy Mattea, Bonnie Raitt and Garth Brooks as well as many folk artists.

As for her inspiration, well, that’s sort of all over the place, she said, though she tries to stay away from love songs. Instead, her albums tend to take a more world-view approach.

“‘Dark Water Rising.’ That was a political album,” she said. “There’s a lot going on in the world.”

The Michigan transplant, who has lived with her family in Leitchfield since about 1992, feels a connection to the country, bluegrass and folk music native to Kentucky.

“I dig the originality of the grass-roots movement,” she said. “I really stand under the flag of folk. You get to break all the rules and you’re a genius for it.”

Avramis recently completed a collection of his best work titled “Dead Deer Tell No Lies.”

Described as edgy, the 46-year-old songwriter said his earliest influences in music include Elton John, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

At 17, he started playing a garage-sale guitar his brother bought for $15.

“It was just an acoustic piece of junk they painted metallic blue,” Avramis said.

It took the New York native a while to start pursuing music in earnest, though.

“I’m what you might call a lazy guitarist,” he said. “I only practice or play when the mood hits me.”

After leaving New York at age 20, Avramis spent about 20 years in the Army before settling in Kentucky, where he has been since 1993. He was in and out of bands for about 12 years and found he works best as a solo gig.

Both members of the Heartland Songwriters Association, Avramis and Neumann like the intimacy of being onstage with nothing but a guitar — and maybe a harmonica — in front of an audience.

“You’d be surprised at how you can communicate,” Neumann said.

Though Avramis will take the stage first Saturday night — “Bruce will grace the stage with his presence first because I lost a coin toss,” Neumann said — they are playing under equal billing.

“We’re both headlining the show,” Avramis said. “We just figured, if we’re both playing, why not book it together.”

It works well for the couple, who actually met through their music.

“I fell in love with her because of what she was playing and what she was singing,” Avramis said of Neumann. “We really respect each other as musicians. That’s why we don’t step on each other musically. She’s one of the best female musicians I know of. More of a ballad songwriter. She kicks my butt.”

Both artists will have CDs available for purchase at Saturday’s show.

To listen to a sampling of their music, visit www.myspace.com/annetteneumann and www.myspace.com/bruceavramis.
- The Pulse (News Enterprise)