Creek Rocks duo Woolf, Bilyeu clicks on Ozarks music

Cindy Woolf and Mark Bilyeu -- who make up the duo The Creek Rocks -- are not only partners in music, they're partners in life.

Bilyeu was a member of Big Smith, and Woolf played as a solo singer-songwriter and opener for Bilyeu's group in later years. Big Smith broke up in April 2012 after 16 years and Bilyeu and Woolf married two years ago after playing together for a decade.

Bilyeu produced and played on Woolf's debut CD, Simple & Few, in 2005, and her third album, May, in 2013. But their first formal collaboration, released in 2015, was The Creek Rocks' debut, Wolf Hunter (described on the CD cover as "A collection of Ozarks folk songs" sung by the Arkansas and Missouri musicians).

Woolf grew up in Batesville, later moving to Springfield, Mo., where she met Bilyeu.

"I grew up near Lyon College and would walk through there to hear someone playing bagpipes under a tree," Woolf says. "When I was 20, I moved to Springfield and was playing with some bluegrass musicians and I crashed a party, where I met Mark. It was a festival at his family's place when Big Smith was huge all over the region. Some of my friends were going to play five songs, and they let me sing one of mine.

"Mark called me about a year later and asked if he could put my song on an album and I said 'You bet!'"

Woolf was living in Oregon at the time, but she came back and started recording with Bilyeu and opening for and sitting in with Big Smith: "After I opened the shows, I'd sell their merchandise and maybe get to get up and do a couple of my songs with them."

The project that became Wolf Hunter is an album of 16 songs chosen from the collections of two folklorists -- John Quincy Wolf (1901-1972) of Batesville and Max Hunter (1921-1999) of Springfield. Bilyeu writes in the CD liner notes that the songs' themes are "love, courtship, hunting, dinner, the good-natured rivalry between northern Arkansas and southern Missouri, and critters in particular ...."

Woolf confirms his description, adding that the album almost got a different name.

"We nearly called the album Critters," as she notes that the album, opens with "Can't You Hear Them Wolves A-Howling," and also includes the songs "Groundhog," "Possum Song" and "The Boll Weevil," (plus the noncritter salutes to their homes: "Little Rock Rock" and "The State of Missouri.") "Mark has been looking for great old songs since he was playing in Big Smith, and I was looking for funny songs. I was kind of on an animal kick. Those were the ones I liked!"

Both sing on the album. Woolf plays banjo and guitar, and Bilyeu plays guitar, mouth bow, fox horn and various percussive odds and ends. In his liner notes Bilyeu explains that the mouth bow "was made by Otis Johnson of Mountain View, Arkansas, and was, we are told, owned by Jimmy Driftwood."

"We'll also be doing some of our original songs," she adds. "Mark is a great songwriter, and I've some stuff. So we'll be doing a big mix of Ozark tunes and some of our originals."

Woolf and Bilyeu are bringing the two musicians who backed them on Wolf Hunter: Jason Chapman on upright bass and Jay Williamson on washboard. And the band, along with opening acts Go Fast and Brad Williams, has a special purpose in playing Friday night.

"It's Sarah Woolf's birthday and she's my big sister," Woolf says, "and her three favorite bands, which includes us, are playing. Brad Williams will be playing with Nick Devlin, his band mate in The Salty Dogs."

Weekend on 07/14/2016