Sometimes it takes years of traveling to find home again. Brothers Ryan and Rob McMaken played their first and last official show as a 2nd and 5th grader (respectively) at the Kingsley Elementary talent show in 1983 in Georgia. They went their separate musical ways for the next 15 years, living and making music in New Orleans, Japan, Portland, and Boston. Now, back home in Georgia, the two multi-instrumentalist singers have decided to team up and perform acoustic duets of their favorite American, World, and original music.

Though the brothers had performed many times and even recorded with each other on other bands albums, it was only recently that the brothers realized that they had a shared musical passion that was yet untapped: duo performance of traditional music. With 6 instruments and 2 voices as their disposal, the McMaken Brothers fill up the room with music. Taking great care to arrange each tune for duo performance, their dulcimer, mandolin, dobro, fiddle, and guitars combine to deliver lilting Scottish tunes, sad Southern ballads, clanging Cajun waltzes, and high Appalachian breakdowns.

Ryan McMaken performed as a singer, guitar player and dobro player throughout his teens and early twenties before he finally fell in love with the fiddle. Working at Rounder Records and later at a center for world and traditional music in New England, Ryan heard some of the greatest gypsy, old-time, Celtic, Cape Breton, and Cajun fiddle players in the world and eventually couldn’t resist. With the many acts he has performed with as a sideman – from Jonathan Byrd, Pierce Woodward, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger and Jess Tardy -- Ryan’s voice comes through clear and pure, no matter what the instrument or the genre.

Brother Rob’s main project, Dromedary, is an instrumental duo that began nearly a decade ago and was quickly recognized by critics, presenters, and even NPR for its “telepathic improvisation” and its unique fusion of world music genres into duo arrangements. Touring with this band ironically led him back into American traditional music world, where NC’s songwriter Jonathan Byrd collaborated with him on multiple albums to produce a unique sound that is both familiar and new. One day Jonathan heard the brothers playing casually at the McMaken family home, and he came up with the idea to hire them as his backing musicians. It was then, in 2008, that the McMaken Brothers left the living room and were born as a band.