Years ago, my husband and I were hired to write a book together, and it proved to be one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. By the first deadline, my husband and I were at each other's throats, unable to look at each other in the eye without snarling under-the-breath insults. I got used to seeing only the backside of my husband as he stormed into his corner of the apartment, ready to tackle whatever chapters he was working on at the time, and he - well, I was the perfect writing companion, and he has nothing to complain about my performance during the ordeal.

Since then, many of our friends and even family members have mentioned how wonderful they think it is that we wrote a book together, and have gone so far as to ask our advice on how to do so, in case they wanted to put some of their own co-thoughts on paper. Sherm and I laugh, and smile, and say something nice, like, "Oh, there's nothing to it." Later, though, I try to make my way to the couple and say, "Writing a book together is a bad, bad idea. Believe me; it'll ruin your marriage."

Coming from this experience, it amazes me that bands like The Handsome Family exist. The husband-and-wife duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks have written and released not just one, but seven albums together, and can still stand to be in the same room together. "We have very clearly defined roles, which I think is something a lot of people who perform together don't have, especially in the folk genre," says Brett of their partnership. "Rennie writes the lyrics, and I write the music. We're totally, like, a singer/songwriter dissected in half, where the two sides don't meet very often."

The formula seems to have worked remarkably well for the couple. Their just-released album, Singing Bones, contains some of their best work yet, with creepy, melancholy vocals from both Brett and Rennie, and beautifully hollow-sounding instrumentals that ground these songs in the great outdoors they seem inspired by. In "The Forgotten Lake," Brett sings about ghostly covered wagons and airplane wrecks, with Rennie's beautiful harmonies weaving in and out of the song like some elusive ghost voice. In the tongue-in-cheek "The Bottomless Hole," Brett reminisces about the life of a man who died trying to explore into a deep, bottomless hole he found behind his barn. In thea capella "If the World Should End in Fire," a multi-looped Brett sings about Armageddon with all the panache of a barbershop choir. The rest of the album explores Biblical figures, death, the perils of gathering fresh fruit, and things that go bump in the night.

"Rennie writes a lot and revises a lot and thinks a lot, and I just sit on my hands," says Brett of the couple's songwriting process. "When she finishes the lyrics, she passes them on to me and I'll start working on them. I go and work up the demos in our studio with electronic instruments and guitar, and I'll play the stuff for her, and we'll talk about it and argue about it and fight about it, and then work on it some more. After a while, I head back down to the studio and turn the reworked demos into songs, filling in the pieces with real instruments where necessary." He pauses. "It's kind of a weird way to work. I don't know if a lot of people work that way. I try to put down the spirit on the songs on the original demos, the way the songs feel tome when they're freshly written, that weird kind of nascent quality, and then I just to overdub everything on top of the demos. It's like I start with a base and build up from there, but trying to retain that same quality of that original performance. Like with this record, too, I had a bunch of people play on this record, but instead of us all sitting down together, I just had them come in and do a bunch of overdubs with the demo.

"Folk musicians usually sit around and jam together, and come up with their songs that way, and slap some lyrics on top of it all when they've got the music together," he finishes. "That's a bad formula, because the lyrics are then subservient to the music, and don't really need to be there. But we're very, very disciplined, and Rennie is extremely disciplined and very perfectionistic and very concise with her choice of words and very conscientious. She has the highest quality control of anybody I know as a writer, and I think that's good, because when the lyrics come to me, I know that they're going to be good, and I don't really have to think about them. I just think about the music. I just sit down and start putting the music together, and think about how the music can best serve the lyrics."

What, no arguments? "Don't get me wrong," laughs Brett. "We fight all the time. But we do know that these are arguments about art, and it's not arguments about us. Our arguments have nothing to do with our relationship or ourselves as people - they're about songs, and we're trying to write the best songs we can. And if that means we have to have a blow-out, complete with breaking dishes, then that's how it is. But then it's done, and we're happy, and our little babies are done and they can go on their way.

"I think if you didn't argue with those things, then there's probably something wrong. I mean, that's why you collaborate with somebody, because you want a give and take. The hardest thing is compromising, but when you collaborate with somebody, you have give up a little bit. You teeter totter back and forth until you come up with something that is not only a combination of the two of you, but also something bigger than the two of you."

© 2004 - Holly Day