Their traditional music backgrounds are conventional enough:

They learned in Irish music sessions in Chicago. They took regular trips to Ireland, where they learned tunes with some of Clare's finest. (They took just a little time out to get married.) And they moved to session-rich Boston in 2001... Hear them play, and you&8217;ll know that they&8217;ve logged a lot of time building straight-ahead Irish music chops.

But once you scratch the simple traditional music pedigree you find something else&8212;a unique personality and vibe that could only come from these two.

Shannon, for her part, brings a keen love of language and folk melodies to the duo. She was raised by writers who took her and her sister around the western United States for research trips for their book Let My People Know, a history of Native American journalism, which involved countless visits to Navajo reservations to collect oral histories. She learned about highlife music—and started on the tin whistle from a Belgian neighbor!—while living in Nsukka, Nigeria, where her folks taught journalism. And she was drawn into the mournful sound of the Saw Sarm Sai while living in Suphanburi, Thailand (a sound she still refers to when writing melodies).

Meanwhile, Matt's first taste of professional music was turning pages for his father, an organist and choirmaster, behind the organ console. After a couple of false starts on the piano and trumpet, Matt discovered the guitar. His very first electric, a Harmony electric plus amp ($35 at a garage sale, pointed him in the right direction. After the amplifier exploded, he focused his energies on the acoustic guitar. Though he has played classical guitar in Italy, rock in Chicago, and tango in Denver, it is Irish music in Boston where he has made his musical home.

Matt and Shannon have been performing together for over a decade with a variety of groups, including critically-acclaimed Irish band Siucra (which they formed with Beth Leachman during their three-year “sabbatical” in Boulder, CO), tangeuros Orquesta Atipica, as well as traditional luminaries Aoife Clancy, Robbie O'Connell, and Scottish gem Emily Smith.

Since breaking out as a duo in 2003, Matt and Shannon have released three CDs and one songbook .

Like Richard Thompson or Nic Jones, the Heatons' music comes from a traditional aesthetic, a devotion to strong traditional bones, and a passion for reaching out to the modern world around them.

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