Duet singing may be the finest distillation of the high lonesome sound, with its roots lodged deep in the boulders of the Blue Ridge and its soul in the rarified ether where the Monroes, the Stanleys, the Louvins, the Delmores and the Blue Sky Boys will meet to trade tunes up in heaven. Now you have the good fortune to encounter Jeremy Stephens and Tom Mindte, linked up for some Old Time Duets. As Tom puts it, “Duet singing is the nexus of music, as I see it. Everything else is peripheral.” Mindte, who has produced several recordings with bluegrass virtuosos The Patuxent Partners, is a dynamic mandolin picker and powerful singer well known on the music convention circuit. He recounts that “when Jeremy Stephens happened by our campsite a couple of years ago, carrying a guitar instead of his banjo, I kicked off 'The Lord's Last Supper,' written by one of Jeremy's banjo heroes, Don Reno. Jeremy caught the tenor vocal and the blend sounded pretty good. We discovered that we knew a lot of the same songs, so we decided to do the album.” Jeremy, a relative newcomer to recording and performing, says he “began listening to old time and bluegrass banjo and guitar players, but some of the first traditional music I ever heard was Dock Boggs, so I've always loved old time music.”