Sometimes, it seems that music is as traditional as it is creative.

And certainly, men and women have been making music together for as long as you can remember. Les and Mary. Marvin and Tammi. Ike and Tina. Sonny and Cher. Jack and Meg. Johnny and June. All of those names evoke specific memories and songs, art that spoke as much to the relationships between people as to the joy of song. It's obvious that the male and female voice were meant to be together, a fact at the forefront of Tuscaloosa trio Sparrow + the Ghost.

Stuart Bond and Rachael Roberts make up the songwriting and vocal team of Sparrow & the Ghost, while Reed Watson fills out the group on drums and percussion. They all bring a history of successful musicianship to the table. Bond and Roberts met while playing with local favorites The Still Guns, and Bond and Watson first cut their teeth in the now-defunct Tuscaloosa group, The National Trust. A shared love of traditional music brought them together, and now they put their own unique spin on the classic sounds of folk, country and the blues.

It's not unusual to see genres and styles collide onstage at their shows, nor is it strange to hear the occasional murder ballad-- but you'll also get a sense of the joy that music can bring. In a way, their music is a celebration. It's about that realization that every bluesman and balladeer must have felt-- the moment of clarity where they realized that singing about it meant releasing it. That's freedom, and that's what Stuart and Rachael are really singing about.

Sparrow & the Ghost have been released. Come hear why.