If anywhere in America there were minstrels, among the most likely places to find them would be Whidbey Island.

Here there are plenty of musicians who serenade the festival crowds in summer and please the locals year-round with all manner of musical styles, harking back to those centuries when crowds recognized and adored their hometown performers.

Janie Cribbs and Joe Reggiatore have been rousting their share of island music lovers for more than a decade and would like to invite everybody to an official CD release concert at the Coupeville Arts Festival from 4 to 6 p.m. Aug. 11 in downtown Coupeville. A rockin’, no-holds-barred CD release party will follow on Sept. 21.

Island’s treasure

It would not be a stretch to say that “Janie and Joe,” as they now call themselves, are truly modern-day minstrels, taking their personal stories and the down-home feelings of their love-affair with local life and feeding it back to the wider world with their large musical gifts.

With their two newly-released albums, “Postcards From a Tiny American Town” and “Sound of Wings,” this treasured island duo have succeeded in blending their abundant talents and creating very different and richly satisfying albums.

Back in the day, minstrels swarmed the feasts and festivals in great numbers with harps, fiddles, bagpipes, flutes, citterns and kettledrums.

Janie and Joe would probably have little trouble blending into the 13th century scene — besides blowing their minds with electricity — with Reggiatore on a variety of skillfully handled acoustic and electric guitars, mandolin and bass and Cribbs accompanying the clear, deep sound of her voice with keyboards, percussion and the bodhran.

And, of course, minstrels knew how to surround themselves with musical friends.

Sounds that soar

On “Sound of Wings” they have incorporated their love of Ireland and its celtic influence on their music to create a lovely, easy-to-listen-to instrumental record that Cribbs calls “a soundtrack of their lives.”

The duo has wisely taken advantage of a bounty of excellent Northwest musicians for this album including Randal Bays on fiddle, Dan O’Connell on blues harp and tin whistle, Larry Mason and David Malony on drums and Cribbs’ brother, Robbie Cribbs, on musical saw.

In addition to his turn on the saw, this record is also lovingly engineered at Sound Trap Studios on South Whidbey by Robbie Cribbs — another jaw-dropping example of the endless talents of this local Cribbs’ clan.

Many of the songs on this album contain the lilting melodies that are reflective of traditional Irish music and the influence that music had on Cribbs’ childhood in Ireland. That influence continues as Janie and Joe frequently return there to perform.

But “Sound of Wings” holds surprises, too, as it plays nicely with other musical styles like the Cajun two-step “Frog in the Grass” and the bluesy “Cellophane Heart” which illuminates the mastery of Reggiatore’s guitar and his long years of gigs on the rock n’ roll and blues circuit.

The tune “Bumpy Road to Knocknarea” was inspired by an adventure the couple had of traveling near Knocknarea Mountain in Sligo in a generously offered car without brakes. The song starts out happily, moving forward gaily as if starting out on a pleasant road trip across the rolling seaside hills of Ireland. Then it builds gracefully to include what sounds like a creative driver managing the twists and hairpin turns of a back country road in a car that will gently come to rest rather than be forced to stop. Indeed, “Sound of Wings” soars musically and is a perfect accompaniment to driving no matter where you are.

Wool gatherers

When speaking with Cribbs and Reggiatore, it became clear that stories are an important part of their musical life and it is evident they’ve found a recipe for writing songs that works very well for what they call their “soulful original folk-rock-blues with a celtic twist.”

With “Postcards from a Tiny American Town” they’ve written a love-letter to small-town America, as if every song were written just as postcards often are; impressions of a memorable place sent to someone you love.

In medieval Europe, a minstrel performed songs whose lyrics told stories about distant places or about real or imaginary events, which is strikingly similar to the story gathering done by Janie and Joe.

“I do all the driving,” said Reggiatore. We’ll be in some small town and we’ll see something or someone and Janie will have a moment where she’ll just start writing; it’s amazing.”

There was the woman on the road they pulled up alongside one day in Spokane.

With the folksy ballad “In America,” Cribbs’ tells the story of a woman of a certain age, her face haggard with too much make-up, driving a beat-up Camaro on the road to a bruised and uncertain life.

“I just saw something in her face, like she was hiding something,” said Cribbs.

Cribbs said she’s often inspired by the glimpses she gets of people on the road and how there are so many people in so many places with their own stories.

“We get so caught up in our own lives that we forget that everybody has their own dreams, hopes, struggles,” she said. “These songs are postcards to all those people.”

Musical moxie

Except for the two well-done cover songs on the album, Bob Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country,” and Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide,” — a gorgeous, slow-tempo version that often brings audience members to tears — these postcards blend personal life with fiction and capture the rich experience of these musicians and their relationship to the world.

“You Say” is a hard-driving, bluesy tune that highlights Reggiatore on electric guitar with Cribbs’ expertly belting out the he-said, she-said story of a couple who might be in the throws of romantic break-down.

In “Off the Brink,” Cribbs’ remembers her late father and the sadness he carried with him on a trip to Mexico before he later accidentally killed himself piloting a crop-duster.

Reggiatore, who hadn’t even picked up an acoustic instrument before he met Cribbs, shows his ability to expertly caress all of his various guitars through this searingly soulful album, especially on tunes like “Mountain of Desire,” “Moses Lake” and “The One.”

The two-disc set is well-rounded and doesn’t shy away from political territory.

On “Too Little Too Late (Katrina’s Blues),” Cribbs’ incredible vocal prowess lends itself to the angry postcard to FEMA she wrote here in regards to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. And “Plutonium Sky” is a touchingly sad, poignant ballad to the rapid decline of a healthy and peaceful planet.

Cribbs’ big voice soars on every song and is made more pleasurable by her impeccable diction which she said is a remnant from her training as a jingle-singer in Ireland. Her clarity allows the listener to understand every word and subsequently fully enjoy these letters to the world for the power of their stories.

Defining moment

This album is produced by Malony at his Blue Ewe Studios in Freeland. Malony fills out Janie and Joe’s sound with his own percussion and drums, Bays again on fiddle, Dan Montecalvo on banjo, Rick Jones adding bass on some tracks and Colleen Johnson on backing vocals. They also added the surprising old-time sound of a Hammond B3 organ played by Bellingham musician Marvin Johnson for the spontaneously written tune “Drop a Coin,” inspired by a found fortune-telling machine card.

The final track on this album is “Operas to the Ponies,” and is a beautiful coming-of-age folk-song which Cribbs’ sings a cappella in a powerful, earthy performance. It is a fitting last song as it conveys that feeling of gratitude for the art of song and place that seems to be Janie and Joe’s impetus for making “Postcards From A Tiny American Town.”

Living on Whidbey Island has made these musicians more aware of the inspiration that comes from their unique community and the importance of cherishing that no matter where they find themselves in world.

Reggiatore said that he feels like this is a defining moment in their musical journey.

“This is the first time in all our recording endeavors that we have been captured in a way that really reflects who and what we are,” said Reggiatore.

The CDs will be available at the Arts Festival in Coupeville on Saturday, Aug. 11, at the Island County Fair on Aug. 16, or at the special CD release celebration at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 21, at the Cafe in the Woods of Crawford Road in Langley at Mukilteo Coffee.

Both albums are also available at Joe’s Island Music in Langley, The Book Bay in Freeland or online at www.janiecribbs.com and cdbaby.com.

Patricia Duff can be reached at 221-5300 or pduff@southwhidbeyrecord.com.