Folk-rock band Shovels and Rope, comprised of husband-and-wife duo Carey Ann Hearst and Michael Trent, will be performing at 9 p.m. Saturday at The Bottleneck.

A little bit country, a little bit rock ‘n’ roll, and everything in between — Shovels and Rope are a riot, and their Bottleneck show on Saturday is sure to be a hootenanny.

The husband-and-wife duo comprised of Carey Ann Hearst and Michael Trent have a wide appeal thanks to their genre-defying folk. You’ll hear Southern blues undertones while Hearst shreds and squeals into the mic. It’s an exciting, hectic and fairly impressive approach to an organic sound in today’s world of synthesizers and digital beats.

Dynamic duo

It takes a lot of creative interpretation to do what Shovels and Rope pull out in their live shows, but the sincerely charming musicians are humble as ever about it.

“What’s happening is, the two of us are flailing our arms and legs in a desperate attempt to keep up with ourselves and make as much noise as we can without making a racket,” Hearst half-jokes before taking a serious tone. “We strive to be, in every show, dynamic, dynamic, dynamic. We could play an hour-and-a-half show of loud and crazy things, or an hour-and-a-half show of poetic heartbreakers. It’s important for our audience to get a nice buffet of all that stuff.”

Generally, you’ll find Trent perched behind a kick drum, one hand on a keyboard, while Hearst rocks a booming voice from behind her guitar. But they’ve been known to switch instruments and try something new in the middle of a set.

“Even if it doesn’t go off without a hitch, the struggle is fun, and it allows us to connect with a lot of people,” says Hearst, who insists that their interpretations of music are part of a tradition that spans the history of music. “The people whose music get passed down, people who came over from Africa, and Irish folks who then turned it into bluegrass and mountain music … people of our generation are recycling and reinterpreting those things. It’s the inherent nontraditional-ness of it, that is the most tradition thing about what we do.”

Banding together

This new tradition wouldn’t have happened, had the two not met in 2002. Both Hearst and Trent had their own successful music careers, and even pursued solo albums after getting hitched. Eventually, the two say, they gave into logistics.

“We were both about 10 years into our other projects, so it wasn’t something that we were just ready to abandon what we’d been working on for so long,” Trent says. “Then, once we got married, our other projects ended for whatever reason, and this was a good way for us to do our careers together.”

Hearst chimed in that it was important to not leave each other behind.

“I was being Michael’s side man in Charlotte on Friday night, and he would be my side man in Charlotte on Saturday night, and it was just getting ridiculous.”

Trent said the couple then decided to throw their eggs in one basket and be just one band.

“Once we did that, we had so many opportunities that kept rolling in that support tours. We stayed out for about two years without barely ever coming home, and it was great.”

Living the dream

Life on the road was always the ultimate goal for the duo.

“It’s not like a holy calling to get to be a musician, but it’s what we love to do,” Hearst says. “Somebody’s got to do it, and we are willing to travel all the time and spend our time trying to say something of emotional value to people.”

Trent agrees.

“We’re super grateful, more than anything, to be in charge of our music,” he says. “We’re living the dream in that way, that everyone we work with, our small team of people, they all respect the way that we like to work.”

You can see how Shovels and Rope work it onstage at the Bottleneck this Saturday.

— Fally Afani is a freelance writer and editor of I Heart Local Music. For more local music coverage, visit iheartlocalmusic.com.