Danny Carnahan

Danny Carnahan and Robin Petrie have enjoyed a fruitful partnership since the 1970s, when they first began to perform folk and experiment with a widening variety of world musical styles. Carnahan and Petrie met while students at the University of Califorinia at Irvine and soon began to play together, he on guitar and subsequently fiddle; she on recorder and later the hammered dulcimer. While Petrie gave up on music to become a potter, Carnahan embraced Irish and Scottish music, teaming up with Chris Caswell and recording two albums. Then, in 1980, Petrie rejoined Carnahan, and the two of them began to play a music that was at once very celtic and very American; the results were heard on 1984's Two for the Road. There followed Journeys of the Heart also released in 1984 and Continental Drift, released in 1987. In 1988 the band decided to change emphasis away from the celtic fringe and toward a more synthetic sound: one less derivative, more coherent. Their release, in 1989, of No Regrets was welcomed as a refreshing departure and a new chapter in the annals of the band.