Doug & Telisha Williams

Folk duo Doug & Telisha Williams grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and met in their high-school marching band, where he was the drum major and she was the majorette. They formed a band to play at a school assembly and later performed with it at local functions. Eventually, the band broke up, but the couple continued to perform, turning to a folk style, even after they began attending colleges five hours apart. They married and found jobs outside music, but continued to play on weekends and eventually built up enough of a following to devote themselves to performing. They released their first album, No Evil, in 2003, and followed it on March 25, 2006, with the national release Rope Around My Heart on their own No Evil Records label. ~ William Ruhlmann