The Daily Times

It took Allen and Amanda Rigell moving almost 770 miles away from home to come into their own.

Since last June, when the couple moved from Johnson City to Madison, Wis., their band has performed at the prestigious Rhythm and Roots Festival, completed an EP and laid out plans for a 2011 mini-tour that will take them to Washington, D.C., down through the Carolinas and back to Tennessee.

Even more surprising, the Rigells told The Daily Times this week, has been the reception Count This Penny has received in their newly adopted hometown.

“The people we play for really dig it and have been really supportive,” Amanda Rigell said. “I don’t know if being from Tennessee and playing Appalachian-style music gives us automatic street credibility or what, but it’s been really well-received, which is exciting. The music scene here is very eclectic; I wouldn’t say there’s an Americana kind of scene. So that makes it very exciting to have such a positive response.”

On the other hand, a listen to “The Gone” EP reveals that a positive reception isn’t so surprising after all. There’s a warmth to the music that stems from the chemistry between the two as a couple, and a ramshackle grit that seems lifted from the duo’s Anderson County roots. T.J. Jones of East Tennessee group The Bearded serves as an unofficial third member of Count This Penny, playing banjo, washboard, porchboard and guitar and acting as sound engineer during the EP’s recording process.

“Plymouth Duster,” the album’s breezy opener, quickly settles into a slice of home. The title track itself builds on Amanda Rigell’s songbird chorus, banjo and guitar swirling like fireflies on a Southern summer night. It’s so quintessentially Appalachian that to reproduce it accurately in their new Midwestern home you’d swear the Rigells filled the trunk of their car with a load of East Tennessee red clay dirt.

It’s a work they’ve been building toward since childhood, almost. Both attended Oak Ridge High School, and in their reminiscing, at least, both seemed enamored of one another even back then.

“Even in the mid- to late-1990s, I always thought of Allen as this really cool guy who was out of my league,” Amanda said with a laugh. “At one point, I found out he listened to (a band she liked) and thought, ‘Gosh! Maybe I have a chance with this guy!’”

“I think Amanda has a much better ear for music in general,” Allen countered. “I learn more from music she likes than music I was traditionally drawn to. Even going back to our sophomore and junior years in high school, she was making mix tapes for me. She has a really good ear for that stuff.”

Although both went to Oak Ridge, Allen’s family comes from a long line of Maryville College graduates. (He even served as the assistant baseball coach there at one time.) His sister, grandmother and a couple of uncles still live in Blount County, and the Rigells are looking forward to seeing their newly crawling nephew when they return to East Tennessee next week.

In high school, they played in the marching band together; both played trumpet, and they were friends long before they were a couple, Amanda said.

“We wound up spending a lot of time together every day, cutting up and being ridiculous in band practice,” she said.

Musically, she started playing guitar “to impress a totally different guy,” she said. In college — both attended Emory University — she dabbled in songwriting; Allen worked as a counselor at various summer camps around the same time, learning to play guitar and “having the whole campfire experience,” she added.

After they fell in love and got married, he worked hard to impress her with his songwriting.

“It started out with me bringing her a song, and she’d say, ‘That’s OK,’” he said. “Then she’d tell me it was pretty good. Finally, I brought her one about a year and half ago that impressed her.”

“When he played ‘Brown Bottle’ (on “The Gone” EP) for the first time, I asked, ‘Who’s that by?’” she said. “When he told me, I said, ‘Really? You wrote that?’”

At first, they played mostly for friends and family; eventually, their love of music and their attendance at shows prompted them to give it a try in public. It’s been a slow process, and just when they seemed poised to make a splash locally, Allen received a job offer in Madison. They opted to move, but they didn’t put their music on the back burner.

“We’ll be up here for a couple of years, then head back down to Knoxville where our families are,” Allen said.

“Our short-term goals are to be playing a lot in this area,” Amanda added. “We’d like to start doing some weekend jaunts to Chicago, Milwaukee and Minneapolis, but right now, because this is our second job, we have to base everything around our vacation time.”

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