Zoe & Cloyd: Popular Duo Pay Homage to Family Roots

With their upcoming fifth album, “Songs of Our Grandfathers,” rising Asheville Americana/folk duo Zoe & Cloyd decided to take a different approach to this latest musical endeavor.

“For the past eight years, we’ve been focusing primarily on original songwriting, kind of our own music and interpretations,” said fiddler/vocalist Natalya Zoe Weinstein. “And, with this project, we’re going back to our musical lineages of our grandfathers.”

Those lineages at the core of the couple’s album are the klezmer and jazz stylings of Weinstein’s ancestors, and the traditional bluegrass tones of John Cloyd Miller’s grandfather, Jim Shumate, a pioneering fiddler in his own right.

“[Jim] was from Wilkes County and lived in Hickory,” Miller said. “So, we’re pulling from pieces that he recorded with Flatt & Scruggs, stuff he played with Bill Monroe, and songs that he wrote — it’s become much more than just a heritage project.”

“[My grandfather] immigrated from Russia in 1923, and then came [to America] via Argentina because he couldn’t initially get into the United States,” Weinstein added. “And though we don’t have any recordings of my grandfather, we have all of these handwritten music notebooks of his — it’s been so fun to go through them.”

Geographically, Weinstein hails from Massachusetts, with her husband, Miller, a 12th generation North Carolinian. And as Miller was surrounded by bluegrass and mountain music as a youth raised in Southern Appalachia, Weinstein grew up playing classical violin, with her father a jazz pianist.

“Music was always around, and I was always passionate about it,” Weinstein said. “I did classical music for about 15 years, but got bored with it in college, reading notes on a page and so on. I wanted to do something different, only to fall in with folks who played bluegrass and old-time music.”

After college, Weinstein relocated to Asheville in 2004 and hasn’t looked back since finding herself in Western North Carolina.

“I fell in love with bluegrass,” Weinstein said. “The more you listen to it, the more you hear the subtleties and the power in that music.”

For Miller, as a member of Gen X, he found himself more interested in the heavier sounds of 1990s grunge and popular music early on. But it was a deep love for The Grateful Dead that led him down the rabbit hole to iconic 1970s jam-grass group Old & In The Way, featuring Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia on banjo.

“That ‘bridge moment’ came when I was home from college and hanging out with my grandfather,” Cloyd recalled. “I asked him, ‘Have you ever played ‘Pig In A Pen’? And he played it, he could [play] everything on that record. He says, ‘Vassar Clements plays on that record, he’s a good friend of mine.’ I knew my grandfather was cool, but I didn’t know he knew all of these [music legends].”

Initially, Weinstein and Cloyd were part of Americana/roots group Red June. But, after the arrival of their daughter, they decided to venture out on their own, ultimately forming Zoe & Cloyd in 2015. From humble beginnings, the duo has toured extensively around the greater Southeast and beyond, gracing the stages of numerous legendary stages and festivals.

In 2021, Zoe & Cloyd were featured on the acclaimed PBS program “David Holt’s State of Music.” And the 2023 release of “Songs of Our Grandfathers” (Organic Records) will also signal Zoe & Cloyd’s first international gig, taking place in Northern Ireland later this year.

“Whereas I come from classical music theory and a formal background, John comes from the folk tradition of learning music by ear,” Weinstein said. “And I think because we come from different musical backgrounds, we complement each other with our skillsets and sensibilities.”

“We feel fortunate that we’re able to play music together, and to make stuff that people enjoy,” Miller added. “My grandfather didn’t have any kind of formal training on his instrument at all. And he always said to me that playing music is a gift, and he was right — it is a gift.”

Enjoy more of our Down the Road – Bluegrass and Old-Time Music Guide here.