Aubrey Atwater and Elwood Donnelly will be performing songs from their latest album, The Weaver’s Bonny, on Friday night at the Peeptoad Coffeehouse in the North Foster Baptist Church.

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

Aubrey Atwater and Elwood Donnelly have performed as a duo for 22 years, and they’re almost constantly on the go — to speak to them last week required separate phone conversations, as she was in the midst of a teaching residency (in banjo, clogging and singing) in North Carolina and he was at their home in Foster.

Their latest disc, The Weaver’s Bonny, shows the duo as always mining the American old-time and Celtic traditions with beauty, grace and sweet singing and deft playing throughout — with help from friends including string whiz Cathy Clasper-Torch, step dancer Kevin Doyle, John and Heidi Cerrigione, and their son Uriah Donnelly.

The new disc is a mix of songs they’ve been dong for ages and those they’ve just picked up recently.

Atwater says she’s been singing “Anachie Gordon” for 25 years — “It’s fascinating to have such a long relationship with one song,” she says of the ballad of arranged marriage and lost love. “Your view of it and your take on it evolve over time; it’s this entity that you go through life with.”

She calls it an “emotional pinnacle” of the disc, and says that as she sang it this time she saw its themes reflected in the struggle for marriage equality. “People not being allowed to marry who they love is a common theme in the old ballads, and it’s still very relevant today.”

New songs include Jean Ritchie’s “Thousand Mile Blues” and “Adieu, My Lovely Nancy,” which Donnelly learned for the recording when they realized that Atwater’s vocals were dominating.

And the disc has dancing songs including “Kevin Doyle’s Hornpipe,” written by Providence’s own Phil Edmonds and featuring step dancing by, um, Kevin Doyle, as well as the closing “Syncopate!,” a minute-plus of Doyle and Atwater making percussive music just with their feet.

“One by one, we fall in love with songs,” Atwater explains. “Sometimes we will have known a song for 20 years, and all of a sudden we’ll hear a particular person do it, and think, ‘I gotta learn that!’ or it’s a song we’ve never heard, and we think ‘wow.’ It speaks to us so strongly that we have to have it be part of us. … when you commit to learn a song, it becomes part of your body and soul. It’s like falling in love.”

Also included on the disc are two songs by Kentucky folklorist, singer and songwriter Dan Dutton, who also arranged two traditionals for the duo.

“He’s awesome,” says Atwater of Dutton, whom she’s known for 17 years and whose folk operas she has appeared in. Donnelly says he’s a local treasure in Kentucky, adding that “It’s kind of like a lot of people we meet — they’re not necessarily touring musicians, but they do a lot in their own areas. … Nonetheless, they’re great musicians and artists.”

The Weaver’s Bonny also includes a songbook with the lyrics, notation for the melody and chord symbols, so listeners can sing and play along. Atwater and Donnelly first did a songbook for 2007’s The Halfway Ground, credited to Jerimoth Hill, the gospel group the duo wrapped around themselves for the project.

“People can sing and play along in the key that we do it,” Donnelly says, “and of course they can change that if they like,” adding that he and Atwater often rearrange songs.

Atwater agrees: “We want people to play the songs themselves.” She adds, “I’d like to say we worked out all this notation ourselves,” but collaborators Heidi and John Cerrigione (members of Jerimoth Hill) simply figured the songs with the help of some software.

“These songs are for all of us,” Donnelly says. “Automatically they get changed from everybody’s style of music, the genres that they listen to when they were growing up.” Atwater and Donnelly quit their day jobs in the mid-’90s, and they both say that the economy and its repercussive effects on arts funding meant that things were looking dicey in the early part of this year, when the summer and early fall gigs are booked.

Atwater calls last winter “one of the bigger panicky moments in my whole career.” Donnelly agrees, saying that “it started to scare us a little bit.” But things picked up in April, and the duo have about 80 gigs (including residencies, some up to a week long) for the rest of the year — about average, as it turns out.

“We had a light summer,” Atwater says of their five-gig August, which she describes as virtually a month off by their standards. “But the rest was a welcome change. … Once I calmed down and realized we were fine, we had a nice summer.”

“We know we’re lucky,” Donnelly says; “we know we’ve been blessed. We’re very aware it could go at any time. But we’ve been doing it for 22 years now, and so far so good.”

The Atwater-Donnelly Band play at the Peeptoad Coffeehouse, in the North Foster Baptist Church, 81 East Killingly Rd., Foster, Friday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15; $7 for kids. Call (401) 647-3105 or go to www.fosteringarts.org.

Rick Estrin was the voice and the harmonica behind Little Charlie and the Nightcats, and with guitarist Little Charlie Baty’s retirement, he’s kept the band going, adding the excellent guitarist Kid Andersen and keeping the vintage, lo-fi appeal of their blues-rock mix on the new disc Twisted. Rick Estrin and the Nightcats are at Chan’s, 267 Main St., Woonsocket, Thursday at 8 p.m. Tickets: $15. Call (401) 765-1900. And sleep over to see Bryan Lee on Friday!

rmassimo@projo.com