The station wagon kicks up a cone of white dust as it slowly comes along the caliche orchard road toward the olive-green farmhouse. At the concrete irrigation standpipe, it turns, stops by the trampoline, and a blond 6-year-old boy in a T shirt and jeans piles out of the backseat. Another 6-year-old, rail-thin with shaggy brown hair and patches on his pant knees, shoots out of the slamming screen door, over the wooden steps and toward the gravel drive. It is 1973, the middle of an orange and grapefruit orchard in deep South Texas. Dave has come over to play. 

Bike rides. Sleepovers. Church youth group. Sometime in ninth grade they come by an electric guitar and a bass. A high school five-piece, The Plan, covers an eclectic songbook spanning the Doobie Brothers to Van Halen, and a new guy with a vintage sound named Stevie Ray Vaughan. Graduation, and both migrate north to Austin for college. Come under the spell of SRV and other Austin-based guitar-driven bands Eric Johnson, Arc Angels, Junior Brown, and Omar and the Howlers. Another graduation, and both rebound to South Texas and cover classic rock and blues in palapa-roofed riverside clubs. 

As college ends the first chapter, diverging careers end the second. But both wind up back in Austin, and fate, like that station wagon, keeps bringing Dave over to play. Moondog. Writing, harmony, rhythm, recording, gigging, drawing on those decades and reaching back farther to the time of their birth. Listen to this male vocal duo and hear echoes of the Everly Brothers and Lennon and McCartney, but also a soundscape that straddles most genres in which guitar has played a central role: folk, blues, rock, country, funk. Stevie Ray Vaughan, James Taylor, Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed. 

Seale and McLeod have played with Dash Crofts of Seals & Crofts, and Rachael Price of Lake Street Dive, and have never gone too long between jam sessions and recording projects at each other’s Austin homes. McLeod has recorded and performed extensively with up-and-comer Christina Cavazos. Seale has performed numerous solo acoustic shows, arranging his own instrumental covers. Moondog’s style evokes nostalgia for bygone times — from Sgt. Pepper’s and ’60s game shows to novelty hits of the ’70s. The energy befits the times “Dave and Ave” first bounced on a trampoline in the middle of a grapefruit orchard.

Avrel Seale – Lead vocals and guitars
David McLeod – Backing vocals and bass
Kirk Sonnenberg – Drums
Charlie Magnone – Keyboards

Recorded at Century Recordings, Dripping Springs, Texas
Producers – David McLeod and Avrel Seale
Recording Engineer – Nick Jay
Mixing – Charlie Magnone
Mastering – The Bubble, Austin, Texas
Cover art – Erren Seale