Back in the mid to late seventies, when I had no hope of ever getting into bars, I was fortunate that a few of the old coffee houses in Toronto still hung on. Though long past its heyday when Joni Mitchell and Neil Young played there, The Riverboat on Yorkville Avenue was still the flagship around which the survivors rallied.

I loved the music and enjoyed the atmosphere of these places; but the things I liked about them most, lack of drunks and intimate space, were probably the very things that doomed them. Unfortunately these places also provided proof that people don't need alcohol to act like pompous twits too in love with the sound of their own voices to notice that nobody gives a damn about what they think or have to say.

It was my first meeting with the bizarre creature whom I've since come to call folkmusicseriosus. Male or female - I think they are interchangeable - they believe that its not music unless played on an acoustic guitar, songs have to be about something that "matters", and the proper place for emotions is on stage at the point in the song where you close your eyes to show how affected (sorry, effected) you are by world events or the disintegration of a relationship.

The species was driven to the edge of extinction with the loss of their natural habitat, the folk club, at the end of the seventies, but managed to hang on at the fringes of local folk societies making a royal pain of themselves. Unfortunately, with the recent surge of interest in traditional music, their population seems to have stabilized and even started to grow.

All of which makes the arrival of Folk Uke on the scene all the more timely. You'd be harder to come by better credentials for a folk duo then Amy Nelson and Cathy Guthrie considering their parentage and heritage, and their debut album, Folk Uke, does nothing to dispel that belief.

For starters they sound like they've been singing together forever, as their vocal harmonies are wonderful. They also have a good ear for what songs will work for them, and the covers they have chosen are ideally suited to their talents and their style. The opening song on the album, "Tonight You Belong To Me" is an old standard written in 1926, which they perform straight, but with just enough tongue in cheek that you know their not taking it too seriously.

But they also take the old Johnny Cash song, "I Still Miss Someone" from 1958, and do a beautiful rendition with achingly pure harmonies and an understanding of how this type of song needs to be sung. But they aren't their father's daughters for nothing and they have inherited both men's sense of mischief and sly humour.