Married fiddlers Donnell Leahy and Natalie MacMaster finally get together to make an album

It's a sobering state of affairs to suspect, just after getting married, that you and your beloved don't really make beautiful music together after all.

Donnell Leahy, fiddler and leader of the celebrated Celtic family band from Ontario that bears the family name, thought as much in a very literal sense after he and acclaimed Cape Breton fiddler Natalie MacMaster tied the knot in 2002.

"It was just after we got married," Leahy said. "Someone taped a house party set we played. In listening back to it, we just didn't sound very good together. Each of us were covering up the other's styles. It was just this big jumble. But what we found was that if we write together or learn a tune together, things sorted themselves out."

Just over 12 years and six children later, the first couple of Canadian Celtic music will release their first collaborative album in the spring, an appealing mix of traditional, contemporary and original fiddle-saturated tunes titled One.

The title, of course, implies unity. But before exploring the project, or the tour that brings MacMaster and Leahy to the EKU Center for the Arts in Richmond on Sunday, there was the matter of solidifying common ground between their fiddling styles.. After that came an even mightier task — the logistics of plotting a recording and tour for two artists with separate careers and a joint household.

"We have very different styles," Leahy said. "Natalie is a Cape Breton player. She grew up in Cape Breton listening to Cape Breton fiddlers. I grew up in Ontario without that kind of style around me. But I listened to my father play the fiddle. I listened to the radio. I listened to accordion music because I had a friend who was an Irish accordion player. Any Cape Breton music I heard came from my mother playing it on the piano.

"Natalie and I intended on recording together for awhile, but I had projects planned and she had projects planned. Then babies started to arrive. It just kept getting delayed, and there was never any time. Basically, this project should have been done eight years ago. It got to the point where we said, 'OK, this is ridiculous. We have to record.' So we put everything else aside and said, 'This is what we're doing' and made it happen.

Enter a totally unexpected guest to serve as the project's producer: Bob Ezrin. During the past four decades, the fellow Canadian has produced such high-profile records as Pink Floyd's The Wall, Kiss's Destroyer, Lou Reed's Berlin, Peter Gabriel's self-titled solo debut and all of Alice Cooper's career-defining albums from the early 1970s.

That begs the question of how things went in the studio when a veteran rock producer takes on a Celtic fiddle album.

"Bob called us up," Leahy said. "He heard that we were making a record and said he would like to be involved, so we met. He brought such a great attitude and, of course, all that experience. But he also brought great ears. He brought honesty and a great sense of arranging."

Then there is the family situation. Who tends to the children at home when mom and dad are fiddling around on tour? Simple. No one is, because the kids — ranging in age from almost 11 months to 9 — are part of the road crew.

"We bring all the children with us, which is really the only way we could do this," Leahy said. "The kids love it. They love the music and they love the excitement of being on tour with swimming pools and tour buses and new cities.

"We home-school our children, as well, which is necessary for our lifestyle. But we get the schoolwork done quickly so the day is left for us to see museums and check the hockey scores."

This story was originally published March 4, 2015 at 6:07 PM with the headline "Married fiddlers Donnell Leahy and Natalie MacMaster finally get together to make an album."