The Roys to make Blistered Fingers debut June 18

This coming week, June 18-21, the Litchfield Fairgrounds in Litchfield will be the site of the 42nd Blistered Fingers Family Bluegrass Music Festival. One of the featured acts is a brother/sister duo known as The Roys. Lee and Elaine Roy were born in Fitchburg, Mass., and raised across the border in Coal Branch, New Brunswick. Seven years ago they moved to Nashville and developed a sound that blends bluegrass, country, folk, roots and gospel music held together with exquisite vocal harmonies and strong songwriting. They have three albums out including their debut, “Lonesome Whistle,” followed by “New Day Dawning” and “Gypsy Runaway Train.” On June 2 they called to chat about their career and their upcoming performance on Wednesday in Litchfield.

Q: I’d like to start by saying that one of the things I love most in music is vocal harmonies and especially sibling harmony — a quality that the two of you have in abundance.

Lee: Well, we appreciate that.

Q: I understand you’ll be heading our way for a Bluegrass Festival.

Lee: Yes … Blistered Fingers?

Q: That’s the one. Have you ever played that one before?

Elaine: We have not and we are so excited, we hear wonderful things about it. We’ve been hearing about it for years and finally they’ve asked us to come so we’re extremely excited.

Lee: Yeah, we’re looking forward to it.

Q: Now, your last album came out in 2013 — “Gypsy Runaway Train” — are you still touring in support of that?

Elaine: We are, that’s the latest album that we have and we’re working on a brand new one right now that will be out early in the fall.

Q: Well, your first album came out in 2011, the second in 2012 and that makes one a year since you started.

Lee: We pretty much have — that’s all we’ve done is crank them out as quick as we can.

Q: What is this new one like? Will people at Blistered Fingers get a chance to hear songs from it?

Elaine: Well, we’re just in the studio right now — all the music’s done and we’re doing all of the vocals. It’s just our sound, it’s the songs that we’ve written. We’ve been very lucky that our songs have been accepted and well-received. We’re excited to have people hear the new music.

Q: Is this festival part of a bigger tour?

Lee: Yeah, we’re touring all year. Blistered Fingers will be the next-to-last day on a 10-day run that we’re doing. But with bluegrass you don’t really do the typical three months out, two months in, it’s more like going out on a weekend and play, then go home, go out the following weekend and then you’re home. We’re blessed that we have a lot of dates this year.

Q: What is the appeal of bluegrass — in your opinion as ones who are creating it?

Elaine: Well, I think what the appeal is — and we’re seeing it on a grander level — is that people still love the raw sound, the traditional sound. We’ve noticed that a lot of people that used to love traditional country music are now coming to bluegrass because there is no more traditional country music. People are hungry for that under-produced, if that’s the right word, music and that’s the appeal of bluegrass music, for sure.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to pass on to the readers of this story?

Lee: Well, you know, they can always check out our website — theroysonline.com — if they want to find out more and kind of get brushed up on us as to who we are and where we’ve been, they can do that there. And we are New Englanders so we consider this going home to play. I know it’s going to be a Wednesday night but we do our best to entertain people so we’d sure love to see the people for two-fold: one is that we’d love to see the people turn out for the festival and show support to that, and two, we’d love to see people come out and see our show and hopefully leave as new fans (www.theroysonline.com).

Lucky Clark has spent 45 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.