On Friday, April 3, we will feature a co-bill of Bill Staines and Dave Mallett. No year at the coffeehouse would be complete without an appearance by Bill Staines. He has actually appeared at the coffeehouse at least once a year for the past 39 years and in the coffeehouse’s early years, a visit from Bill provided the financial “lifeline” to keep the venue going. He will be joined by Dave Mallett, another long-time veteran of the folk scene. Come see these two old favorites — you will be hard pressed to keep your feet from tapping and hands from clapping.

For over thirty-five years, Bill Staines has traveled back and forth across North America, singing his songs and delighting audiences at festivals, folksong societies, colleges, concerts, clubs and coffeehouses. A New England native, Bill became involved with the Boston-Cambridge folk scene in the early 1960’s and, for a time, emceed the Sunday hootenanny at the renowned Club 47 in Cambridge. Bill quickly became a popular performer in the Boston area. In 1971, after one of his performances, a reviewer for the Boston Phoenix stated that Bill was “simply Boston’s best performer.” A decade later, both in 1980 and 1981, the annual Reader’s Poll of the Boston Globe selected him as a favorite performer. In 1991, Bill entered his fourth decade as a folk performer with an international reputation as an artist. Singing mostly his own songs, he has become one of the most popular singers on the folk music circuit today and averages around 200 concert dates a year.

Bill weaves a magical blend of wit and gentle humor into his performances, and as one reviewer wrote, “he has a sense of timing to match the best stand-up comic.” His music is a slice of Americana, reflecting with the same ease, his feelings about the prairie people of the Midwest or the adventurers of the Yukon. Interspersed between original songs, Bill also includes songs ranging from traditional folk tunes to more contemporary country ballads and delights in having the audience participate in many of the numbers. He may even do a yodeling tune or two- having won the National Yodeling Championship in 1975 at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Kerrville Texas. Radio and TV appearances have included A Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage, The Good Evening Show and a host of local programs on PBS and network TV. Hot on the heels of his most recent successful release, “Old Dogs,” Bill continues to drive over 65,000 miles a year doing what he loves, bringing music to people.

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Dave Mallet’s career began when he was ten years old, playing in a country and folk duo with his older brother, Neil. “We played everything from old songs like ‘Carry Me Back To Old Virginny’, which is the only song that my father ever sang,” recalled Mallett, “to stuff that was on the radio. We were around when Elvis Presley came out and when Johnny Cash recorded “I Walk the Line.” We did the whole folk thing, too — the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary. We had a real mixed bag.”

Discovering the music of singer-songwriters like Gordon Lightfoot and Bob Dylan, as an acting student at the University of Maine, Mallett began writing his own songs. “Up until that point, I thought of myself as a singer,” he said. “In college, everybody that was singing also wrote. I realized that that was what I wanted to do. I was a theater major. I felt short-changed that I had to speak someone else’s words. I felt that, if I became a singer-songwriter, I could sing my own words.”

A turning point in Mallett’s career came, in 1975, after he discovered that Noel Paul Stookey, of Peter, Paul and Mary, had moved to Blue Hills, Maine and was opening a recording studio. “That was back in the days when a recording studio was sort of like Oz,” he said. “It was a foreign land. I wanted to see his studio, so, I called him up and said, ‘Can I come visit?’ ” Within six months of their initial meeting, Mallett found a true mentor in Stookey. In addition to producing Mallett’s first three albums, Stookey helped to bring his tune, “The Garden Song,” to the attention of influential folksinger Pete Seeger who included it on his 1979 album, Circles And Seasons. The song has gone on to find its place amidst the lexicon of American folk song. “It was never that big a hit,” said Mallett, “never blared at you, ten times an hour, on the radio. It’s gotten around but in a very human way, through the mouths of children, Universalist ministers and wedding ceremonies. I’m so proud to be associated with such a simple thing.” After spending a few years in Nashville, Mallett returned to Maine in 1997 and has continued to rediscover the roots of his music. “My music is a combination of European and New England maritime music,” he said. “The New England maritime thing is Scotch and Irish. It’s more European in the tempos, time signatures and chords. I think it’s very northern.”

Any new song that can live comfortably beside the well-worn songs of folk tradition has a good chance of surviving the test of time. Such, we believe, are the songs of Bill Staines. Charles “Sandy” Paton, Folk Legacy Records

There is no better writer of instantly memorable sing-along choruses in this genre of music. The Boston Globe

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Dave Mallett may be the only artist working today whose portraits and stories, derived from the American heartland, can come close to being compared to the works of Stephen Foster. Steve Lacrosse, POPULAR FOLK MUSIC TODAY

Ya wanna know what’s going on in contemporary folk music? Start here. David Mallett has the warmth of a flannel shirt, the comfort of a quilt, and the heart of a poet. He sounds like somebody you’d like for your best friend. Robert Oermann, MUSIC ROW