Arts Editor

So how does a nice Jewish girl from the Bronx, N.Y., a classically trained soprano, get to a bluegrass group with the improbable name of Dead Men's Hollow?

"Happenstance," answers Caryn Fox of Centreville, whose group will release its second CD, Two Timin', next week.

A journalist/PR professional, Fox had been working at an Internet technology company in Northern Virginia in 2001 when she got together in a backyard with fellow worker Belinda Hardesty and Mike Lieber for a session of singing three-part harmonies to Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry."

"That was the defining moment," she says. "We all looked at each other and said, 'That wasn't half bad.' "

That's how the group started. "That version was electric ‹ electric drums, electric base, electric guitar," she says.

In 2003, Fox and a few members of the group decided to change direction, ditching the electric instruments and transforming it into an acoustic group that performed bluegrass.

"We have a very Appalachian sound, a Virginia roots kind of music," she says.

It's been a long musical journey for Fox, who was born in 1963 and grew up in an observant Conservative Jewish home in the Bronx.

She says music was always her muse and remembers listening for hours to a clock radio her parents gave her when she was in elementary school.

She was heavily involved in theater in high school, but studied English at the University of Rochester. "You can make a living in that," she says.

After graduation came several years of voice training in classical music.

The current iteration of Dead Men's Hollow features three vocalists ‹ Fox, Belinda Hardesty and Amy Nazarov; Mike Clayberg on guitar; Bob Pierce on bass; and Marcy Cochran as the fiddler.

The group's unusual name comes from a time after the Civil War when saloons, pawn shops and houses of ill repute were found on the Arlington end of the old aqueduct bridge leading to Washington, D.C. To get through the area unharmed, law-abiding citizens had to be armed and travel in groups. This notorious place was then called Dead Men's Hollow.

The group's new CD has both traditional and original songs featuring "a little country, a little gospel and a little blues," according to Fox.

It has appeared in a wide variety of local venues ‹ from the Kennedy Center in the District to Strathmore in North Bethesda to the State Theater in Falls Church. But it also has played at coffee houses and churches.

It won the 2005 Wammie Awards for Best Bluegrass Duo/Group, Best Bluegrass Recording and Best Debut Recording for its CD Forever True.

So far, Dead Men's Hollow has not appeared in a Jewish venue, but Fox says she has targeted the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia as a possible performance locale.

Two-Timin' is slated to be released Sept. 12. To celebrate, the group will perform at the Broad Street Tavern on Sept. 8 at 9 p.m. (admission is free) and at the Unity Church in Frederick on Sept. 9 at 8 p.m. Admission is $10.