Photo: Paul Janovitz

Somewhere between Janis Joplin and Ani di Franco, you’ll find Celia Woodsmith, the carefree and energetic frontwoman of Hey Mama. Woodsmith was born in tiny Tryon, North Carolina (“population probably a couple hundred”) a legacy that helps her reach back, way back to Mahalia Jackson and Mississippi John Hurt. Hey Mama takes the history of improvised blues, adds a little electric guitar and a dash of crunchy washboard, and–voila!–upbeat, infectious, bluegrass-tinged pop, coming soon to a town near you.

Woodsmith found her partner in crime, Avi Salloway, on their first weekend at the University of Vermont, when the siren strains of Carlos Santana drew a mutual friend into his room. As Salloway tells it, he was playing around on his electric guitar on the first weekend of college, when suddenly, “There was this beautiful girl sitting on my bed…I’m like, ‘college!’” The beautiful girl wasn’t Woodsmith—as Hey Mama’s website says, no, Woodsmith and Salloway aren’t getting married—but she entered the tiny dorm room shortly thereafter and the two began talking music. Their shared love of Delta blues and desire to experiment with forms and instrumentation led them to Woodsmith’s trademark washboard.

“We were working on this old song, ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin,’ and we thought it needed a little crunch,” she says. So she picked up an antique washboard that had been hanging on Salloway’s wall. “I used banjo picks on my fingers at first,” she explains, but soon learned to slap, scratch, and squeeze every last nuance of sound from her new instrument. Comfort became proficiency and proficiency gave way to experimentalism. Woodsmith laughs, “It’s been broken, like, ten times,” but she and Salloway both insist that the band is more than the washboard. Indeed, both musicians play multiple instruments, and drummer Jared Seabrook and bassist Ben Kogan find an easy yet driving pocket behind every song. But the washboard Salloway dug out of an antique show helps Hey Mama create an instantly memorable and intimately authentic take on Delta blues gone electric.

Salloway says he likes bands that “put a pop frame on a blues song,” a sensibility you can hear on nearly every track of their latest album, Let It Rise. Hey Mama will play several showcases at SXSW, their first foray into the heart of Texas, and they’re touring all the way down. Bostonians can give them a friendly New England sendoffon March 6 at the Paradise with Tim Gearan and Jesse Dee.

–Dan Weber