"I am currently sitting on the banks of the Mississippi in southern Mississippi, so I'm pretty far down."

So stated Emma Beaton, cellist and spokesperson for the Folk Arts Quartet, in a recent telephone interview to help promote the group's upcoming appearances at the Unity College Centre for the Performing Arts on Thursday. For more information about the show, visit www.unityme.org/theater or call 948-7469.

The first order of business was to establish a little bit of personal history and it was learned that Beaton's family had originated in Scotland and currently resides in British Columbia, Canada ... her father, who's traveling with the group, was overheard in the background causing Beaton to pause and listen.

"My father just said I should say that last year I won the Canadian Young Performer of the Year Canadian Folk Music Award," she said. "I'm also in another band called Joy Kills Sorrow. I sing in that band and we've played in Maine, even," Beaton said. "I actually play more with that band then I do with this (one). We're just signing a record deal with Signature Sounds, we have a record coming out at the end of February."

Seeing she brought up her role as a singer in Joy Kills Sorrow, I asked if the group is primarily an instrumental act or are there vocals in there, as well?

"A bit of singing -- it's mainly instrumental," she said, "but we do a few songs."

The next topic of discussion was the band itself.

"There's been a lot of changes recently," she said, "but the main members of the band -- as of late -- have been myself; Julie Metcalf, who's the viola player; and Mia Freidman, a fiddle player who also sings. Another fiddle player came on for the fall (tour) and, because Hannah Read is unable to tour at this time, we have Tashina Clarridge playing these last few gigs for us, she also is a fiddle player. So, as you can see, there's been like a lot of change lately ... but the shows in Maine will be the Folk Arts Quartet and we'll be playing the same material."

Speaking of material, I asked what it was that the four-piece group would be performing? It is, in make-up, a traditional classical string quartet of two violins, viola and cello.

"Well, we're all rooted in various fiddle styles but, at the same time, it is a string quartet, so we arrange traditional and original fiddle tunes in a sort of more structured way that suit's a string quartet."

"Each one of the sets kind of evolved differently, but sometimes if someone's written a tune or has brought a tune to the group, they might have a way to kinda pick it apart and dissect it a bit and add new parts already, or we just all work on it together and come up with different lines and maybe different tunes or parts that would fit well with the main melody, as well."

The group as been around a little over a year and has had a revolving line-up even early on.

"Julie and Hannah were a part of the group from the beginning, but their previous cellist recently moved to Ireland, so I joined the band in May. The whole line-up thing is very confusing," she said.

She went on to explain they were all in school together at the Berklee College of Music. They haven't really done a lot of touring outside of the Boston area.

"We've gone to British Columbia, so I think that would be the furthest we've traveled: to the other side of the country; but, come January, all of us will be out of school, so we'll be much more able to tour then."

Lucky Clark is a music journalist celebrating his 40th year of writing this year. He can be reached at lucky@megalink.net for questions or comments.