BY MIKEL TOOMBS

A fill-in performance by the Dutchess and the Duke at this year’s Bumbershoot was so enjoyably shaggy, you’d have thought the Seattle duo of Jesse Lortz and Kimberly Morrison, who headline Wednesday (Nov. 25) at the Tractor Tavern, had only three hours notice, rather than three days.

D&D’s impromptu nature (“The more time we have to prepare,” Lortz says, “the more time we have to be nervous, I guess”) makes a nice counterpoint to the seriously good music found on last year’s “She’s the Dutchess, He’s the Duke” and now the splendid “Sunset/Sunrise,” which came out last month on Sup Pop imprint Hardly Art. (Why “Dutchess”? “We used to have this band called The Flying Dutchman and it was “Dutch,” so she was the Dutch-ess,” Lortz told the spell-checking Austin Town Hall.)

“There’s this thing, too, that we don’t ever learn the songs,” Lortz continued. “We did this tour with the Fleet Foxes a couple years ago. We had a friend who played all the (guitar) leads with us, so we could just sing and play rhythm, and he couldn’t go on tour. So on that tour we had to learn how to play the leads and sing at the same time.”

At Bumbershoot both Lortz and Morrison impressed with their guitar playing, as well as with their evocative vocals. It’s something of a surprise, then, to find that Lortz not only wrote all the songs on “Sunset/Sunrise,” he played all the guitar parts.

“I hate to use the term “control freak,” but I’ve put out my own records, I’ve written all the songs,” Lortz said. “So with this project it was kind of like, ‘Hey, I’ve got these songs, I really want you to sing them with me.’

“We did that seven-inch and they’re like, ‘Oh, we want to do an album.’ So it’s still going to be what it is.

“It’s kind of cool, because I feel that for the recordings, it’s more my thing. But then when we play live, she obviously brings a lot to the music, (and) live we have this chemistry. It’s kind of weird that it’s so obviously my thing. And sometimes I feel crummy about that because it’s not like a creative collaboration. But also, it’s just the way it is.”

Produced by Greg Ashley (The Gris Gris), who’s also on Wednesday’s Tractor bill (9:30 p.m.; $12), “Sunset/Sunrise” is fine just the way it is. It’s an often dark work (“A lot of the content comes from depression and feeling alone,” explained Lortz, who’s going through a divorce) that draws a musical exuberance from the vintage rock (the Rolling Stones in particular), folk and country of 40 or so years ago.

“I love ’60s music and ’50s music. To me that period was the most untainted by industry or whatever,” Lortz said. “Of course you want to sell records and you want people to like your band, but as corny as it sounds, it’s an art form. And it’s consumerism secondary.”

And, ahem, speaking of consumerism, the Dutchess and the Duke recently were featured in a full-page ad in Rolling Stone, something you might not expect of a fledgling indie act.

“It was a licensing thing that we kind of got some good money for,” Lortz said. “But it’s funny because it’s revealed how many people we know actually read Rolling Stone. I don’t look at it.”

Here’s a video of the Dutchess and the Duke’s “Reservoir Park,” from last year’s “She’s the Dutchess, He’s the Duke”:

(Editor’s note: Mikel Toombs is a Seattle-based freelance writer and music critic. For more about the Dutchess and the Duke by Toombs, go to San Diego’s SDNN.com).