The stars are especially bright over Scotty and Sasha Prawalsky's Foresthill home on a recent night.

Maybe it's the crisp winter air that hangs above the foothills like black silk. Maybe it's the winding highway leading to the couple's rustic two-story, forest-shrouded home, a promising road to cozy warmth.

Or maybe it's the sound of the Prawalskys singing an old Maddox Brothers & Rose country tune: Scotty's clear voice a playful tease to Sasha's sweet, slightly husky tone.

The song finished, Scotty slaps at his stand-up bass and asks the eternal question, "What's next?"

Sasha turns to their 6-year-old daughter, Sadie, and asks, "What do you want to hear?"

Sadie, cradling 6-month-old kitten Lefty (Lucy, the family dog, listens from an upstairs perch), thinks for a moment and then motions for her mother to come in closer so she can whisper in her ear.

The request?

"Whatever you want to play," Sasha repeats with a laugh.

This is life at the Prawalsky home. Scotty and Sasha juggle full-time jobs, raising Sadie and 10-year-old son Cooper – and, as the founding members of the Poplollys, making music when they can, practicing several times a week at home and playing shows in California and Nevada.

It's a love story told in two-part harmonies and playful banter. The couple are as relaxed onstage as off, with gentle interruptions, teasing and a clear, sweet sense of mutual affection. Scotty, 37, is funny, sometimes bitingly so. Sasha, 33, is sweet and accommodating – although one suspects she doesn't suffer fools lightly.

The two met 15 years ago through friends. It wasn't quite love at first sight.

"I thought he was a jerk," says Sasha.

"I was – I still am," says Scotty, good-naturedly.

Perhaps, but he was quickly smitten with Sasha, eventually following her to San Diego to lure her away from beauty school and back to Northern California.

Around the same time, Scotty and a friend bought an Auburn bar. Scotty, who'd played trumpet with the local ska act Filibuster, now had another band, Larry & the Lovers, and wanted to turn Auburn's Smoke Shop into a venue.

Sasha, then only 18, wouldn't be able to hang out there for another three years, but the relationship blossomed, and baby Cooper arrived in 1998. Shortly thereafter the couple wed in Lake Tahoe.

And so now a family, the couple gave up the Auburn bar and eventually settled in nearby Foresthill. It was a quieter time.

"There wasn't a lot going on," Sasha says. "We were just getting acquainted with parenting."

Sadie was born in 2002. By that time, Scotty was playing in the Scandalins, and Sasha sometimes sang along at house parties. Then, in 2005, the Prawalskys caught a Valentine's Day "Crooning Couples" show at Old Ironsides. Sasha was inspired by the way real-life twosomes translated their relationships into onstage musical chemistry.

"(It was) so sweet – I thought, 'I want to do that.' "

A year later, Sasha found further inspiration at a Gillian Welch concert. After the show, she told Scotty she wanted to make music.

Fine, he said, but you'll have to learn to play guitar.

And so Sasha, who'd taken a few lessons, practiced until she was comfortable enough to play in front of others.

The Prawalskys made their "Crooning Couples" debut in 2007. Tim White, who performed at the same show with his wife, Gerri, was impressed and asked them to play a show with his band, the Alkali Flats.

"They really had this full-balanced thing going," White remembers.

"Even though it was just the two of them up there, they worked like a band – it was the full package," he says.

He was also struck by their chemistry.

The Prawalskys were a little terrified at the idea of playing another show.

They had two kids, after all, not to mention full-time jobs selling wine – she works for a distributor, he works for a wholesaler – requiring them to log hundreds of miles each month.

But play they did, calling on Sasha's dad and Scotty's mom for baby-sitting and expanding into a full band with Richie Lawrence on accordion and guitarist Parker McDonald.

Call Bee pop music writer Rachel Leibrock, (916) 321-1176.