McGonigel's Mucky Duck

Trish and Darin
December 20

730 PM

Austin singer-songwriter Trish Murphy and her brother Darin will flit between the kitchen and stage tonight.

She's assembled a menu to accompany the duo's Christmas show at McGonigel's Mucky Duck.

"We're sort of like executive chefs on the deal," she says. "We created and submitted a menu. We'll have some supervision and be puttering around the kitchen before we go onstage. But thank God we don't have to rip off our aprons and sing for our supper."

Murphy is no stranger to the kitchen. She keeps a well-maintained food blog on her Web site and she also teaches a cooking class at Austin's Whole Foods.

She and Darin — who grew up and cut their teeth as a duo in Houston — started cooking as kids. "We had a weird bohemian pace to our lives," she says. "Our parents were real young. But my mom was really traditional about family dinner every night. Everybody helped in the kitchen.

"It was a real egalitarian deal. She didn't serve anything off the stove. It had to be plated and on the right kind of dish. Glasses were filled with ice, tea poured, the ritual never varied. That gave us a kind of grounding in the kitchen that maybe other kids didn't get."

The cooking tonight will be well under way by the time Murphy and her brother show. But since the meal will be family recipes, they'll keep an eye on things in the kitchen.

"So much about cooking is tactile and you're using all of your senses," she says, "knowing by experience how things look or feel. We'll be able to get into there and give everybody a tactile frame of reference."

As for the songs, expect some originals, some holiday medleys and "some other things that are a little less worn out."

andrew.dansby@chron.com