A new husband-and-wife team is hoping that -- with the musical influence of his famous uncle -- traditional country fans discover the duo has the right stuff.

The Wrights, a Nashville team made of Adam and Shannon Wright, released their inaugural album -- "Down This Road" -- in the spring. Adam is the nephew of country superstar Alan Jackson, with whom The Wrights and Sara Evans will perform tonight at the Post-Gazette Pavilion in Burgettstown.

"Alan is proud and supportive," says Adam Wright, 29. "He really likes the music that we're making and our approach to our music."

Naturally, Adam Wright grew up saturated in country music, and cites Jackson as a strong influence on his style.

"I got to watch him, from the ground up, get to where he is," he says. "We heard a lot of Alan Jackson around the house."

Music has been a lifelong passion for both Adam and Shannon Wright, who met in 1998 during a gig at an Atlanta club. She needed a guitar player for the performance, and a cousin recommended Adam Wright.

"The very first night we met, we played as if we had known each other for a long time," says Shannon Wright, 31. She grew up singing and had many relatives who played musical instruments.

Adam and Shannon Wright began performing together around Atlanta and quickly became a musical and personal team. They were known informally as simply Adam and Shannon -- or "whatever we could come up with," Adam jokes -- because they weren't married. But in September 2002, that changed: They officially became The Wrights, legally and musically. The same week they got married in Georgia -- the native state for both -- the couple moved to Nashville and began pursuing a recording career.

"I just got lucky and ran into Shannon -- someone who could help me organize my life and turn it into a career," says Adam Wright, who had no other vocational plans outside of music.

The title track from "Down This Road" was released as a single early this year, and The Wrights are deciding which song to release next. Getting widespread airplay can be challenging, though, to new artists who lean toward traditional country style, they say. Pure country artists like Jackson already have an established following that survives otherwise pop-infested country radio airwaves. Yet The Wrights know many disgruntled country fans out there are waiting to discover them.

"It's not a matter of if we have an audience, it's just where we're going to find it," Adam Wright says.

"A lot of the older artists -- the people who are our heroes -- those are the people that we've learned from. We listen to the people that came before us, and then try to make current country music."

Shannon Wright says she loves music that is very real, simple and understated -- a good description for the 12 tracks on "Down This Road," which contains many easygoing songs with often humorous lyrics about the ups and downs of life and love. Yet she and her husband do not want to be anyone's recycled rip-off; they say they want to take their untainted roots, and create modern and unique country music.

"We're not trying to rehash the past and do something that's already been done," Shannon Wright says. "For us, it's just really important to bring a little bit of tradition with us. We want to be contemporary and relevant today. ... but remind them where the music came from.

"In country music, there's always cycles," she says. "We're just hoping that it will swing our way."