While attending college in Boston, fiddler Maura Shawn Scanlin and guitarist Conor Hearn found themselves sharing the stage as members of the folk band Pumpkin Bread. But after bonding over their shared love of Celtic music, they began performing as a duo as well. Dubbing themselves Rakish, after the traditional Irish melody, “Rakish Paddy,” they began exploring and expanding on the traditions they started absorbing as children — Scanlin in the Blue Ridge Mountain town of Boone, N.C., right on the path of the Appalachian Trail; Hearn in the Celtic enclaves of Washington, D.C.