Bluegrass musician Shane McGeehan, originally from Summit Hill, and wife Claire will help usher in the start of the Jim Thorpe Fall Foliage Festival on Saturday.

The duo, performing as Claire & Shane, will play from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Mauch Chunk Opera House, located on West Broadway. The twosome — playing harp, guitar and often fiddle — will also perform at the same time and venue on Oct. 11.

“Claire and I were playing at the same bluegrass festival in Tunkhannock when we met,” McGeehan said, “and we have played shows and music together since the beginning of our relationship.”

McGeehan and his French wife, together since 2018 and married in 2020, live in the Southwest of France. The act, he said, “is folk-/bluegrass-derived, but it strays a little more into different styles. She sings quite a bit of songs in French, for example.”

Claire & Shane mixes “our two musical worlds in America and France. We sing songs that resonate with us from the two countries. There are chansons françaises, Appalachian ballads, folk songs and some bluegrass songs sung with two voices.”

The Fall Foliage Festival shows “will surely have some differences,” said McGeehan, who has played the event since he was a teen. “There will also be some repeats. Usually, those are decided by request.”

McGeehan’s website offers a preview of Claire & Shane’s music, with versions of the songs “Le Chant des Livrées,” “Pretty Fair Maid” and “If I Needed You” available to stream.

As a young child, McGeehan enjoyed bluegrass festivals and the rhythm of his father Pat’s banjo. He would drop in on jams even before he was big enough to hold a guitar.

“I started playing live pretty young with my dad, who has played a lot locally since I was a kid,” he said. “I’ve been writing probably since I’ve been playing. I have so many pieces of songs that sit in a notebook somewhere, and even some songs I perform today feel unfinished.”

As a teen, McGeehan took up both the upright and electric bass.

“I took electric guitar lessons with a local guy named Chris Davis for about four years. That helped me develop an understanding of the guitar and music in general, which I was able to apply as a bassist.”

In 2017, McGeehan co-founded bluegrass band Serene Green. He recorded three studio albums while with the festival favorite, which has shared the stage with a number of national bluegrass artists.

McGeehan’s late-2022 solo album, “Your Love For Me is Gold,” includes cuts such as the title track and “Stranger in the House.” The sound of bluegrass luminaries such as Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers and Jimmy Martin inspired the set, issued on Patuxent Music.

Since 2023, McGeehan has played bass in New York City bluegrass band Bushwick Mountain Boys.

The group, he said, falls “somewhere between traditional and modern bluegrass.”

McGeehan considers the Bushwick Mountain Boys’ sound “reminiscent of the bluegrass of the ’60s and ’70s — after the ‘Big Bang’ of the first generation and before the “newgrass” movement of the ’80s. We enjoy singing harmony together, so there’s a lot of that.”

The Bushwick Mountain Boys, McGeehan added, has a lot of originals in its repertoire. One original, guitarist Chris Luquette’s “Sam Bushwick,” appears on the group’s 2024 release “Live in Paris.” The covers-heavy album includes a rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Walkin’ the Line.”

Both Claire & Shane and Bushwick Mountain Boys “have ideas to get into the studio,” McGeehan said, though “for the moment, nothing is planned.”

In terms of McGeehan’s career highlights, one occurred on his last tour with Bushwick Mountain Boys, “when we played in Gettysburg. Tom Adams and Chris Warner, two banjo legends, came to see us of their own free will.”

McGeehan, on the eve of playing another Jim Thorpe Fall Foliage Festival, thinks the area music scene “has changed a lot since I was starting to play. There are a lot more musicians who have arrived in recent years.”

As the influx of talent contributes to Jim Thorpe’s vibrant music scene, support for McGeehan and his music remains strong.

“For me, everyone has always been encouraging and welcoming.”