Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby played the Black Cat on Wednesday night. Photo by Karen Hibberd.

I came to Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby – the husband/wife rock troubadour duo who played the Black Cat backstage Wednesday night – separately, in very different ways. I caught Rigby as a surprise opening act for Steve Earle at an old theater in my hometown more than half a decade ago in a performance so witty and funny that it inspired my dad’s band to go out and record one of her tunes, the sly “Keep It To Yourself.” Meanwhile, English punk-rocker Wreckless Eric (born Eric Goulden) had a minor hit, “Whole Wide World”, that was reverently covered by the beloved, now-defunct Philly band The Bigger Lovers and received some minor notoriety in power-pop circles.

Some may better remember “Whole Wide World” as the only song Will Ferrell’s character in Stranger Than Fiction knows how to play on guitar, providing one of the more memorable rock geek movie moments of the past decade. It’s no surprise this is the only tune he knows – it’s not much more than two chords and a lot of bashing. And, as Eric recounted Wednesday in a wonderfully long-winded intro, it was Rigby’s cover of the song at a pub in England with Eric watching that introduced the two. “I walked up to her after the show,” Eric said over the slowly building intro, “and I said, ‘Now this song only has two chords, and you’ve got them both wrong.’”