The husband-and-wife songwriting team known as Truckstop Souvenir is not the typical band from Seattle trying to make it in the music industry.

By focusing on storytelling and quality of songwriting, Dennis James and Lauryn Shapter are following the footsteps of songsmiths like Townes Van Zandt and Tom Waits, their inspirations.

James said these are musicians specifically known for their good songwriting.

“They’re not just writers that put out the hits. They are performers and touring musicians, and there is a culture that goes along with that that really appealed to me,” James said.

The duo will be stopping by Ames on Thursday to perform at the Octagon Center for the Arts, 427 Douglas Ave.

Lauryn said their live performances are similar to the sound of their album, “Leave Nothing Behind.” The two each contributed five songs to the album and did almost all the singing and playing on the record.

“What is different [in the live show] that you don’t get from the CD is there is a camaraderie between the two of us; we have a lot of fun when we play and audiences pick up on that,” Lauryn said.

Storytelling plays a big part of their live shows, said Lauryn, whether it is between songs or in the lyrics.

“There is a lot of storytelling within the context of our songs, but there is also storytelling in between the songs and in between the lines.” Lauryn said.

Truckstop Souvenir keeps a plethora of instruments on stage. James, who primarily plays guitar, and Shapter, on violin, often stray from the instruments they have the most experience with in favor of ones they have picked up more recently.

“We try to break it up and create a little bit of a landscape with some of the arrangements so that it’s not one person on guitar the whole time,” James said.

They also try to keep things interesting by trading lead vocals back and forth.

“We go back and forth between who is singing lead and who is playing lead, so there is diversity in that too,” Lauryn said.

James summed up the live Truckstop Souvenir experience by comparing it to literature.

“It would be like a really good, cohesive collection of short stories with pretty music to go with it,” James said.

Lauryn and James said their marriage is similar to their music in that it works well because they complement each other’s strengths and hide weaknesses.

“The dynamic within a band is often there are so many elements of passionate, powerful creative forces and egos that often get attached to those things,” James said. “When you spend that much time together in a small place every night, all those things start to creep up.”

Lauryn said she believes there is no way she could tour without her husband and bandmate.

“We have heard a number of our friends who are in bands talk about how it’s like being married to five people, so you have so many more layers of complication and they’re not people who you have chosen to spend your life with as a partner,” Lauryn said.

“We already got along well enough that we decided to marry each other, so we are a leg up on the compatibility piece,” Lauryn said.