Words race from Alan's lips to be caught up in Andalin's exclamations. Her hands sweep wide, high and low trying to capture big, happy thoughts.

His hands are still, except when he reaches for the keyboard or adjusts the bass in the recording studio at their Holladay home.

The Bachmans have reason to be enthusiastic. And, in a hurry - for they live two lives: one by day and one by night.

Alan is an attorney and Andalin is a paralegal. Together, after evening falls, they are the heart of Desert Wind, a band with 11 CDs and gigs each year from Scottsdale, Ariz., to Portland, Ore.

Their recorded music is eclectic, and typically considered world beat, fusion or new age because of the emphasis on Middle Eastern drums and rhythms. Several albums feature songs Alan wrote with inspiration from Hebrew scripture and other ancient writings.

If there is a thread running through their music, it's a spiritual one.

"It's about bringing peace on earth," says Alan. "And, it's fun!" adds Andalin.

When they play for weddings and conventions and in nightclubs, Desert Wind is as likely to let rock-and-roll rip as they are to play jazz.

Alan is the band's keyboardist and plays mandolin and guitar. Andalin, classically trained but long devoted to jazz, plays flute and wind synthesizer. An assortment of musicians join them for live performances and recordings.

Alan is the group's engineer and songwriter; she is the business manager, running the band's Web site and sending out hundreds of CDs a month.

In the past 18 months, they have been stunned to realize the world market for their music. Hundreds of their songs are downloaded from the major Internet music sites every month, with many orders from Japan, Australia, Canada.

"We're better known in Germany than here," says Alan.

And, apparently, they're better known among senior Lutheran women in the Midwest.

Desert Wind's Christmas album, which Alan says he arranged and wrote to help Christians place Jesus Christ in his native Middle East, was written up in a Lutheran magazine.

After that, orders flooded in, many in the shaky handwriting of women the Bachmans surmised were older Lutherans ready for a Jewish take on Christmas carols.

In Utah, the Bachmans are probably better known for their day jobs.

Alan is an assistant attorney general whose assignment is the Capitol Preservation Board and state construction projects. Andalin (she reversed her given name, Linda Ann, as a teenager) is a paralegal for a private law firm and works on bankruptcy and litigation cases.

They relish telling the story of how they came together after leading somewhat parallel lives for four decades.

Andalin was raised in Salt Lake City to a musically-inclined family. She was in every youth symphony possible, and played the piano and violin while growing up in the 1960s.

Once she heard a flute at a school assembly, she was hooked, and took up the flute at age 12. In high school, she found a talent for improvisational jazz, and began playing at the University of Utah with the stage band.

She studied music at the U., but when her parents died in a car crash - she was 21 - she was left to raise three younger siblings.

Married and later divorced, she became active in Kol Ami Congregation and played in local bands. She was just finishing her business degree from Westminster College when she met Alan.

The son of Polish Jews who were first-generation Americans, Alan was raised in Rochester, N.Y.

He showed an affinity for music as a young boy, and his parents sent him for piano and music theory lessons at the Eastman School of Music.

At Syracuse University, he earned a degree in special education and was intent on teaching until he decided he wanted to be a lawyer representing people with disabilities.

He came West to attend Gonzaga University's law school in Spokane, Wash., and worked as a deputy county attorney in Oregon for nearly a decade before quitting to become a club musician in Las Vegas.

Passing through Salt Lake City after a short stint in glitter city, Bachman liked the dry climate and decided to stay. He was hired by the Attorney General's Office in 1987.

It was in 1996 - just a couple days after a rabbi had given Alan a blessing to find his soulmate - that he and Andalin met.

They were in Lehi, at opposite ends of the set for an episode of "Promised Land" that was filming that day. Each had been hired to provide music for the television series.

Alan went looking for a friend and found Andalin. She asked about the Star of David he wore and when each learned the other was Jewish, divorced, worked in the legal field and into music, they began a conversation.

Five days later, Alan proposed and five weeks later, they were married.

"How great is that!" exclaims Andalin.

The life they've built together is fueled by mutual admiration.

When Alan leaves his studio for a moment, Andalin gushes: "He is a genius!"

When she describes learning how to write a computer language to create their Web site, Alan says, "She is a genius!"

At present, Desert Wind is recording a double CD due out before the end of the year.

As with previous albums, Alan is immersing himself in ancient writings to guide his songwriting for "I Will Remember."

A passage in Leviticus is the inspiration, but he also is reading in Zohar, a rabbi's writings from the third or 13th century (it's disputed). Some songs will be in English, some in Aramaic, but most in Hebrew.

The album will recall every Jewish shtetl - small town - destroyed by the Nazis, and there will be songs for every Jewish holiday.

Whirlwind lives or not, it's a lot of work to write and record that much music.

"We'll be luck if it's done this year," says Alan.

kmoulton@sltrib.com