Sister Sister

The words sister sister are typed in a front stacked on top of each other in the middle of the image. On either side of the words are illustrated silhouettes of feminine hairstyles in different colors.

An Interview Or Two With Some Of Our Favorite Sister Bands.

Putting together a band is likely not the first thing on a list of easiest things in the world. We’re not sure, we haven’t checked the list lately. But we do know that it takes not only musical talent but compatibility with your bandmates— unless you want an MTV docuseries about you in a couple of years. If you don’t want the docuseries you gotta be wise about who you choose to perform with. Seems like no safer choice in the world than a sibling—or dare we say a twin—or dare we dare we say, identical twins? And while it’s true that lots of attention gets paid to the dynamics between family members in bands when things don’t work, we’re in the business of examining the things that do work. And a pattern we’ve happened to notice is that sister bands work. Whalebone was lucky enough to ask a few sister bands we admire if they wouldn’t mind interviewing one another, sister to sister, to find the gems inside the best parts of what it’s like to work, travel and perform as a sister duo—and how those familial ties serve their work and inspiration. They don’t disappoint. 


The Watson Twins

Two women pose for a photo leaning up against a green pool table. They are standing in a room that has brick and concrete walls, arcade games, and leather chairs in the background. The women both have long, dark, wavy hair and are wearing matching black and rainbow colored outfits. The woman on the right is holding an acoustic guitar and the other is leaning on the table.

Leigh Watson: What do you feel like was a real pivotal moment for you when you decided to take music more seriously and dedicate your life to being a musician on the road?

Chandra Watson: When we moved to LA, that was the beginning of really committing to music in a bigger way. We’re from Kentucky, went to school in Indiana, traveled around the country with our guitars, camping and playing songs and all that kind of fun stuff. And then we had to make real-life decisions. I feel like going to LA was the first spot where we were intentional about going somewhere and creating something.

Falling into the music scene there and in Silver Lake and having people like Rilo Kiley and Silversun Pickups become our friends and our peers changed the way that we felt about music. They also just upped the game because we wanted to be in those worlds with them and we really admired them. 

Then, of course, singing with Jenny Lewis, who was our neighbor. That organic evolution of becoming touring and professional musicians was cool. It just felt right. We were going to maybe move to New York or Chicago or Boston or Seattle or Portland and I’m just glad that we landed in LA.

Leigh: For me it was going to see bands on Monday nights and seeing Elliott Smith and Beck. It charged us to say, “Oh, our friends are doing it. We can do this.” And then you have this really supportive scene around you just championing you all along the way.

Chandra: If you could have coffee with one iconic musician or artist, who would it be?

Leigh: For a long time my first go-to would be Bob Dylan, but I feel like that might go all kinds of sideways. I love his music too much to be in that space. I don’t want to ruin all of the songs that I love that were very poignant to me as a young person when I started writing music. So I don’t think I’ll pick him, but he’s my first instinct.

So instead, Emmylou Harris, because she is someone that I really admire and look up to. I think you feel the same way. I’m going to invite you on my coffee date, of course, ’cause we do everything together. But I wanted to pick somebody that has affected us both as musicians in a deep way. She’s had this amazing career as a backup singer for some of the most amazing singers, yet she’s had her own career with its different incarnations that have made her such a seminal person. She also seems super down-to-earth and really cool. She lives here in Nashville, so I wouldn’t have to travel to go have coffee with her.

I just had a whole conversation with my therapist about this, because being a twin is a weird thing. It’s a bizarre thought, that you’re conceived at the same exact time, so you’re never really alone. From the moment of conception, there are two. And we’re identical twins, so we’re the same egg, split. So it’s really like one thing becomes two. I explained to her that collaboration is something that we all strive for. Whether it’s a partnership with someone you live with, a husband, a wife, a team that you work on or a team that you play with, we’re all striving to collaborate in a seamless way that allows us to reach another level. So we want to be able to do that in a seamless yet symbiotic way. I think, because we’re twins, it’s like we’ve been collaborating since conception. So there’s a language between us. 

Chandra Watson

Leigh: What is your approach to writing songs? How do you get there, and do you prefer writing alone or collaborating?

Chandra: This is a trick question. She’s just looking for compliments here. But I always start with some kind of instrumental or vocal melody—some kind of little hook or phrasing. Try to voice memo it, so I don’t forget it, then pick up the guitar and start working with it. Or if I’m just strumming around on the guitar, I’ll go ahead and write down the chords and do a little recording of it as well, then start messing around with words. Sometimes I don’t have the words, so then it’s just a jumble or a free-flow thought kind of situation.

Obviously, for many years we wrote separately. But writing our last record, Duo, together and then our new record that’s coming out in June, Holler, has definitely changed the way I feel about writing music. Collaborating at this point in my career is sometimes stronger than a solo write, just because it really pushes you to think outside the box and to listen to someone else’s comments, suggestions, or ideas. After writing songs since we were 16, it’s more interesting to me.

And not that you can’t write songs on your own. Lots of people do that, and we did that for many years, but I see a reflection in the growth from when I first started writing songs in a solo effort, just me and my guitar, and then bringing those to you and harmonizing on them together. It’s way different than what we do now, which is sit down with a phrase, a thought or a theme and start to hash it out together. And it can be frustrating, and it can be fun, and it can be challenging, but that’s more interesting to me, where I am in my life right now.

Chandra: When you’re going on tour, what are the top three things you cannot live without? Besides me, of course.

Leigh: First and foremost, a wellness product that I think everyone who deals with anxiety or stage fright should definitely check out is CBD. I take CBD oil about 20 minutes before we go on stage. Number two is my cowboy boots. I’ve always got a pair of cowboy boots on the road with me, the white ones that you know and love. They’re like a second set of slippers. Then the third, because everything else I can buy, is my jewelry. People know us for our jewelry because we collect along the way. We have multiple charms that are the same, of course, but we also have our own individual pieces. Other than that, I can pretty much buy whatever I need on the road—a toothbrush or even a guitar. I love my guitar, but I’m not sentimental about it in the same way as my jewelry.

Leigh: So, we’ve released seven records. One of them was a covers record, so that doesn’t count, but is there a favorite record or Watson Twins song that you still feel really proud of?

Chandra: I think it’s safe to say, and this is not a plug, our new record is my favorite record we’ve ever made. And it’s not out yet, so no one can go listen to it, but it will be coming out later this year, on June 23*. It’s our new material, so there’s always a love affair with the new songs when you first write them and you’re waiting for people to hear them. But I also think that you and I set out to write this record very specifically. It’s probably the most intentional record that we’ve ever written because we created some parameters for ourselves and then pushed through to really stay within them.

Editor’s note: Lucky you, you’re reading this in the future, so you can go buy this album right now


Tegan and Sara

Two woman sit for a photo together against a black background. Both women have dark curly hair and are looking in opposite directions from the camera. The woman on the left is wearing a black sweater and the one on the right is wearing a white sweater.

Tegan Quin: Do you feel a kinship or a closeness or a draw to other people like us, because it’s such a unique thing, specifically to be in a band with your sibling?

Sara Quin: I definitely think that it requires a different kind of threshold to be in a band with your family member and/or romantic partner—that is a whole other subgenre of bands that aren’t just made up of human beings who aren’t married to each other or related to each other. But I think that I’m interested in and curious about bands that have family members in them, because I do think the general consensus, culturally and socially, is that it is not healthy to spend your adult life in a band, or in some kind of business arrangement, with each other.

It’s very normalized that you grow apart from your family. Maybe you have a bond or connection with them, but it certainly isn’t one that would require you spending 300 days a year on a tour bus traveling around the world with them, sitting next to them on airplanes, sleeping six inches from them in a bunk or doing interviews with them as your quote unquote job. I do think it does require a sort of abandoning of societal norms. So when I see other people who have done that, I’m like, “Are they cool? Are they weird? Are they masochists? Let’s find out.”

Sara: Do you feel like it is a requirement that we share the same musical inspirations or business inspirations in order to be in this band successfully? And do you feel like there was a time in our career where maybe those things were more aligned? And do you feel like they’re further apart now? How do you see all of that? And does any of it matter?

Tegan: Well, I think the fact that we’ve had a lot of different musical inspirations and different approaches to business has been super helpful to the health and quality of Tegan and Sara the band. I think a lot of bands end up breaking up or having a lot of unresolvable conflict because there are too many voices. But I also think it can be almost as detrimental to be in a band where everybody agrees. And I think there’s just enough conflict between us, regarding what the production of our album sounds like, or what the production of our live show looks like, or what direction we go in our business, that it allows us to keep things fresh and try different things. I think when you have too many outside voices or too many voices in the mix, it can just be chaos. And I think we have controlled chaos.

I think everything about what we do, how we write music, how we run our business, how we survived 25 years of being in a band together is more interesting because we’re siblings. When people say to me, “Oh my God, it’s so cool. You’re in a band with your sibling. What’s that like?” I say, “What would it be like if you were in a band with your sibling?” And I’ve never met a human being who hasn’t been like, “Oh God, that’d be a nightmare.” I think the conflict that comes from being in business with family is not an easy conflict or an easy relationship. And I think partly what makes us interesting is how we survive the differences in who we are.

Tegan: Over the years, you’ve talked about the differences in our songwriting. I’m wondering if that’s changed or evolved recently with our new album. How would you describe the differences in how we write? Or the kinds of songs that we each create individually?

Sara: I think that songwriting is a process, and we all have strengths and weaknesses. I think that as we have developed as songwriters, I’ve seen your strengths get stronger, and I’ve seen your weaknesses sometimes stay the same. And I think that to your credit, you are focused on the areas in which you do well and you sort of dig into those things, and you are very comfortable exploiting them. But I think that you are not necessarily patient or curious enough about where you could improve to spend much time looking at that stuff.

And that’s actually not a criticism I’m giving you. I think it’s just more of … I see in myself that it’s probably a deficit of mine that I’m more curious and interested in where I think I can improve myself as a songwriter and as a person, than leaning into the parts of me that everybody agrees are strengths.

Tegan: But I mean, how are our songs different?

Sara: I think that you are a more traditional songwriter, in that you have a better understanding or instinct when it comes to telling a certain kind of story in a song, that also mirrors more traditional songwriting approaches. And I find that I have a slightly more abstract way of approaching the arrangement of songs, the way that the music is written and laid out. And lyrically, the way that I would tell a story is maybe less traditional, and in some cases more truncated than the way that you will have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I talked about this a lot actually this past year. I think that especially 25 years into our career, the best part of working together is that we are family. I think as our lives get fuller—Sara just had a kid, our parents are getting older, we all just moved back to the same city, like Sara and I both with our partners, to be near my mom—it gives us so much grounding in our work, to know that there are more important things than our work. I don’t feel like if Sara can’t put her time into the band, that she’s choosing something better over our work together. She’s choosing family, usually, over work. And that’s also me.

Tegan Quin

Sara: Who do you want to collaborate with outside of our band? And who do you think I most want to collaborate with outside of our band?

Tegan: Who do I want to collaborate with? This is timely because obviously, we’ve been talking so much about collaboration, and there’s honestly a bottomless list. I feel like we haven’t done a ton of collaborating with queer people. Remember that whole phase where we did so much EDM collaboration, and punk-pop-type bands always wanted us to sing with them? I feel like it would be really interesting to collaborate with someone super-pop, like a Katy Perry or a Britney Spears. Or the exact opposite, like Indigo Girls.

Tegan: Who is your musical idol? 

Sara: I’m looking up the word “idol.” I want to actually understand, what does the word idol really mean? “An object of extreme devotion.” When I was 15 I felt extreme devotion to Smashing Pumpkins. But now I’m 42 and I don’t feel extreme devotion to anything besides that moment after I put my child to bed, and I get to eat chips, and I get to have a glass of wine and watch The Last of Us. That’s my idol right now, that one hour of time. I have an extreme devotion to that moment in my life. But I don’t feel extreme devotion to anything. 

I’m an atheist. I’m godless. I don’t have any idols. I just don’t. But I am a great example of not needing devotional feelings towards anything to lead a satisfying and exciting life. A satisfying, deeply satisfying, and creatively satisfying life. 

Sara: Is it fun in a cool way, or is it potentially desperate, to imagine doing a sibling band music festival? Has it been done? Do we know? And is it a good idea and should we spend some time thinking about doing it? Or is it just too far? Are we just too self-obsessed these days? 

Tegan: No, because as you know, I really love HAIM. I love Aly & AJ. I think The Aces have siblings in the band. Obviously, Waxahatchee. Kings of Leon, they have siblings. I mean, there are some pretty epic, amazing, strange, exciting sibling bands. And why, in terms of genre, again, I feel drawn to it—I want to understand. I think it would be so fascinating. I find your desire to even ask the question of whether we should have a sibling festival delights me. 

Sara: I don’t want it. I just want you to know, if you’re curious: As soon as I said the idea out loud, I was like, Tegan’s probably writing an email to our managers right now, being like, “So I know we talked about doing a cruise in a couple of years and inviting a bunch of bands. What if it’s all bands that are …” 


Aly and AJ

Two women singing on stage together, the one on the left has the microphone in her right hand and the cord in the other while the girl on the right is holding the microphone to her mouth with one and and using the other to lean on the other girl's shoulder. The girl on the left is wearing blue striped pants and the one on the right is wearing red pants.

AJ Michalka: So Aly, I’m curious, what is your favorite song we’ve ever written, either when we were recording as 78violet or now? 

Aly Michalka: I would say it’s a tie between “Don’t Need Nothing” and maybe “With Love From.” But “Don’t Need Nothing,” I don’t ever get tired of singing that song live. And I feel like we’ve played it now quite a few times and I’m like, “I like the song still.” It’s really good. I love the little chanty, almost meditative part of that chorus and how many vocal overlaps there are throughout the song. And I just love the meaning of it. 

Aly: If we could be floating in another genre of music that’s not indie pop, what would you want to dip your toe into? If it was like, maybe we didn’t even have the career we had in the past and we were just a brand-new artist coming out of the scene. 

Aj: I think based on our past and the music we listened to growing up and where our roots are as songwriters, I think I would say country. Because I feel like if we hadn’t signed to Hollywood Records and we had gone down a little bit of a different career path as younger kids, we would’ve been making country records. 

Aj: If you could pick up any instrument that you currently don’t play, what would it be and why? If you could just naturally one day be like, “This is the instrument I’m going to start learning how to play.” 

Aly: Honestly, it’s very minimal, because I’ve only played it on one song during the tour, but I do really like drums and I feel like I have a good sense of rhythm, because I love dance and all the elements of dance are so driven by the beat. I also think that a band having a really great drummer is such a necessary thing. Not that I don’t think I would be playing on every song of ours because I would want to be performing, but I think it’s cool that Danielle Haim plays drums and is really good. And I think it adds an interesting element to the band when she does get on the kit. So I don’t know, maybe I would say drums. What about you? 

Aj: I think it’d be so cool to play the electric violin. Any string instrument besides guitar that we didn’t dive into as kids. I think bass, violin, banjo. Just learning another string instrument, I think, for me. 

I think there are a lot, but I think the number one thing would be it’s really hard in this industry to explain what you’re going through to people that aren’t living it with you. And so to know that you have a direct line to someone who’s experiencing every day with you is so refreshing and also just validates everything you’re going through, but I also think it really helps when you can be on stage or in a session or whatever it might be.

Aly Michalka

Aly: If there was one artist living or dead that you could spend the whole day with, who would it be? 

AJ: I think she would be absolutely kooky and so fun to hang with Janis Joplin. For sure. You’d probably get really fucked up. And, oh man … you know what? Kurt Cobain. In Seattle. So many people look up to them. It’s sad, actually, the fact that they didn’t get to continue making music. It’s such a shame, because they could have been making so many great records still and their time was just cut so short. 

AJ: What would you say is the biggest misconception of yourself or the band? Where you’re like, “Actually, you have this wrong about me or us.” 

Aly: I feel like we’ve gotten past a lot of those hurdles now. I think when we were younger, the biggest misconception was, were we really writing our material? And I think you and I really wanted to double down and prove that as much as possible. And I think we did, and it became very clear that that’s the truth. But I think that was the biggest misconception growing up, was at our age, are we really capable of writing? I don’t feel like there is one now, one that I feel like we have to just break walls down for. 

Aly: If we could tour anywhere in the world next, where would you want to be? 

AJ: I would say Japan and Australia. We’ve never done a proper tour in Australia or New Zealand. And we’ve never toured in Japan, we’ve just played shows and done radio promo, but we’ve never played concerts there, and I feel like those shows would be really crazy. I also just want to get back to Japan because it’d be so fun. We took it for granted, I think, when we were young. We were kids, so we probably didn’t appreciate how special it was when we were there. I feel like Australia’s actually probably something that’s on the horizon within the next couple years. 


SistaStrings

Two women posing for a photo together on the front porch of a victorian style house. The women are standing back to back with their faces turned to their side to face the camera. They are both wearing jeans and black tank tops but the woman on the left is holding up a white cello and the woman on he right is holding up a white violin and bow.

Chauntee Ross: What is it like to work, and especially tour, with your sister? 

Monique Ross: Oh, touring with you is amazing. Because you know me—I’m very independent in certain ways, but also very codependent on my sister, a.k.a. you. We grew up doing literally everything together. You know how shy I was as a child, and somehow our connection as sisters, and with music, helped me come out of that. And touring with you I think has still helped me continue to blossom out of that. Although now no one anywhere would ever say I was shy. 

But as far as working together—delightful, amazing. I think we bounce off each other really well. Even when we disagree, we’re like, “Okay, let’s take a beat and think about it.” And usually we come up with a solution where we’re both like, “Absolutely.” Whether it’s music, or touring opinions, or what outfit we’re going to wear if we decide to match that day. 

Monique: Obviously we love what we do. But we were also very passionate about our classical world. And you particularly wanted to be a soloist. Do you ever regret not pursuing that? Or are you like, “I am living my best life right now?” 

Chauntee: No, I don’t regret not pursuing it. I do regret sometimes not keeping up the practices that I was so heavily invested in for so many years. And I don’t really mean regret, because I can always change what I’m doing. 

But the classical world in the conservatory setting was a little bit traumatizing for me as far as my relationship with music went. And that was very startling, especially the last three years of my college career. I felt like I was on an island most of the time. I felt like anytime I was excited about music and had ideas, I was always squashed in some way. I didn’t feel seen or heard as an artist or a musician. 

That’s a huge thing that’s missing in conservatory settings right now, especially in music education. For classical musicians, there is so much of a philosophy of, “Just do what the professor tells you to do, because they’ve had the career.” It’s like, “No, it’s a new time and day. I have experience as a young Black woman in this setting that influences how I’m going to approach this concerto. Don’t tell me I’m wrong if it doesn’t have to do with technique.” One of my professors would talk to me and he’d be like, “What are you trying to say with this music?” And that was how he was able to talk to me about technique and those different things, by relating it to what I was actually trying to say rather than this very dry way. I appreciated that. 

I think that the classical world itself might regret how it treated me eventually. But I’m hopeful that at some point I can use that experience, turn it around, and put it into the next generation. Because it doesn’t have to be this way. All of this music—gospel music, classical music, R&B—is part of who I am as an artist. And I don’t think one should exclude me just because I’m into another as well. 

Monique: Don’t you feel like the trajectory of music schools is going to have to change, and be more inclusive, just because of the way the industry is going now? And all of these string players who are doing all sorts of sounds that aren’t just classical, who are some of the fiercest classically trained musicians—I feel like music schools are going to eventually have to open their minds and incorporate new things. 

The best part about working with my sister is I have someone that I know has my back. A lot of times, especially in the music industry, you never know—I know she’s got my back, and I’ve got hers. It’s a comforting thing working with my sister.

Chauntee Ross

Chauntee: Who comes to mind at this moment as one of your biggest musical influences who was physically present in your life growing up, and even now? 

Monique: Well, one of the obvious answers would be my siblings. Literally all of them. My siblings were musicians. I mean, obviously there’s you with violin, and then our oldest sister Rickena with viola and our sister Sharice with violin. Then our brother Ricky on piano who, hilariously, can’t sing a lick, but probably has one of the best ears in the world. Literally oozing music. And we loved to sing. 

When you asked that question, I literally visualized us sitting in the living room playing music. I would write all of these cheesy songs as a child then hop on the piano and be like, “Guys, will you listen to the song I wrote?” Sometimes you guys would laugh, and sometimes y’all would be like, “Oh, Monique, that’s actually kind of good!” Having that growing up helped me musically, honestly. 

Now, if we were going to current times, of someone who’s not actively in my life, I have the biggest obsession with Erykah Badu. Literally, some of the new songs that I’ve started trying to write, I’m just like, “How would Erykah Badu sing this song?” 

Monique: What was one of your most embarrassing moments ever on stage? 

Chauntee: It was Black History Month, or it was Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, something like that. Some very Black holiday. And we had to sing a song at that local college in the city we were living in, remember? And you and I used to have a group that was a trio in high school. It was me, you, and our friend Amber. And we started in the wrong key, so in the middle of the song Amber changed to the right key. Twice. It was unexpected and jarring, but we went along with it, because honestly, even as kids, we were great musicians. I have to give everybody credit for that. That was awesome. I think being raised in the church and all that really allowed a loose ear. So we really didn’t have this regimented way of approaching music naturally, which is incredible and awesome. But it just made me laugh. I laughed for the rest of the song. And we tried to restart the song, but I just kept laughing and laughing. You know when you’re the only person laughing, and there’s a whole audience there, it’s just not a good look. I felt like my ancestors were not pleased with me that day. 

Monique: Where do you write from? 

Chauntee: Songwriting is still a new thing for me. Coming up with songs myself made me self-conscious. I didn’t actually really start writing songs until a couple of years ago. But I would say, literally this year, I’m only now beginning to be comfortable writing. So I really don’t know how I write, or whatever it is. Sometimes it comes really fast, all at once. Most of the time, any song that I’ve written to completion on my own has just taken time, and no one’s seen them or heard them, and no one will. And that’s fine. But the songs that I’m like, “These are good tunes,” definitely come in bits and pieces. 

We live in Nashville now, and we’ve been working with Tracy, our agent, and she’s like, “Oh, let me get you in these songwriting sessions. It’s the Nashville way. You’ve got to write songs with folks.” And I’m like, “Ew. Scary.” But I am now realizing I’m probably more comfortable doing a co-write than writing all on my own, and that’s interesting. I feel like I’m at my best when I can present ideas to someone else who also has ideas, and then we work off of each other, and chisel out a song together. It’s less intimidating that way. I thought it would be backward. I thought that I would be more anxious writing with someone else because I was so uncomfortable writing songs. It’s like, “No, because the few times you did suggest something, it led to something really incredible in this song.” So it was more validation to me. Maybe I’m building up my confidence. 

Monique: I personally find it very vulnerable to co-write. Not to say people’s opinions are everything to me, but I write from an emotional place, so if you’re sharing something, the last thing you want is to be squashed down. Because you’re like, “Oh, these were my thoughts.” So I find it very vulnerable. 


Tigirlily Gold

Two women smiling for a photo together in a field. The photo is cropped from the chest up, they are both wearing black tank tops and a silver necklace. The woman on the left blonde hair cut to chin length and the woman on the right has blonde wavy hair that reaches just below her shoulders.

Kendra Slaubaugh: Krista, what does being blonde mean to you? 

Krista Slaubaugh: So being blonde is obviously a hair color, but to us it means being confident and bold in who you are and not being afraid to poke fun at yourself because life is way too short to take it all too seriously. We are also big Dolly Parton fans and she’s such an icon, so being blonde is a Dolly Parton state of mind. We also have a song called “Blonde” coming out, so it’s not completely random. 

Krista: What’s your favorite part about working with your sister, or your least favorite part? You can really spill it all. 

Kendra: I mean, I swear I really don’t have a least favorite part, because I don’t think I would want to be in the music industry if I was by myself. I think the best part is always having someone to talk to through the lows of this career, through the highs of this career. There’s always someone to lean on, and really that one person that truly understands what you’re going through, because really no one else can understand. So I think that’s one of the best parts about being sisters and in a band together. And also, we just laugh so much together and we can be really up-front with one another, which I think is a huge blessing, because our rebound rate, if we get mad at each other, is like 10 seconds. 

Kendra: If you’re going into a gas station, what are you picking out? 

Krista: My go-to is the Nerd Clusters. I love candy. And not chocolate, but as processed, as sugary, as fake as it gets. The Nerds, the Airheads Bites, Sour Patch Kids, sour gummy worms. I’ll also probably grab something fizzy, like a Diet Coke. I love Diet Coke. And then probably something fun like chips. I don’t know. We eat very healthy out on the road, as you can see, but I’m always craving those Nerd Clusters when I come back from a show. 

The best part is having someone to share all the highs with and someone to share all the lows with so you’re not alone, ever, because it’s a very lonely business. I also love writing with Kendra. I love just … everything is such teamwork. The voice in my head, when I’m hearing a song, it’s Kendra’s voice, it’s not my voice, we’re writing together and just doing everything as a team. And we’re stronger together. 

Krista Slaubaugh

Kendra: What is one of the weirdest things you’ve seen in the audience from the stage? 

Krista: We played downtown Nashville for a couple of years, so it’s the four-hour cover gigs, and you see a lot of things you don’t necessarily want to see. One time we were playing at Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row and this girl got up on the bar and she looked around and you knew she was going to do something. And she just went, “Woo!” and lifted her top off so that the girls were out for a while, and then she got very quickly escorted out. 

Krista: What are your go-to karaoke songs? 

Kendra: Ooh, this is a good one. I mean, we always usually do karaoke together. So as far as karaoke songs that we love to do, “Hold On” by Wilson Phillips, “Bennie and the Jets” by Elton John, “Goodbye Earl” by The Chicks, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” by Whitney Houston. Those are probably the top for me, honestly. 

Kendra: What’s one of your favorite memories during our 10 years of doing music together? 

Krista: Oh my goodness, it’s hard to pick one, but you and I were independent artists for about eight years before we signed a deal. So the day we were offered a deal from Monument Records, we got a call, at this table right here, from Katie McCartney, who’s the GM over there, and you could tell she was smiling. It was why we moved to Nashville, to hopefully sign with a major record label. And she looked at us and the words came out—it felt like I was being proposed to, and I’m not married so I don’t know what that feels like, but she said, “I would like to offer you girls a deal,” and we just started bawling.