You guys have really flipped your power dynamic

Laura: Brandi taught us a lot of that. We needed a female who had gone down the road ahead of us to come back and go, “Watch out for this, and don’t do this, and make sure you think about this.” Brandi was like that pioneer that stepped in and was like, “Unh-uh, they can’t do that to you, that’s not fair, because somebody tried to do it to me three years ago,” you know? Brandi really has guided us, even up until this very point in time. And she gives us a perspective on it that we need sometimes.

What’s an example of something that you’ve pushed back on lately that you might not have a few years ago?

Laura: Our album artwork. People were like, “You should put a picture of you on the front,” and we didn’t want to do that. We chose a really cool old family photo that’s going to be on the cover. It fits, you know, the imagery and the message of the record better than a photo of us would have. We wanted to have this record be more about the songs and the redemption and the resurrection and all the stuff that we’ve gone through, rather than just a really beautiful, flawless, photoshopped, perfect photo of us on the front.

Your album cover doesn’t really make that big of a difference in your record sales, and at the end of the day, I don’t care about record sales because I had to make this record to get over all that junk that we went through. I don’t care if 20 people buy the record. I’m proud of it, and we went through it and we wrote about it and it’s gone now. That’s a process we had to go through. We’ve learned it is always up to us. If we can’t get on board with something, it’s not going to work and our fans will sense it. It took three records to get to the point where we understood that.

How is the sound of this new record different?
Lydia: I feel like we reverted back to our roots a lot on this one. It’s a lot more stripped down, it’s just more open and it leaves room for our vocals a lot more. We tried to showcase our songwriting a bit more.

Laura: One of the great things about working with Brandi is that she’s a vocalist. She’s powerful. We had never worked with someone who focused on vocals. She pushed us into a place vocally that we would have never gone if we had just kept working with producers and not an actual artist who performs live shows all the time. She would be like, “Laura, I want you to preach on this part. Get on your pulpit and preach here. Lydia, you be in the choir.” I think she recognized our innate timidness, where we’re afraid to be imperfect

Lydia: Our southern-ness [laughing]

Laura: Vocally we’ve really found our sweet spot on this record.

Does the lead-up to this record release feel different too?

Laura: Every time you get ready to put out a record, there’s just this sense of anything can happen. There’s that magic. Just the suspense around a record release is exciting. You know, we worked so hard on it. We spent so much time and anguish and joys and devastations. So much has been put into it, I’m just excited to see what people think.

Lydia: I think what we’re probably looking forward to most this year is just getting the songs in front of as many people as possible, just because we are so proud of them. I think they’re our best work.

Laura: I always marvel at how logically, when you think about how much work and travel and time and business it takes just to play on stage for an hour and fifteen minutes, how insane it is. All the work just for that one little section of bonding with people, but I don’t know, it keeps you coming back. It’s something about that healing moment-

Lydia: That connection, yeah. Especially talking to people after the shows. That makes such a huge difference, because people tell their stories. They’re like, “My grandmother sang that song to me when I was a kid, and that means so much that you brought that memory back.”

So where do you see your music now, with this new record, fitting into the canon of American music past and present?

Lydia: The way that we sing together, it’s always going to sound like an older time whether we want it to or not. We grew up in a family that sang a lot of gospel and bluegrass music. Our harmonies themselves just sound like that, no matter what we do. It’s always going to lend itself to an earlier time. We’ll always have the harmony.

Laura: We just care about songwriting and being good vocalists. If you can write a really powerful song and deliver it in an honest way, I think that’s the highest aim that we have. I used to be at a point in my career where I wanted to win certain awards or perform at certain places or have certain recognition. Now, I feel like as I get older I care so much less about that. It’s more just about: can I sleep at night knowing what I just recorded? Can I wake up in the morning and be proud of what I wrote yesterday? That, to me, is the measure of our success.

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