For a duo called the Secret Sisters, Laura Rogers and Lydia Slagle let their relationship hang right out there on stage. At a packed late April show at Nashville’s Basement East, amid masterful renditions of their new and familiar songs for a spellbound audience, the sisters niggled each other, rolled their eyes, and came off at times like siblings who’d maybe been cooped up together in a van too long. And at the same time, this banter, which gets laughs, is an endearing part of their show and their relationship with their fans.
On record and in performance, the Secret Sisters have been all about harmony since launching on their rollercoaster ride in the music business around 2010. But in Episode 283 of the String, we get into the unique challenges and blessings of sharing everything with each other and the audience, year in and year out.
“We've had our ups and downs,” Laura says in our Zoom interview. “We've had our moments of tension and disagreements and not getting along well. But ultimately, you know, we actually do work really well together. Somehow, we always managed to keep peace and find a way back to a place of cooperation. So it has been really nice to have, you know, each other as a sounding board not only professionally and creatively, but maternally as well.”
That’s right. Even as the Rogers sisters were getting some grueling financial and legal challenges behind them and renewing their creative lives through a pair of albums with Brandi Carlile as producer, they started families. Laura had a son in 2019, which became just the start of an epically busy few years. “Around that time, we started making (fourth album) Saturn Return,” says Lydia. “So we were in the throes of that for a while. And then I had my first kid. We released Saturn Return with Brandi Carlile again as the producer. It was amazing. And we were getting ready to put out that record in 2020, on like February 28, or something like that. And of course, two weeks after that, the pandemic just sort of wiped everybody out.”
As with so many other artists, tour plans were scrubbed and dates postponed. Thus began a time of life at home, nesting as new families, living a couple hours from each other in northern Alabama and staying in close touch. Laura and Lydia have had second children since then, even as they recorded an EP and then their latest album close to home. It’s little wonder that themes of family, hope, and love are central to the rapturous new album Mind, Man, Medicine, released at the end of March on New West Records.
Just when we’re tempted to think the Sisters have found a sound and settled into it, they keep growing and surprising. 2017’s You Don’t Own Me Anymore was a cathartic battle cry of freedom after career-threatening, litigious disruptions with their label and management. Saturn Return continued their run with Carlile, their champion when they needed one most. It had streaks of light and darkness, with an ever-deeper feeling for arrangements and emotional connection.
With rave reviews and a Grammy nomination, Saturn Return would feel genuinely challenging to follow, but Mind, Man, Medicine answers the call. It opens almost too gently, with the pensive “Space,” but it really takes off for me with “Paperweight,” a clever if antiquated metaphor and a snapping, soaring chorus where the singers demonstrate their ability to intuitively find novel and surprising harmonies. Ray LaMontagne joins in on “All The Ways,” which has become the album’s hit single with its classic southern sway. The tender “Bear With Me” is a personal favorite with its elegantly spare songwriting and a hook that has numerous meanings. And “Same Water” is a real masterwork about the reach for emotional stability with the album’s title secreted, if you will, inside.
Because of the great producers they’d worked with had studios around the country, the Secret Sisters had never made a full album in the world-famous recording scene just down the road from their hometown in Muscle Shoals. They connected with Ben Tanner for the 2021 EP Quicksand and decided to continue the relationship.
“We really tapped into every genre that we are inspired by with this record. It feels like there's so many different brushstrokes on this, and I think that a lot of that has to do with kind of where it was recorded,” Laura says, citing the soul, country, blues and gospel that’s all indigenous to a short trip from where they live. She calls Muscle Shoals “the perfect sweet spot for all of that to blend together. It seems like the location just captured all of that in a really representative way.”
We packed a lot into less than a half hour, and what emerges is a couple of assured songwriters, commanding singers, happy mothers, and appropriately ambitious artists who just happen to be bound by blood and band. This is set up by a thought provoking conversation with Los Angeles renaissance man Rev. Shawn Amos. He talks us through his unique upbringing, his interesting career in A&R, and his evolving sense of musical mission and style. The latest iteration is a 70s throwback funky R&B sound on the boisterous and political album Soul Brother No. 1.
