The Secret Sisters: Making a big statement

*Originally published in the TimesDaily.

By Monica Collier Staff Writer

Jun 4, 2017 Updated Jun 4, 2017

The dark wooden double doors at 116 E. Mobile in downtown Florence are closed. In less than two hours, the Secret Sisters will take the stage before a sold-out hometown crowd.

Laura and Lydia Rogers are backstage sipping tea before sound check for the night’s performance. It’s the first stop on the Greenhill natives’ five-month tour in support of their new album “You Don’t Own Me Anymore.”

It has been four years since the sisters’ sophomore record, “Put Your Needle Down,” was released. The gap between the duo’s 2014 record and Friday’s debut of “You Don’t Own Me Anymore” has been a time of reckoning.

Laura and Lydia have felt the disappointment of being dropped by their label. They felt the uncertainty of whether they would make music again. The dark times they experienced helped them grow personally and musically.

“You Don’t Own Me Anymore” is a product of their growth paired with a renewed passion to make music, but to do it on their own terms.

On this May night, the air conditioning is out at 116, but the sisters don’t seem to mind. An air of excitement surrounds them as they take a few minutes before their show to answer questions from the TimesDaily.

TimesDaily: The Secret Sisters has overcome many obstacles since the last record. Do you see the new record as a new beginning?

Lydia: Very much so. I see it almost like our first record in many ways. It feels like a debut. We’re getting a fresh start. We went through a pretty hard time a couple of years ago. Now we are just seeing the light. We’ve got some really good songs to show for it. I’m excited to see what happens.

Laura: I agree. Someone said the other day how rare it is to get a second chance. We’re not afraid or hesitant to say how lucky we are to have a second chance. A lot of people don’t get a first chance.

Our first couple of years, we were really able to cut our teeth on these ridiculous opportunities that no one ever gets. We were almost overwhelmed by how many good ones we had. Now it kind of feels like that was our trial by fire. Now, we have a little bit of grit under us. We’re going to put it to the test with this record.

Lydia: Because we went through what we went through, we’re a lot more grateful now. When people pay $20 and take time to come see us, that’s a really big deal. We don’t take that for granted.

TimesDaily: Do you think maturity has anything to do with your new attitude?

Laura: Life isn’t easy for anybody. Everybody is having to work hard at something. Not that we took it for granted in the beginning, we just didn’t think about what it meant.

TimesDaily: Do you have a new perspective?

Laura: After going through all of that — we thought we would never play another show. There was a good eight- or nine-month period where we were done. I was like, I wonder if they’re hiring at the courthouse. I’m serious. I actually looked into doing something else. All of that would have been fine. If I had to hang up the music hat, that would have been OK.

To go from making records with your heroes and touring with your heroes then all of a sudden, you can’t even get a show. It’s a strange place to be mentally.

TimesDaily: How was this record-making process different?

Lydia: With our first two records, we had T Bone Burnett and Dave Cobb. Dave Cobb produced the first one, then T Bone also put his touch on it. Then, T Bone produced the second. They did such a good job with those records. I’m so proud of them. But, they are strictly producers. A lot of times, we felt like we couldn’t necessarily give our input freely. Because they are producers, we felt like they knew more than we did.

Laura: That was our insecurities. It wasn’t them.

Lydia: No. It wasn’t them saying we didn’t have an opinion.

Laura: I think because we are Southern and we never intended to have a music career, we just automatically assumed everyone knew better than we did what we needed to do. We never contested anything. We never fought back on anything. You know, some of the things are fine and worked out better. In hindsight, we look back and we see we really had to learn that it’s OK to speak your mind. It doesn’t make you a bad person.

Lydia: This record is a testament to that. Working with Brandi (Carlile) and the twins (Phil and Tim Hanseroth), it was different. They’re artists and producers. We felt like we could collaborate with them and give our input. They asked us our opinion. They wanted it. This one feels more like our record.

Laura: Plus, it was just an interesting experience. With our first two records, we were signed to a major record label deal. The checks just got written. The studio just got booked. We didn’t even have to think about it, we just showed up and would sing what we were supposed to sing.

With this process, when we started talking about making a record, we didn’t have money. We decided to crowdfund it with a pledge music campaign.

We were really hesitant about that at first. We were afraid it would be an abysmal failure. It ended up being really successful really quickly. It blew our minds. It really helped light a fire under us.

We realized there was interest, and there was an audience who still wanted to hear what we were making. For us, that was a huge confidence boost after a really rough couple of years.

TimesDaily: This record feels like a gift to your fans. Do you have hopes that it reaches a new fan base, too?

Laura: It feels like a gift to the two of us, too. For us, more than anything, we had to write and make this record in order to heal. At the end of the day, we’ve recovered because of this record. At this point, I want the record to do well and I want people all over the place to hear it. But even if nobody likes it, it was a mechanism that allowed Lydia and me to recover.

Lydia: We had to tell that part of the story or else it would have stayed bottled up. It needed to get told.

Laura: More than anything, it was a kind of counseling tool (almost) that we used.

Lydia: It was our therapy.

Laura: As an artist, you want any record that you make to have broad appeal. You want it to go where it’s supposed to go. I think there is a lot of letting go of the reins a little bit, too. We made the music as honest and real and genuine as we could in that moment, and we’re sending it out into the world.

Lydia: There’s something liberating about that. You let it go. It’s going to do what it’s going to do. We’ve put our best efforts into it. That’s all we could do.

TimesDaily: In this singles-driven digital download age, is touring a necessary evil?

Lydia: It’s true — even more so now than ever before. Touring never gets easier. I think it gets more difficult as you get older.

We’re both married now. It was easier when we didn’t have anybody tying us down. You have people you miss. It’s our job, though. It’s the only way you can make money now. Once we get out on the road, it’s tough but it is fun.

We have a greater appreciation for both now (touring and being home). The biggest lesson we’ve learned is to be grateful for every opportunity because it can be taken away in a second.

Laura: It wasn’t that long ago that we were sitting at home looking at the calendar wondering where the money was going to come from. And here we are with the rest of the year full of shows and people want to buy tickets.

I can’t believe it. It’s really bizarre to be here in this moment. I have to not think about it.

On the way down here, I was thinking, wow, we’re playing a headlining show and it’s sold out. That’s awesome. We have this brand new record we’re so proud of and a tour. I kind of got a little emo about it. We’re back at it, and I didn’t think we would be.

TimesDaily: Was Brandi Carlile key to you being able to move forward musically?

Laura: I don’t think we would have been able to resurrect it without her. I really don’t. We didn’t know how to put one step in front of the other. We were sitting at home going through all this awful stuff. We were exhausted from just trying to stay afloat. We didn’t want to write songs. We didn’t want to plan a tour. It really felt like starting over.

Lydia: It was daunting.

Laura: Brandi was the main person who would check in on us. Every few months, she would send us a text or call us asking, “What’s the latest?” We would update her on our situation.

Right before we decided to go into the studio and make the third record, we did a couple of shows with Brandi. We had started trying to write again. We were doing our sound check, and she was sitting in the house. We played this brand new song we had written. We had never played it anywhere before. (It’s actually the first single we released for the record.)

She’s so passionate. She stood up and said, “Y’all better not tell me you wrote that song.” That was our moment. Brandi gave us a vote of confidence.

We hung out that night, and we played her two or three new songs. She told us we just needed to make a record.

Lydia: We didn’t know how we were going to do it, but she made us want to.

Laura: She put the plan in place and had a solution to every problem or excuse that we had.

Lydia: We needed that. She’s about 10 years ahead of us, so she has the experience. We owe her so much more than we can even say. She spent her own money on us. The first couple of months we were in the studio, she fronted a lot of those bills. We paid her back, but she had so much faith in us.

TimesDaily: Tell me about the woman on the album cover.

Lydia: That is our paternal grandmother Marcy. I think in that picture she had just turned 13. She’s 86 years old now. She is a firecracker. When we told her we had her on the cover, she was so surprised. It has made her so happy.

TimesDaily: That photo along with the album name, “You Don’t Own Me Anymore,” makes a powerful statement.

Laura: With our first two records, the album covers are photographs of us. We love both of those album covers, but this record felt so different. We didn’t want to do a third record with a picture of us on the cover.

Lydia: It was about more than us. If there ever was a time to not show a picture of ourselves, it was now. Honestly, we were going through old pictures of our family because we wanted to have something to go with each single. We saw that picture and knew it needed to be the cover.

Laura: In real life, it’s this tiny, little bitty picture. I think it’s interesting that such a tiny picture can make such a big statement.