(NORTH ADAMS and NORTHAMPTON, Mass., and HUDSON, N.Y.) – The Sweetback Sisters bring their honky-tonk holiday sing-along tour to the greater region with stops at MCLA in North Adams on Thursday, December 12, 2013, at 7:30pm; at Club Helsinki Hudson on Sunday, December 15, at 8pm; and at the Academy of Music in Northampton on Friday, December 20, at 7pm.
Each December, Brooklyn’s favorite country band tours the East Coast spreading holiday cheer with the Sweetback Sisters’ Country Christmas Singalong Spectacular. This supremely fun and wildly popular show requires audience participation (lyric sheets are provided) and a love for all kinds of holiday music. All the songs are presented with the Sweetback Sisters’ signature mix of harmony singing, rollicking Telecaster and twin fiddling along with a healthy dose of holiday cheer.
At MCLA, the group performs at the MCLA Church Street Center’s Eleanor Furst Roberts Auditorium. In addition to the Sweetback Sisters, MCLA’s Jazz Band and choir, directed by composer/musician Jeff Link of the college’s music department, MCLA’s award-winning Allegrettos, and students from the Academy at Charlemont also will perform at this event.
The Sweetback Sisters started the Country Christmas Singalong in 2009 at the Jalopy Theater in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The first year brought an intimate gathering of family and friends close to the stage with lyric sheets so all could sing along. The audience was a combination of 20-somethings drinking beer and 60-somethings drinking mulled cider and singing so loud they nearly drowned out the old sound system.
Emily Miller was first inspired to host a sing-along while participating in a Christmas charity event in Chicago called “Songs of Good Cheer”. “The audience knew songs like ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ and ‘Walkin in a Winter Wonderland’ by heart because they’ve been singing those songs for most of their lives. I was so moved hearing the entire audience sing that I knew I wanted to recreate it with the Sweetback Sisters” says Miller. Rehearsals were called, lyric sheets were passed out and the first year’s sing-along was a rousing success.
The Sweetback Sisters stir up their twangy magic in artisanal Brooklyn, N.Y. – the new Nashville. Kansas-born Emily Miller was raised in Hong Kong, where she spread the gospel of American music in a family band. In the Sweetback Sisters, she handles fiddle and guitar chores as well as vocals. Zara Bode’s singing first drew attention at the Pioneer Valley (Mass.) School of Performing Arts, and she also brings a musical theatre background to her performance, which includes guitar.
The boys in the band add fiddle, guitar, bass and drums as well as male backup vocals. The group’s styles range from Western swing to honky-tonk as well as Tex-Mex, countrypolitan, Bakersfield. and even rockabilly by way of the Traveling Wilburys’ “Rattled.” The group’s retro-country sound has made them darlings of public radio audiences, and they have performed on Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion” and “Mountain Stage.”