The Secret Sisters have signed to New West Records and are set to release their anticipated new album You Don’t Own Me Anymore on June 9th, 2017. The 12-song set was produced by Brandi Carlile & her collaborators Tim and Phil Hanseroth, and is Laura and Lydia Rogers’ first new record in over three years. NPR Music premiered the video for the album opener “Tennessee River Runs Low” today calling the record “a set of songs both reflective of tradition and deeply personal.” The video can be seen HERE and features the acclaimed Alabama artist Butch Anthony. It was shot on his 80-acre family compound where he hosts the “Doo Nanny,” an annual art/folk micro festival. The Secret Sisters have also announced their initial tour dates in support of the new album launching May 13th in their hometown of Florence, Alabama (Please see dates below, with more to be announced soon). You Don’t Own Me Anymore will be available digitally, on compact disc, and vinyl and is available for pre-order via PledgeMusic.
An open audition in Nashville in 2009 lead The Secret Sisters to a major label deal and a critically acclaimed debut album produced by T Bone Burnett and Dave Cobb. Followed by a tour with Levon Helm and Ray LaMontagne, the sisters found themselves sharing stages with Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Paul Simon, appearing on numerous late night television shows, issuing a single produced by Jack White and released by his Third Man Records, as well as releasing a second album with Burnett at the helm. But the tides turned quickly and after the release of their sophomore effort Put Your Needle Down in 2014, the girls were dropped from their label and found themselves with barely enough money to stay on the road and keep making music. They retreated to their homes in Northern Alabama where they started embracing what could be a future without music. “It was a nightmare that every day seemed to worsen,” says Laura. “We went through things we literally never thought we would come out of.” Adds Lydia, “it had just gotten so bad, the only option was to file bankruptcy.” To make ends meet, Laura took a job cleaning houses and the girls performed the occasional concert when they could. It was then that Brandi Carlile – someone whom The Secret Sisters have admired for years – offered to produce their next record. Soon after, a PledgeMusic campaign was launched which raised 50% of their goal in just 48 hours (and exceeded it in just over a month) with nearly 1,500 fans coming forward to personally help them rebuild.
Even once Carlile gave The Secret Sisters some renewed hope, things weren’t instantly easy: what they went through left wounds that needed to heal before they could pour themselves into songwriting. But when they did, Laura and Lydia found themselves in a more creative and honest space than ever, with their experiences flowing and morphing into collective tales of triumph, rage and the indefatigable human spirit. The resulting songs of You Don’t Own Me Anymore are about life when everything you think defines you is stripped away. These are journeys as poetic as they are confessional, always anchored by the timeless, crystalline ring of Laura and Lydia’s voices in sweet unison. “Brandi, Phil, and Tim had never produced a record for anybody but themselves,” says Laura about their experience in the studio. “We are all artists, and we could include our opinions. I felt like everyone was an equal force in the room. It is often lost on producers that you actually have to go perform your song on a stage – it’s easy to get so caught up on the production that you don’t discuss how this all will translate – but Brandi innately understood that.”
The end product finds the sisters taking their music to new places, with soulful, gospel grooves and stirring vocal performances that never seek perfection over power. It’s a document of hardship and redemption, of pushing forward when it would be so much easier to drown in grief. And it’s a story about how passion and pure artistry can be the strongest sort of salvation. “The only way we could have completely healed was to have written an entire record,” says Laura. “I think we were just in the wrong parts of the machine,” says her sister. “We feel like we have learned where not to be, and where to go.”