Article and photos by Ericka Kastner
Early exposure to musical performance prompted two Salida teens, known on stage as The Powell Sisters, to enter the Colorado bluegrass music scene. Years later, they’re strumming their way into house parties and music festivals across the country.
Phoebe Powell, 16, says she was first inspired to learn the fiddle during a PBS broadcast performance of Celtic Woman. As she watched the band’s fiddler dance barefoot across the stage, then-9-year-old Phoebe told her parents she wanted to learn to play the fiddle. Six and a half years later, not only can Phoebe dance while she fiddles, she also sings harmonies beside her sister on stage and last year added plucking the banjo to her repertoire.
Growing up listening to live music at the former Salida Bongo Billy’s Café, Harper Powell, now 15, fell in love with the guitar and learned to play the instrument at age 8. She says she started with folk music and finger picking and in the last couple of years has shifted to a bluegrass, flatpicking style. When Harper was looking to add an angelic sounding instrument to The Powell Sisters performances, the music of Ron Thomason sparked her interest in the mandolin because “it looked super fun.”
The girls’ first CD, City That Dreams, came out over the 2014 Memorial Day weekend and incorporates a wide variety of musical genres, including covers of Bob Dylan, Bill Monroe, Kate Wolfe and Crooked Still. Also included on the album is their own take on Chelle’s Dance, written by their band coach and Cotopaxi resident Heidi Clare.
As they recall, their earliest musical influences were Nancy Griffith and Emmylou Harris. Other inspirations include Alison Krauss and Union Station, Tim Crouch, and Buddy MacMaster. “We didn’t (and still don’t) know popular songs that everyone our age listens to,” Phoebe says. “We used to live outside town and we went to a lot of barn dances. That was a lot of our inspiration too.”
Collaborating together as sisters and musicians has been a learning process, Harper says, as they sort out how to balance each other. Phoebe agrees, saying that it takes work. “But playing and performing together is a blast.”
Their vocal sound as a duo is unique because they have “sister harmony,” or an ability to sing the same tone, blending their voices together. Phoebe says it’s easier to connect vocally because they are family, and the two would have to work to harmonize more if they weren’t.
As they ramp up for a performance, the girls practice together about an hour a day, and with the recent production of their CD, they missed some school. “It was a huge load to handle during the school year, but totally worth it,” Harper says.
When they aren’t performing or practicing, the Salida High School junior and sophomore have full schedules, participating in track, cross-country running, mountain biking, skiing and swim team.
Before Phoebe graduates from high school, the girls plan on making another CD, which they hope will be a mix of covers and originals written together. Encouraged by musician and singer/songwriter Sarah Jarosz’s rendition of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem Annabelle Lee, they intend to put some poetry to song for the CD as well.
Serendipitously, their first live performance brought them full circle to an open mic night at Bongo Billy’s Café. Harper remembers the café as an amazing place that was “the perfect music venue.” Since then, the Powell Sisters have performed annually at the Westcliffe Hay Fever Festival, a San Francisco café, a house party in New York City and a Texas music festival, where they met Lyle Lovett and their childhood muse, Emmy Lou Harris.
When asked what playing music means to them, Harper says she finds it to be illuminating every time. “You learn as you go. It involves a lot of emotion, and recording takes a lot out of us emotionally and physically.”
“There is really nothing like it,” Phoebe says. “Listening to music is completely different than getting to know music firsthand. You become intimate with the song. It’s a pretty cool feeling.”
To purchase a CD or arrange a booking with the Powell Sisters, contact them at phoebeandharper@gmail.com or “like” them on Facebook at Phoebe and Harper – The Powell Sisters.
Logophile and wordsmith Ericka Kastner has chosen writing as her primary art form since she was stricken with a fondness for her first thesaurus at age 10. Ericka relishes the chance to sit beside a campfire in the Colorado Rockies strumming her ukulele. View her work online at erickakastner.com.
