Five female singer-songwriters, four musical categories and an audience: the perfect recipe for Showcasing Singer-Songwriters: The Sister Sessions.
The Sister Sessions (comprised of five Brisbane women) are returning home this month for the fourth instalment of the theatre-style show.
Singer-songwriters Kristy Apps, Lucinda Shaw, Julia Rose, Melissa J Evans and Nikolaine Martin will be showcasing their talents through a series of musical categories, completely unknown to the audience until the curtain rises. "We choose a category such as 'The First Song You Ever Wrote' and we all play the first song we ever wrote, one after the other. We play and sing on each other's songs and it gives us a chance to create a really different rendition of our tracks," Kristy says, soloist and front-lady for her band The Shotgun Shirleys.
"The concept is to make people feel that they are welcomed into a lounge room, potentially a share-house of musicians and friends sitting around playing on each other's tunes."
Coming together for a musical catch-up in a relaxed setting is the main aim for The Sister Sessions, with the five ladies enjoying each other's company just as much as playing the music. "You lose inhibitions that you'd have working with other artists because you're working with friends.
"You're willing to take more risks and if they don't work and you fall flat on your face, it doesn't matter. Everyone just laughs with you, it's really encouraging."
Kristy says The Sister Sessions are also about showing audiences what makes each of the women musically individual, and transferring their musicianship to the work of friends. "If you put on a gig with two or three women singer-songwriters, people can often question it. They say it's a bit same-same, but we're saying we're really different as artists and it makes no difference what our gender is. Everyone brings a really different energy to the music," Kristy says.
Although many of the girls play in the same bands, or occasionally alongside each other at gigs, their tastes and influences differ significantly. Audiences can expect a little bit of everything at The Sister Sessions, with a mixture of folk, country, rock and even alternative genres.
Though unlike most gigs featuring a variety of artists, all five women stay onstage for the majority of the performance. They'll discuss the category onstage before they perform it, allowing the audience to learn more about the artists and their songs.
Plus, by changing categories at each show, every song performed is uniquely interpreted each time. "It's a really different kind of show," Kristy explains.
"For us, it's exciting because we never know what it's going to turn out like. It is a bit rehearsed, but it's more about watching your songs turn into something different… I think that's really special for an audience, because the music is only in that moment, it never gets recreated."
Kristy says that these close-knit friendships, both on and off stage, also allow for a very honest show. "We talk pretty honestly about where our songs come from."
Showcasing Singer-Songwriters: The Sister Sessions takes place at the New Globe Theatre 16 April.
