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If trust had a sound, it’d be My Sister, My Brother.
“Sometimes you just immediately trust somebody––you’re at ease from the beginning,” says Garrison Starr. “You know they’ve got your back. It feels easy. I immediately felt that way with Sean.”
Garrison is talking about Sean McConnell, her musical partner in My Sister, My Brother, a new group with the kind of natural magic that only happens when kismet masquerades as coincidence. Individually, they are independent solo artists known for smart songwriting and breathtaking vocals. Together, their voices reach that rarefied air typically reserved for families: harmonies that twin and snake around each other to hypnotize and soothe. “When we started writing and especially when we started singing together, it was like, ‘Wow. This is not normal. This feels very natural,’” Sean says. “It feels like singing with a sibling you’ve sung with for a long time. Very quickly, it became a special collaboration.”
The two artists formed My Sister, My Brother, not because they’d planned to, but because they had to. They first sat down to write during a songwriting retreat. They emerged with “Nothing Without You,” a stunner with its heart on its sleeve.
“I just felt like there was something trying to come out that was important, especially after that first song,” Sean says. “We just knew.”
“I wanted to keep coming back to work with him,” Garrison adds. “We both wanted to keep coming back to it.”
After their self-titled debut EP, My Sister, My Brother was released, the World was sadly brought to a halt by an unavoidable two-year global pandemic. The artists reunited as soon as travel bans were lifted and began creating new music. After a week of hunkering down at McConnell’s Silent Desert Studio, they emerged with a collection of seven new songs entitled My Sister, My Brother II.
The pair’s hopes for My Sister, My Brother II are rooted in creating art that takes on a deeper, more human mission both for themselves and for anyone who hears the songs. “Not everybody in every writing session is always trying to make the best, most authentic thing. A lot of people are chasing another dragon,” says Garrison. “When you find the people who are trying––who inspire you––you have to hang on to it. It makes you better. It keeps you honest.”
“Hopefully this music makes people feel less alone––brings them a little hope in a time when they might need it,” Sean says, then, prompting Garrison to laugh and nod in agreement, he adds, “Who doesn’t like crying to a sad song?”