ALONG COMES MARY

When I was invited to check out The T Sisters this Sunday at one of my favorite LA clubs, The Mint, in Hollywood, I was intrigued. Unfamiliar with their music, I knew I would be a fan as many of their influences are the same as mine. From Joni Mitchell to musicals like Rent, these 3 sisters have mastered their musical abilities with combining these eclectic, diverse mix of artist while incorporating their own sound as well. Read below for my interview with Erika Tietjen, the eldest of the T Sisters & if you’re in Los Angeles this weekend, make sure to RSVP & get your tickets HERE.

We grew up listening to The Beach Boys, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Donny Hathaway, Stevie Wonder, Peter Paul and Mary, and our dad who is a wonderful singer and songwriter.  As we got older we were influenced more by 90’s R & B groups like En Vogue and Boyz 2 Men, Alanis Morissette, the Dixie Chicks, Ben Harper, Crosby Stills Nash ‘n Young, the Indigo Girls, Tracy Chapman, The Pointer Sisters, some pop country music, and even some musicals like Newsies and Rent.  In recent years, we’ve been very influenced by our contemporaries in the music scene like The Wood Brothers, Chic Gamine, The Wailin’ Jennys, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Lake Street Dive, our producer and bay area bluegrass legend Laurie Lewis, and Anais Mitchell, in particular her folk opera Hadestown.  There’s so much good music out there!

We grew up in Berkeley and Piedmont, both in the bay area.

My earliest recollection of music is singing and dancing around to Anita Belle’s ‘Sweet Love’ and also Beach Boys tunes.  And our dad singing at the piano–that’s a pivotal backdrop for our experience of music.

Chthonic Theater is our musical theater collective that we formed with a good friend, Melanie Patterson, after high school.  Chthonic Theater was the collective through which we created and performed our first original musical theater production, an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.  Since then, we’ve written and performed three other musicals with a cast of other musicians and performers, and we also host variety shows in our theater space that showcase local performers of many mediums.

We’re looking forward to our first tour to the Nashville area in September, and our first tour to the southwest in October.  In the winter we’ll be recording our fourth CD full of all the tunes we’ve been writing this year, and we’re looking forward to making an album at this stage in our career when we have so many more ideas about recording and arranging.  We look forward to hitting Europe in the next year and hopefully Canada and some other countries as well!