Just last week, the members of Sister Sadie were in Los Angeles for the Grammy Awards to celebrate their third album, No Fear, which was nominated for best bluegrass album. The six women of Sister Sadie have established a simultaneously contemporary yet traditional sound, which, upon first impression, feels like the female counterpart of, say, The Infamous Stringdusters. The music is strong, tight, and impressively stands out in a genre that sometimes feels overwhelmingly male. This Saturday will kick off the first of three appearances Sister Sadie will make in Colorado, performing their Grammy-nominated music and their freshly released single, “If I Don’t Have You.”
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Not only can they hold their own in a male-dominated genre, but Sister Sadie’s journey towards the claiming of that space was done with their own figurative bare hands. How a group of women “who’d known each other our whole lives but never played in a band situation together” came to be in the same league as the legendary Del McCoury and the prodigal Billy Strings is a story of serendipity and boot-strappin’. It started with five women playing a show one infamous night at Nashville’s Station Inn, where they knew “from the first downbeat…it was something special,” said fiddle player Deanie Richardson. First came the promoters offering festival spots, then came the inquiry from the record label, and then the award shows started calling.
“It all started and happened very organically without a team behind us,” said Richardson of the band’s germination. “It was a really beautiful way for Sister Sadie to grow and develop.” The original five-piece group released their sophomore album in 2018 and the band has undergone a handful of changes since then. There was much regrouping, rebranding and relearning that occurred, along with guitarist and lead vocalist Jaelee Roberts, guitarist and vocalist Dani Flowers, and bassist Maddie Dalton joining up with Richardson, banjoist and vocalist Gena Britt, and mandolinist and vocalist Rainy Miatke. “The energy completely shifts when you bring in a new person,” Richardson reflected, with No Fear being a perfect example. “I so love what they brought to this project, from songs they wrote to their stellar vocal performances,” and it’s these feelings which inspired the album’s meaningful title.
For this long-awaited album, Sister Sadie enlisted “great friends” Mary Meyer, Hasee Ciacco, Seth Taylor, Cathering Marx, Steve Hinson and Tony Creasman to help create what would become the “most magical feeling, ideas and riffs and laughs and cries and just elated joy,” Richardson said, reminiscing. An experience that she referred to as her “favorite thing in the world” was felt by listeners, resulting in the validation and honor of a Grammy nomination. No Fear is clean, graceful and humbly boastful, letting listeners witness the quasi-phenomenon that is the female bluegrass artist.
For Richardson, she has “wanted to be in the Colorado music scene for years.” Fortunately and naturally for Colorado, bluegrass fans have three chances to catch Sister Sadie fresh off the awards circuit this month. Their first chance will be this Saturday, February 15th, at Cervantes’ Other Side, with a slot at the Midwinter Bluegrass Festival the following Sunday. A couple of weeks later, they’ll be mountainside at the now-renowned WinterWonderGrass Festival in Steamboat. “Our set is high energy, the vocals are second to none, the songwriting is some of my favorite ever,” said Richardson. “We are going to bring it hard, Colorado!”
Listen to No Fear on Spotify here.