I grew up across the street from a McDonald’s and a Burger King, close to a four-way intersection where exhaust-belching 18-wheelers idled at the red light before trundling up the on-ramp to Interstate 291.
The Green Sisters — singing siblings Melody, Betsy, Brianna and Rebecca (from oldest to youngest) — grew up on a farm in Hubbardston, MA, surrounded by chickens, pigs, sheep, cows, horses, hay, wood and hand-cultivated crops.
Brianna was kind enough to field some questions about their farm life and their music in advance of The Green Sisters’ next show at the 1794 Meetinghouse in New Salem on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
The four Greens play multiple instruments (fiddle, banjo, mandolin, guitar, upright bass) and have a repertoire that includes original songs and cover tunes in multiple styles (folk, bluegrass, old-time, cajun, Celtic, a cappella and more).
“We were raised with fairly limited access to ‘the real world’ — we didn’t have a TV and we spent a whole lot of time entertaining ourselves on the farm,” Brianna said in an interview last week.
Their mom and dad, Joyce and Rick, have a country/western band called The Housejackers (the name comes from long ago, when they had to jack up the house to repair the foundation). “Growing up, our parents would send us up to ‘bed’ when they had practice at the house. Yea right! Picture four tiny children squirming in their beds, trying to remain tired when all one should be doing is dancing!”
Most of their extended family is musical, too. “We have a tradition every year: each of us (twenty or so voices) starts a different Christmas Carol at the same time and sings it until the end. It is a nonsensical and great cacophonous sound that usually ends in uproarious laughter.”
Family and music have been woven together for the siblings for as long as they can remember. “I bet the first time we ever harmonized was right after the last of us was born; I reckon we cried in harmony,” Brianna said. “We spent countless hours harmonizing while cleaning the barn, splitting wood, picking blueberries, and riding across the country in the family RV — ample time to drive our parents mad!”
Friends and fans kept asking the Green sisters if they’d perform at weddings and functions, so in 2015, they made up their mind, Brianna said. “We discussed forming a band ‘for real,’ and the resounding reply was ‘Heck yea!’ ”
During their sets, the sisters might perform covers by Fats Waller, Patsy Cline, First Aid Kit or the Grateful Dead, but they also write strong original songs, like Brianna’s beautiful and folky “Oak Tree” (which she said was inspired by her “childhood days of hiding in treetops for the joy of it, a place where calm is found and where truth is not clouded, but simply exists”) and the Betsy-penned love song “Too Many Roads.”
In recent months, they’ve been recording a debut album during their limited spare hours. (Brianna is a park ranger at a flood control dam for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Rebecca works at a hospital, Melody is a preschool teacher, and Betsy is a mechanical engineer.)
Tom Mahnken, a member of such groups as Trailer Park, Beige and the Young@Heart Chorus band, has been capturing the quartet’s sound in his Ashfield studio; he said he wanted to record them before he even heard them sing.
“I met the Greens when Trailer Park did a gig [with them] last October in Petersham. Within a few minutes I was convinced they were some of the nicest and most fun people I had ever met. I thought it would be a blast to work with them in the studio. And then I heard them sing, and I thought, ‘Holy smokes.’ Between their music and personalities, I just like being around them. There’s a lot of laughing.”
“There’s something about the sound of siblings — the Boswell Sisters, the Everly Brothers — they just sound so good together,” Mahnken said. “The Green Sisters sound like four strings on the same guitar.”