On a recent Saturday night at Webster Hall, rock band Larkin Poe was giving a half-hour masterclass in playing giant tones when bandleader Rebecca Lovell yelled, “My big sister is going to preach!” Megan Lovell stepped forward, holding a strange wing-shaped instrument clumsily tied at a vertical angle to her body. Sermons will be delivered on knees of steel.
Earlier in the day at Le Petit Cafe in Carroll Gardens, the sisters hit the road to heavy bluesy southern rock. It all started about thirty years ago in Tennessee, when four-year-old Rebecca began singing with six-year-old Megan and their older sister Jessica. “Our mom taught us how to sing chords,” Meghan said. They have “Blood Harmony”, an almost supernatural mixture of kindred voices; “Blood Harmony” is also the title of the band’s latest album.
The sisters have a classical education, primarily the violin. After eight years of using the Suzuki method, they participated in bluegrass festivals. “Music blows our minds,” says Rebecca, who calls herself “the car of the family.” They asked if they could change the genre. “You benefited from discipline,” their parents said, Rebecca recalls. “If you want to manage, it’s up to you.”
Rebecca took the mandolin, Megan the dob, and Jessica the violin. They called themselves the Lovell sisters. “Jessica and the Girls” is what their friends call them. After winning Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” teen talent competition, they began playing bluegrass festivals. They become “girls” when Jessica enters college.
“We wanted to do more than just bluegrass because we grew up with classic rock,” Rebecca says over an oat milk latte. Homeschooled, the sisters immersed themselves in their parents’ eclectic musical tastes. Rebecca lists some of them: “Bach, Black Sabbath, Carpenters, Allman Brothers, CSNY, Jerry Douglas, Yanni, Aldi Meola, Wyndham Hill Collection.” We were just a string orchestra.”
So Rebecca taught herself to play electric guitar, and Megan took up steel with slides. Acoustic lap steel, introduced to the United States by Hawaiian musicians in the early 20th century, influenced country music pioneers such as Jimmie Rodgers with its mournful sound, and early bottleneck blues, most notably Son House, bridged the gap between later separate genres . performed as “redneck” and “racial” music. The first mass-produced electric guitar was made of steel, known as “fryer”. But later this instrument gave way to pedal steel, which allowed the player to change the pitch with a foot bar.
“I realized that this was the voice I had been looking for all my life,” Meghan said. However, instead of resting the instrument on her lap, she uses a special frame that allows her to stand and move while playing. “Not only does she have to play on the court,” says Rebecca, “but also to keep the court close to her body as she walks. If I bump into her, she skips notes. legs. She tripped over shit on stage a few times.”
Steel for Megan’s first lap, Rickenbacker, was made from heavy Bakelite. “My back hurt like hell,” she said. She designed her own instrument from lightweight poplar wood: Paul Beard’s Beard Electro-Liege.
The sisters wandered into Retrofret, a vintage guitar shop. Store historian Peter Kochman recognized them from the cover of Vintage Guitar magazine. “Usually the cover is played by old guys playing Les Paul,” he said. “It’s nice to see young women.”
Megan tried out several types of knee steel in the store. Gothic screams fill the store, dirty and thick, full of strange music from old roots that oscillates between the sacred and the mundane.
“You have a voice,” Corman said, nodding to Rebecca, “and an instrumental voice,” referring to Megan’s steel. “It’s like BB King,” King often talks about duets with Lucille, as he calls his guitar. “He called it ventriloquism,” Koeman continued. “She sings and he sings. You have the same vibe.”
“It can be very shy and mysterious,” Rebecca said of Meghan’s performance. “But when she digs deep, you can feel her enthusiasm. Megan doesn’t sit back. She’ll chop you off if need be.” ♦
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Post time: Apr-11-2023