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		Sleepy John Sandidge interviews the Burns Sisters in the rustic "dining area" of Humphrey, his home on wheels (pictured above en route to the festival). How he convinced them to set foot near the Beast is unknown ...

Camp Mather, Yosemite, CA, 9/4/99 -- SJ = Sleepy John Sandidge; BS = Burns Sisters in unison. Don't miss the RealAudio sound clips about marriage and politics.  

SJ: welcome to the Burns Sisters interview, somewhere in Camp Mather, sometime in September … we have this one little microphone, so I'm gonna have to pass it around. Welcome to Marie, and Annie, and Jeannie …

BS: hello! hello!

SJ: Marie's a little slower than the other Burns Sisters …

Jeannie, Annie: In every way …

SJ: Earlier we were talking and I asked you, Who's in charge. Could we get that answer once again?

BS: I am!! (see photo at right)

SJ: You guys actually come out of a musical history that goes back a few years. Before there were 3 Burns Sisters, how many were there, Jeannie?

Jeannie: Well there actually still are 5…

Annie: … we locked two in the closet …

Jeannie: … we have two other sisters who we used to perform with: our oldest sister and our youngest sister.

SJ: And they dropped out of the group after you did a couple of albums for a major label …

Jeannie: We worked together for ten years, performing regionally in upstate New York and then we got a record deal with SBK Productions and Columbia Records and we did two records with them, which did very well. We lost our deal, and we all had our separate nervous breakdowns (laughter) -- I'm kidding there -- and we all did our separate music. Then Terry went to Nashville, she's a writer down there at MCA Publishing, and Sheila is still writing songs and is an art teacher in Ithaca.

SJ: So the three of you decided at one point that you would be a trio, which is always good when there are 3 people -- so how did you guys decide that it was time to go back out and do it again?

Marie: Actually, the very first band was Jeannie, Annie, and Marie, before we ever were five.

Annie: We're the Original Burns sisters …

SJ: Not a cheesy imitation.

Marie: … then Terry got out of high school and Sheila left a relationship and moved to Ithaca and joined the band. Should I get into everyone's relationships now?

SJ: No, we truly don't have time, or enough space on the web site. (Laughter)

RealAudio: The Burns Sisters conduct a spontaneous internal census to determine the total number of marriages in the band ... a special Strawberry moment.

SJ: So now there's two albums out on Rounder/Philo Records, and a Christmas album. Was that released on Rounder?

Jeannie: Yes.

SJ: Titles?

Jeannie: Close To Home, In This World, and Tradition.

SJ: And one of those is a Christmas album?

Annie: Tradition is a holiday album, and it has a lot of different, well, traditions, which is why it's called Tradition. It's got a beautiful song we dedicated to Israel; it's not a traditional Hanukkah song but it is dedicated for the season, called "Shaloo Shalom". We have a Rumi poem (ed: Jalal ud-din Rumi, Persian poet and mysitc, 1207 - 73) put to music, as well as some of our favorites … we were raised Irish Catholic … so we've got "O Come O Come Emmanuel", we have an Irish lullaby, a couple of originals, and at the end there are a group of Tibetan monks that are chanting for world peace.

RealAudio: The Burns Sisters discuss their political heritage, including the influence of their father.

 

SJ: Who does the writing?

BS: We all do that.

SJ: When somebody brings a song to the table and says I've just written this and I really like it, and the other two don't, how do you handle something like that? Jeannie?

Jeannie: Well, since we're all the Boss, we all have veto power. But very rarely does that situation happen. The person who brings a song to the table usually will know ahead of time whether its going to work for this band, so it's not something that we deal with very often.

SJ: So it's not a thing where you have to say, Boy that one really sucks.

Jeannie: No, we don't use those words.

SJ: And therefore remain friendly on the road ...

Marie: A lot of times what happens is we write songs, we work them out, and we may love them very much, but really it's the audience reaction that counts. We can tell what our best songs are by the audience, really. We test them out, and those are the ones we end up playing, the one's that are going over well.

SJ: There are a couple that have become sort of Burns Sisters anthems. What's the one that you just cannot walk off the stage without doing?

Marie: "Dance Upon the Earth", "God Made Woman" -- Annies new one, and "I Am A Patriot".

SJ: So those are the three Burns Sisters anthem kind of songs, where if you got off the stage without doing them there could be trouble at the merchandise booth …

Marie: We would hope!

SJ: In the can right now, as of September 99, you have an album done. I understand we have some NEW news about that today. Is it something we can talk about?

BS: No, no.

SJ: Okay, then we won't … But the good news is that the album's done and will be released. Do you have any idea when it will be released? Jeannie?

Jeannie: It's scheduled to be released in February, 2000.

SJ: "Scheduled," she says, so there is a small disclaimer there … it may come out sooner, it may come out later. Annie, tell us what we can expect on the new album.

Annie: It's a nice group of songs. We took our time producing it because we wanted to get a very specific sound. We did our tracks in Nashville and then we took it to New York City and we got this wonderful guitar player, Mark Shulman, to play on it. Then we took it home to Ithaca and worked in a studio there, just relaxed with our vocals and … we took about 8 months to record it. It's been done for a while now, and we're getting good reaction from our record company, so we're just sort of waiting around.

SJ: It's such a weird process. You would think that once the album's done and it's a good album -- obviously, watching the history of your albums, they just get better and better, the songs and the shows just get better -- you'd think they'd be anxious to get that out on the road.

Annie: You would think that. (laughter)

Jeannie: The truth is, I think that our company wants to release it at a time when they're not releasing two high priority albums at the same time. They have to time it a certain way. Unfortunately, our timing and their timing were a little off this time.

SJ: Well, you wouldn't want to get it out before the Christmas season ...

Marie, Jeannie: Right, you don't want to make that money … (laughter)

Marie: And we didn't want it for this festival season, we have huge festivals this year …

SJ: Right, you come with new stuff and people will buy it, and then what? You don't have it any more … Annie's shaking her head.

Annie: I love sarcasm.

SJ: Oh, you noticed … Now, the Burns Sisters have had a very full summer of festivals and you're touring … how many dates a year are you doing?

Jeannie: I think we have about a hundred dates as year at this point,

Annie: Actually, I have a few more than that …

SJ: Well, you're the single one, right?

Annie: That's right.

SJ: Well you can look for the Burns Sisters somewhere in your area in this coming year 2000. We want to thank all of you for taking just a moment to be with us, and we wish you the best with this new record and I hope you get it out real soon.

BS (unison): Thank you John!!

 

(Recorded by John Sandidge. Photos by John Simmons. Emergency martinis by Steve Palopoli.)

 

Sleepy John, Steve Palopoli, Marie Burns: post-interview.

Check out Steve's take on

Dave Alvin's Strawberry performances.