Today we’d like to introduce you to Annie and Kate Brogdon.
So, before we jump into specific questions about what you do, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Many stories about bands start out about how the members met, but actually, our story goes back a long way. We are twin sisters, 20 years old, from the Austin, Texas area. Although we’re fraternal twins and are very different, we have always lived together and have been involved in many of the same activities in our lives.
Our extended family is all from Houston, which is our second home and where we now reside to go to school at the University of Houston. Our music journey started by accident. As a young child, Annie has strength issues in her hands, and she was in occupational therapy to help correct that. After we started kindergarten, our family schedule got very busy (we also have a younger brother), and we couldn’t continue the therapy. Our mom decided that piano lessons might help Annie’s hands, and since Kate was always singing anyway, we got a keyboard and lessons for our sixth birthday. That’s when our musical lives began.
After a few years of piano, we took on guitar, drums, bass, flute and vocals. When we were nine, we became part of a student band and started performing a few shows. By the time we were 11, we were in three different performing student bands, playing various instruments and singing lead vocals. We later were also in middle school bands, playing flute, clarinet, guitar, piano and bass. One day, for fun, we started practicing for a gig, just the two of us with songs we hoped to add to one of our band’s sets. At that point, we realized that being a music duo was also something we wanted to do. We’ve been performing as Annie & Kate ever since.
Over the last eight years, we’ve performed about 60-70 shows a year, mostly in Austin, Houston and San Antonio. Since we’ve been in college, that has slowed somewhat but we still perform fairly consistently. We’ve written about 20+ original songs and have three recorded albums on iTunes, Spotify, etc., with our last release a few years ago. Our sound is indie rock/pop with strong vocals and harmonies. Annie plays guitar, and Kate plays percussion.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
On one hand, our music path has been smooth in that we have been fortunate enough to have people involved in our band (our family) who have skills that has helped us. Our father is an engineer and is familiar with running sound, so he often did that for us at our shows. Our mom was in human resources before she had us, and was also a photographer. She has done all of our photography, website design, and has been our booking agent and manager. Our brother maintained our gear and helped us get ready for gigs. We’ve also been lucky in meeting some incredible people in the music business who have helped us along the way. We are grateful for all of them and would not be where we are today without them.
That being said, it’s definitely not all been easy. Austin, with its reputation for live music, is an incredibly competitive music environment, even for musicians in their teens. People compete for good gigs, and it can also be difficult as a minor in some venues. Since our sound is not quite enough to be considered a solo act but also not really a band per se, that has also presented some challenges in where we can perform. We’re too loud for some venues looking for chill background noise, but we’re not a big enough sound for some venues looking for full bands. Lastly, we made the choice to travel to Houston and San Antonio for gigs, which at times was challenging with school. Since we’ve been in college the last 2.5 years, we’ve slowed down a bit which has helped, but sometimes it’s still challenging to juggle everything.
The best advice we could give to anyone wanting to be in this business is to practice and refine your music first and foremost. Secondly, a great place to start is open mic nights. That is a great way to test out your music and your sound to an audience without much risk. Recognize that sometimes you need small gigs, and sometimes you need big ones — there is a purpose and a need for both. Staying flexible in this business is also critical. There are often lots of moving parts and sometimes you have to improvise or go with the flow.
Please tell us more about your music, what you are currently focused on and most proud of. What sets you apart from the competition?
While we have a good amount of original music, we also perform a variety of cover songs in our shows. We’re probably best known for our vocal harmonies and different takes on those covers. In order to sing many of the songs we wanted to cover, we felt like we needed to change up the arrangements in order to do them acoustically, plus it’s just kind of cool to hear a different take of a song. Being a duo for so long, and perhaps also in being twins, we feel that our ability to sense each other’s timing and our harmonic abilities are what makes us a different kind of sound.
We were fortunate to have been recognized in Austin as one of the top teen bands, and to have our music featured on TV and radio. Being members of the Grammys is also something of which we’re proud. However, some of the things of which we’re most proud are our three albums — Lost and Found (2012), Running Out of Time (2014) and The Storm Within (2017). Each of those represented a lot of hard work in writing, collaborating with other artists and our producer, and recording in the studio. We are also very proud to have met and worked with so many great artists and musicians along our journey. We often gig with other bands and have met some dear friends through that.
Who do you look up to? How have they inspired you?
Musically speaking, our inspiration has come from many bands and genres. As kids, we didn’t listen much to the typical children’s songs. We knew some, but we often listened to music our parents played. That included bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rob Thomas, Rush, Fleetwood Mac, Daughtry (with whom Annie got to perform on stage!), Heart, and a band from New York called Antigone Rising. With a Hispanic mom, we also grew up listening to some Spanish music from artists like Selena, the Gipsy Kings, and Gloria Estefan. In our student bands, we played a good deal of classic rock, Motown, blues, The Beatles and Elvis. In middle school, we had great fun playing in the jazz band. As we got older, our tastes branched out into some alternative rock and some pop. From a musical perspective, our inspiration has really been all over the map.
On a more personal side, as we mentioned above, there were many bands with whom we worked who inspired us as musicians and as friends. Although we don’t get to see many of them since we’ve been away at school, we have such fond memories of getting to perform together and feed on one another musically.
Two of the biggest sources of inspiration for us are our two former music teachers. We started our musical beginnings in piano, and our instructor made it all so fun and relatable for us. She gave us the ability to appreciate making music. Our other teacher not only taught us most of the other instruments we learned to play, but with him, we also learned how to be in a band, how to work with others, and how to perform. Our music foundations came from them.
Our producer has also been a great source of inspiration for us. With him, we learned so much about the music business and what goes into making professional recordings. We worked with him for all three of our albums, and we have fun and work well together. He is as much a part of our sound as we are.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.annieandkate.com
- Phone: 512.413.8331
- Email: anniekatebrogdon@gmail.com
- Instagram: @annie_and_kate
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/anniekatemusic
- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/akbrogdon
- Other: http://spoti.fi/2EN2mzm
Image Credit:
Sylvia Brogdon
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