Brothers and Sisters' Cutting-Edge Nostalgia

words by Carly Kocurek
photos by Victor Yiu

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   In Will Courtney's house in Austin, the members of Brothers and Sisters are surrounded by '60s and '70s era bricabrac, speaking through plumes of cigarette smoke. The rapidly-filling ashtray and the equally rapidly-emptying bottle of Crown Royal make it clear the band's tendency to refer to each other as “Brother” and “Sister” isn't part of some rigid devotion to old-time religion.  

   Will Courtney is the band's de facto leader and primary songwriter. He and sister Lily, who co-founded the group and also sings, are the only actual sibling connection. A few years ago, Will was living in Los Angeles and trying to make it in the music scene while Lily was working on a degree at the University of Texas. He was growing fed up and started to think of making a go of it someplace else. He had kicked around the idea of starting a project with his sister, and leaving L.A. made that a possibility. “When he was in L.A., we became best friends,” says Lily. “We talked all the time. We liked the same music, and we thought, 'let's see what it would be like to sing together,' and next thing I knew, I was in this rock 'n' roll band.”  

   After the decision was made, Will and Lily began working on a lineup. “I put out an ad on Craigslist, and I met Greg [McArthur] that way,” Will says. “He introduced me to Dan [Wilcox], and my sister I knew already, and then we had a friend who introduced to Dave [Morgan], and then Ricky [Ray Jackson] found us on MySpace. It's all about Internet and that kind of stuff.” Though Brothers and Sisters has weathered a number of personnel changes, the lineup has, at this point, solidified into a well-rounded six-piece act. “From the minute I joined this band, I could tell that there was something different about it,” bassist Dave Morgan says. “There was a lot of back and forth—maybe I was going to join Brothers and Sisters, maybe I wasn't. I saw them play a show with another bass player... and it was like watching a girl I had a crush on on a date with someone else.” The next day, Morgan called to say that his decision was made and that he would definitely be signing on. 

   Although Brothers and Sisters have a sound that reaches backwards to the golden harmonies of a bygone era, they have relied heavily on the web, not only to initiate contact with the musicians who have become band members, but also for publicity and to help build a fan base. They have benefited from the increasing hipness of television soundtracks, too. Their song “Without You” made it onto an episode of The O.C., and, while it didn't exactly launch them directly to fame and fortune, it did expand their audience. “We did notice a whole lot of new people joining [our page] on MySpace,” Will says. “People I didn't expect to hear were saying 'Oh, you're on The O.C.’ So that was cool. It was cool, because it was a big scene – I don't follow it enough – but the guy and the girl finally kiss, and I was like, ‘there's my song playing in the background.’”  

   While all the band members feel good about the decision to license the song for use on the television program, Will readily acknowledges that, a decade ago, they may have made a different decision. “It's changed,” he explains. “Ten years ago, it would have been like,  'No way, you can't do this.' But it's changed. You gotta do whatever you can to get your music out.” Attracting a slew of O.C. viewers to the Brothers and Sisters MySpace page might not be a direct ticket to astronomical record sales, but it does increase the band's profile and help their sound reach the world outside of Austin. 

   Even if the particular program the song made it into might be an easy target for cheap jokes, the track makes a fitting background for romance. There is something deeply romantic running through much of what Brothers and Sisters do. It's both homey and earnest – like memories of a relationship with someone who let you down gently enough that you can still look back fondly. There's also something a little AM radio about their sound. It nods toward the richest folk acts of the 1960s as it also draws on the Lynyrd Skynyrd-fueled vision of the Drive-By Truckers and the ethereal country fantasy of the Jayhawks. “Everything kind of comes together naturally [during songwriting],” says Morgan. “There's some folky stuff, and some power pop, and the country thing, but I think the thing that kind of runs through it is a directness or an unpretentiousness.” Their sound is nostalgic without being cloying, largely derived from the musical obsessions of the Courtney siblings and the individual musical styles of their band mates. “It's just Will's personality perfectly displayed,” says guitarist Ricky Ray Jackson. “And, if you meet Will, it's no surprise—he's exactly what I thought he would be like. That, to me, is the common thread of the songs. Everybody's personality is very well represented.” 

   The decision to self-release the record, like the decision to license “Without You”, reflects a certain attunement to changes in the way that music is being made and distributed and the ways that bands are finding audiences. As much as Brothers and Sisters may sound like peers of the Mamas and the Papas or Love, their business sense is situated squarely in the age of digital. Selling songs to teen dramas and tracking down band members on Craigslist have increasingly become the rules of the game for bands in the early part of their careers. This change, compared with the band’s backward-looking aesthetic, provides an interesting contrast. “The times have changed so much,” says Will. “The way we're going to experience music in the future is online, and bands are going to become successful through their shows. You've just got to accept that. It's kind of come back. The artists never made their money on the record sales anyway.”  

   Perhaps, at least in this case, the more things change, the more they stay the same.