Two years ago, a quartet of sisters from the Georgia mountains went to Muscle Shoals, Ala., to make their first professional-style demonstration recording. They didn`t quite know what they would do with it after they made it, one of them recalls now, but they knew they needed to make one.
”We knew we wanted to make records, but we didn`t know the procedure,”
says Kathy Forester of the up-and-coming Forester Sisters.
Their Muscle Shoals demonstration recording activated a chain of unusual circumstances:
— First, a couple of well-known Alabama songwriters offered to become their producers.
— Then a song salesman who was a friend of one of their band members dropped off their demonstration recording at Warner Bros. Records in Nashville. Warner Bros. executives were so impressed that, in February of 1984, they called wanting to see the Foresters perform in person.
— Finally, the following June, three Warner Bros. executives came to see them sing at a show in Calhoun, Ga.
”They talked to us after that show,” Kathy continues, ”and said,
`We`re still interested. Why don`t you all come to Nashville and do a showcase (performance for record executives)?` At that point in time, we didn`t even know what a showcase was,” she adds with a laugh. ”I know. It`s pretty hilarious.”
The Forester Sisters–Christy, June, Kathy and Kim, whose ages range from 30 to early 20s–can be hilarious, but their story isn`t as funny as it is heartwarming. It affirms that it`s still possible for an act with nothing but talent to gain public attention in today`s cynical, big-money music marketplace.
Now the darlings of country radio, the Foresters are probably the first four sisters to assault the top of any American hit chart since the Lennon, Andrews and McGuire Sisters. They`ve seen their unheralded first Warner Bros. single, ”That`s What You Do When You`re in Love,” reach No. 10 in the country Top 100. Now their second single, ”I Fell in Love Again Last Night,” is in the country Top 10 and appears certain to reach No. 1.
Such quick success is remindful of that of another female group, the Judds, a duo that came out of nowhere a year ago to win the Country Music Association`s career-building Horizon Award. (They were signed by RCA following a similar live-performance showcase for record executives.)
The Foresters won`t win that award at next month`s 1985 presentations
(they didn`t make the final list of five nominees), but they already have the distinction of beating the Judds at one thing: the Judds` first single made it only to No. 19 in the country charts.
Like the Judds, the Foresters come from humble Appalachian beginnings, but they have none of the Judds` Hollywood overtones.
”We grew up and live in New Salem, a rural community of under a thousand people on top of Lookout Mountain,” says Kim Forester. ”Most people know about the end of the mountain where all the rich people live (Chattanooga, Tenn.), but the mountain runs a long way out of Tennessee down into northwest Georgia and northeast Alabama. New Salem isn`t big enough to have its own post office, so our mail comes out of Rising Fawn, Ga.
”We were born and raised on a farm, although it wasn`t a farm as such. It`s more of a farm now than it was then. It was only about 15 acres then, but now Kathy and her husband have 40 acres that, combined with Mother and Dad`s, comes to about 90 or 95 acres all together.”
They began singing together publicly at the New Salem United Methodist Church eight years ago. Three years later, when a friend`s friend offered to let them sing in his small Chattanooga nightspot, they began singing in nightclubs as well as their church, to the intense disappointment of their parents.
Playing club dates wasn`t easy, however, because the two older sisters were schoolteachers, June teaching regular grade school classes and Kathy teaching music. Kim was studying sociology at Emory University. Christy was studying anthropology at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.
The music they sang then was eclectic, but oriented toward modern country.
”For our basic bar jobs, we did a lot of Emmylou Harris stuff,” Kathy says. ”We did things off a couple of the more solid country Juice Newton albums, and we found a lot of stuff from Gram Parsons, Gail Davies, Bonnie Raitt . . . people along that line.”
They were particularly impressed, she adds, by the joint vocal work of Emmylou Harris and Sharon and Cheryl White of the Whites. Harris and the White girls worked and toured together so much for a while that their sound ”got pretty close to the way you sing when you`re sisters,” she says.
With no grubstake to fall back on, last year the Foresters quit their teaching jobs and their college careers to try to make it in the record business.
”We`ve all wanted to do it all our lives,” Kim recalls, ”but I guess I was the one who was most vocal about it. I mean, we all talk, but I`m the loudest and most obnoxious. All I ever wanted to be in my whole life was a musician. I would sing into my Dad`s electric razor when I was little, getting up on my knees on the bathroom sink so I could sing into the mirror.”
Quitting their jobs and educations was not an easy decision, however. June and Kathy had taught seven years (”we were a third of the way to retirement,” Kathy muses), and Christy and Kathy were nearing graduation.
But they felt they couldn`t go on being partly in the music business and partly out of it.
”Working all day, practicing all night and playing whenever we got the opportunity was driving us all nuts,” Kathy says. ”Both jobs were suffering, the teaching and the music, and we just decided, `Hey, look, it`s killin`
us.”
They aren`t out of the woods yet, of course. Although they`re rising quickly and recording their second LP, they still aren`t earning enough on the road to afford to lease a bus. For short hauls, they`ve been renting a U Haul RV, using a bus only for longer trips. In the habitual manner of the rurally reared, they say they`re ”taking it slow, not getting in over our head.”
Asked if it`s difficult for four females to get along together on the road, Kim laughs.
”I think it would be difficult for four anybodies to get along on the road after a while,” she adds. ”We fight sometimes and bicker sometimes, but we have eight years` experience.
”A lot of times we`ll have an argument that probably would break up a lot of groups, but we know if we give everybody some space, it`ll be all right tomorrow.”
Does a group of four women face any special problems playing nightclubs and bars?
”It`s been good preparation for this business,” Kathy says, with another laugh. ”You`ll have old drunk men come up and say, `Oh DARLIN`, I`m in LOVE with YOU,` and you just say, `Aw, you`ll wake up tomorrow. Just never mind.` There`ve been nights when we`d have a bunch of drunks in front of the stage hollering things like, `My name`s DA-vid, BA-by. Play something WILD,`
and you just think: `Oh, please don`t get onstage.` ”
`But a lot of times we`ll get special treatment because we`re women,”
Kim observes. ”Then sometimes (nightclub managers) will think just because we`re women we`re ignorant. On some things, we are rather ignorant, but for the most part we have good sense and we`re relatively intelligent, and they`re learning now they can`t just pat us on the head, send us off and say, `Do it this way, honey, okay?` ”
Why are the Foresters succeeding at winning almost-overnight recognition when so many other talented acts are failing? Like the Judds, a daughter-mother duet team, the Foresters offer the market a different sound and an engaging family image that is much warmer than just that of four people singing together. Also like the half-traditional and half-contemporary Judds, the Foresters` work can be taken two ways at once: new by younger listeners and, by older ones, something of a throwback to the `50s and `40s.
The Foresters themselves aren`t sure.
”I think,” Kim replies after a moment of contemplation, ”people may just be ready for a bunch of women.”
