Nobody knows where they're going at the beginning of their life like that. I feel like way too lucky. You were really accepted by a rock audience wholeheartedly. When the sisters sing together, there's this thing that happens. There's something magical about when siblings can put their voices together. It's a god-given kind of spookiness. It is kind of spooky. Yeah, it is a slight beauty, charisma,

sass, fire, a voice, and not just a voice,

a voice that means something to people.

It sounds great on the radio.

And you just want to roll down your window, you know,

and chew gum or something.

Nancy, thank you for being here. I'm happy to be here. Um, it's such a big story. So I'm going to start in a very obvious spot. I'll try to avoid all the obvious, but it seems such a watershed moment when the Beatles start appearing at it. Sullivan, how many musicians they inspired to say, I want to do that. Completely. And you and your sister kind of had that moment. That was their, the same lightning bolt that hit the planet, you know, hit us as well as musicians. Yeah. And we, we were like, we became the zombies for guitars, you know. Yeah. Were you already playing? Or was that...

Well, musical family.

Yeah. So kind of the Von Trabs in a lot of ways. We were all singing together in the car. Yeah. And ukulele's and pianos and harmony. Yeah. So you're already in a musical mindset and then you see that and you think, okay, that sort of organizes where I want to go. That's completely organized, you know, yeah, focused in our attentions on the rest of our lives, what we wanted to do. But what? Well, so lucky that way. What was it about the guitar for you that, you know, because, you know, guitar players are a particular breed. Yeah, they're good. Yeah, because thank you. It's a kind of nerdish thing that goes on. What's up? Do you have a guitar pick on you? I think I do, actually. I'll try it.

It's great, yeah. Okay. Yeah, a steely for a purie. Yeah. It's kind of like trading marbles. What was it about the guitar that could spoke to you? I have a musical facility, I guess, I'm just a musical person born into it with parents, you know, that taught us harmony singing and piano lessons and flute and clarinet and so with the Beatles showed up, it was like, must have guitar and I just took to it, you know, I just, I just, it absorbed me. It still does. Yeah. But when I was nine, it was like, I must, this is play purpose is to be, to learn how to play every Beatles song. Wow. And every hit song that was on the top 40 radio station, you know, the terrestrial radio station. And you know, I learned how to read music a couple times, but it never, I never needed it really. I just use your ears when you have good ears, you have good ears. So you can imitate what you hear and approximate what you want to hear. But the guitar was, I got the worst guitar of all time, was the first one, $30 rental from the bandstand music store down the street. And it was a liel. I was going to say, remember the brand. Yeah. A liel, okay. It was like a three quarter size plywood guitar. Mm-hmm. It was like a dowel neck, kid. Yeah, yeah. And the strings were about that far off the fretboard. Yeah. So it was like, it was life without F. You know, you cannot play F. There's a guitar player joke. I know exactly what you mean. No bar chords allowed. I didn't play any Fs for like the first 10 years of my life. This is too hard. It's a true, truly. But Anne got a good guitar from our grandma, because we were all interested in being like, not like the Beatles. We wanted to be the actual Beatles,

have a band, be like the guys.

Not be the guys.

Not like the guys or girlfriends of the guys would be them.

And her guitar was playable.

So I would sneak off with her guitar.

And she'd get really pissed off at me.

You took my guitar, give it back. Yeah, so yeah. It's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it for her vocal facility like God given or from the great spirit. It is kind of frightening how it came from from the great, it came from above, you know her. But it is kind of frightening as somebody who sings and you sing that it sounds so easy for her. I know. She hits like crazy notes and it's just like. She's just like pyrotechnically effortless. And even if you listen to your first record, which we'll get to in a second, but it's she's already there. It's not like you don't hear somebody in development. No, no, it's just sorry. But you hear, well, I'm an expert on the topic. Yes, please. But during the course of our little run here for 50 years, one time, you can hear the Elton John influence and her accent of singing on like Reboot Danny. She'd go like, you know, she'd have like that little country slang kind of vocal accent. Yeah, right. And I get that. And then of course rubber plant was massive influence, you know, on it. But not pretty-slick, not, you know, the females of the time, they were more R&B or psychedelic and pre-slick. But like all great artists, it sounds like her no matter what it is, yeah. And she, we'd have, my parents would be having a party downstairs. And it's like, come on down and girls, come on down and entertain, you know, entertain the party. Oh, okay. So they go, and do your Ethel Merman imitation. You know, and she'd sing Hawaiian wedding song like. Yeah. Like with the big, like there's no business like show. Yeah. That was the was the at the merman sound yeah that as a little kid she was like able to belt you know and just entertain well Judy Garland had the same thing you know I think Judy Garland started on stage when she was four yeah and I think by the time she was six she was appearing on you know yeah big old school 2000 and see theater stages. Born in a trunk. She had that big voice, right? She just had that projecting, you know. But all of the kind of emotional muscle behind it too, you know, because Anne was kind of the ugly duckling, you know, the little fat chick with the braces. And so I think a lot of her pain was part of the muscle that she put behind her vocalizing to prove the point, you know, that she was kind of loveable. And she proved it. She totally proved it. So correct so correct me if I'm wrong, because you know, you have to do your research, but the band viewpoint. Yes. You were in viewpoint at some point. We were called the viewpoints. Okay, the viewpoints. Yeah, because we were a little collective of four, um, high school, all female, right? All four girls. I was in junior high and they were in high school. And we were doing Bob Dylan protest music, right? So like four little white chicks from suburbia called the viewpoints, you know. Oh, you okay. It's a very, what a name now. I'm not like any. We're such rebels, you know, with our skirts and our jackets that match the Beatles' uniforms actually, because our mom would sew us those uniforms to match the Beatles' outfits. So yeah, we were a little folk quartet called the viewpoints, singing about Vietnam and stuff like that from middle-class, lower middle-class suburbia. So this would be like late 60s? Yeah, yeah, right after the Beatles. Wow. Yeah. Right before the big summer of love. Yeah, I saw some indication where you also would play solo to solo acoustic. Is that? Yeah, I knew I was always going to be an ants band because of bands like the viewpoints and the little Rapunzel we had a band was for a while and then we were but she's been four years older than me she got into bands that had drums and amps and stuff first and they she was able to play at places that served alcohol. I see. So I had just hanged back for a couple of years and I decided even though I knew I was going to join her band obviously I went to university first to kind of declare my independence as an individual from being her little shadow for all those years. And so I'm real happy I did that because I read all about, you know, the Austrian ski and I got into Gerta and Nietzsche and all that college girl stuff. When you love Todd Rungren stuff like that. Every college girl must love Todd Rungren. Yes. A wizard and a true star is Todd Rungren. Right. Right. I think that's interesting though. So you had a sense of destiny with your sister. What was your relationship like then? I mean, because you know, the focus always is on the relationship within the context of the band. Right. Because that's where the most people go. Yeah. But, but what was your, like, if there wasn't a band, if there wasn't music, what was your relationship like then? That's an interesting question I've never been asked, you know, but, um, because my own self-definition has been and side-kick ever since I was born, basically, we have a third sister who's eight years older than me. And so I'm the youngest, but she and always was kind of like the initiator. She instigated like before we even had rock bands or the Beatles came along. She was like, well, let's make a play in the

garage. the initiator, she instigated like before we even had a rock bands or the Beatles came along. She was like, well, let's make a play in the garage and you know, like charge, charge for Kool-Aid and have the neighbors come over and have a little comedy show. And we did, our dad had a real to real Sony 2 track and we'd make little comedy records and I still have those.

For the documentary, there's coming up, but you know, it's really fun, clever stuff that young people are capable of when given the right tools. We had guitars and we had humor. We had a solid family with musical people, you know, that we, family that came out of.

And I think, I mean, even when I got real angsty and the hormone poisoning started to kick in, you know, when you're like 16 and 17, you know, and you get, you know, it was like, oh, God, my family's too happy. Like, I'm not cool enough because my family's tightened together, you know, because we're military. Yeah. And so we stick together like a troop, you know, and pull the wagons in a circle of a little love circle in our family. Um, because we had to move and move and move and move and be the newcomers everywhere. And have you, our little musical tribe. And so I'd be like really embarrassed that my parents were not divorced. You know, so like, I don't have anything to really. Not a trauma. Yeah, not enough trauma to like whine about, you know. So, so we had a really solid family. Yeah. For like being little productions and the joy of our parents like helping us out making costumes and all that stuff. I was gonna ask you because you have these experiences of living in Taiwan and I think Panama or like. Yeah, Panama. It's not everyone's experienced to kind of live internationally very young. Yeah well I was born into I I came after Panama but they've lived in the Carolinas and Taiwan when I was really a kid. Yeah do you have any memory of those times? A lot of home movies that jog your memory I think sure yeah, I think I do remember a few things. Yeah Pretty well actually a lot of sense memory and the water buffalo and you know the oh there was a compound a walled-in safe compound where the military families were living where there was there shooting outside the walls and stuff like that. And there was a hired staff inside of our compound to help us cook in the nanny. But there was typhoid and there was all kinds of you know all kinds of tropical sudden downpours and and just a really rich sense of memory of being a little kid you know that humidity and turmoil and stuff. Color and color and smell and yeah. I know. So your father was a Marine. Yeah, he retired as a major. And your grandfather, Brigadier General. Then his dad retired as a forestar Brigadier General. That's crazy. John Bushrod Wilson, senior. Isn't there a military base named after your grandfather? I don't know. I read that somewhere. Really? Yeah. Well, if AI says it, then I'm going to believe that. I don't know. I mean, some things. I read stuff all the time. That's not correct. But I thought that's an interesting detail. They said it. It was it was it out there. Oh yeah, there is. There is. You're right. We got a little flag, um, momentum that they gave us out there. That's why. Yeah. And yeah, when my dad actually passed on the, the, um, the color guard came out to the house and did the salute and all that of that in the proper way. But yeah, my granddad, my uncle, my dad, a lot of military, a lot of Marines in the family. From my mom's side, the World War I military, a lot of...

A lot of fighters, a lot of warriors in my family. So was there any, as you're moving into music in this intense countercultural time, kind of like what we have now? Yeah, okay. You're coming from a traditional military background. Right. And yet you're also in step with your generation.

You're singing protest songs. Was there any consternation on your parents part that you're going to misrepresent something or was that it was that it played at all? Well, you know, it was really amazing how my parents evolved through the late 60s where Vietnam got more like a dirty war.

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