With its pastures, farmhouses and strawberry fields, Middlefield could fit easily in one of America’s heartland states.
The Connecticut town proved to be a perfect incubator for country music and a fitting home for Presley & Taylor, a sister duo that calls its brand of country “neo-traditional.”
“It’s so unexpected, two girls from Connecticut singing country,” said Taylor, 18, the younger of the two. “But it’s our roots — it’s who we are.”
Now on tour, the sisters return to Middlefield on Saturday, June 17, to perform at the Lyman Orchards Strawberry Fest.
The two grew up in a household steeped in country music lore. Weekends meant a trip their grandparents, where they sang favorites like Hank Williams’s “Your Cheating Heart,” Taylor recalled during a recent telephone interview. She performed the song as a 5- year-old at a local talent show.
Family remains a motif of the duo’s music, and the sisters’ first trip to the local recording studio was a family “coming-of-age ritual,” said Presley, 19. In a few short weeks, they had recorded seven tracks, which they published as “All Kinds of Beautiful,” their first EP. Today, their parents — former country singers themselves — handle the sisters’ bookings.
Their manager declined to give the sisters’ last names for privacy reasons, citing her clients’ young age.
For the past year the sisters have split time between Connecticut and Nashville. Presley is a rising junior at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield; Taylor, who graduated from high school earlier this month, will join her there in the fall.
Trying to carve out a foothold in Nashville, the mecca of country music, has meant juggling musical dreams and schoolwork obligations. It’s been tough, the sisters admit. They estimate that they spend every other weekend away from home, performing in Tennessee or on the road.
Presley said she’ll never forget their first performance in Nashville two years ago. “I called my mom after the show and told her, ‘I want to go back and keep doing that,'” she recalled.
The Lyman Orchards show is just one stop on a statewide series; the sisters will be in Bolton on June 28 before embarking on a fairground tour with stops in North Branford, Bethlehem, Hebron, Somers and Spencer, Mass., to round out the summer.
As a genre, country is hyper-local, with favorite places becoming a framework for songs.
In the song “My Hometown,” which Presley said the two wrote just before she left for Sacred Heart, she cites the stone church where her family worships, the field where they hung out in high school, an oak tree where “Ricky kissed me while lifting me off the ground.”
“Where it all began, is where I’m bound,” the chorus goes.
The Lyman Orchards Strawberry Fest is Saturday, June 17, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and features pony rides, pick-your-own strawberries and a pie-eating contest. Free admission; lymanorchards.com. Presley & Taylor take the stage at 1 p.m., presleyandtaylor.com
