The Secret Sisters live at the Birchmere in Alexandria, VA review

Laura Rogers had some advice for the sold-out house on Sunday night. “If someone has hurt you, forgive him. That’s the only way you’ll begin to get past the pain.”

“And maybe don’t sing about him every night,” her sister Lydia added.

Laura agreed, then launched into “He’s Fine,” naming Davey White – the man who broke her heart years ago. It became the basis for the Secret Sisters biggest hurt.

Laura Rogers and Lydia Slagle have been singing together for their entire lives and have been putting out albums since 2010. At the Birchmere in Alexandria, VA on Sunday, they put on a typically funny and touching show for 400 fans.

The Secret Sisters perform intimate show at the Birchmere

“He’s Fine” comes from their third album, the Brandi Carlile-produced You Don’t Own Me Anymore, which helped revive their career after they had been dropped from their label in 2015. They also sang “Mississippi,” the “murder ballad” from the same album because, as Laura noted, “all good bands have a couple of songs in which everybody dies.”

Secret Sisters shows feature excellent songs and beautiful harmonies, as well as a stream-of-conscious monologue from lead singer Laura, who gets deeply personal about relationships, mothering, and how her microphone smells. (Spoiler alert – it’s not good). When she starts rambling, her younger sister Lydia, who sings harmony and plays guitar, tries to rein her in.

Early on, they sang “Cabin,” from their fourth album Saturn Return, which had the misfortune of being released in February 2020, just as COVID was about to shut down the world. Laura expressed how disappointed they were that they could not tour in support of that album, but took great pride in the fact that “Cabin” would always be remembered as “the song that lost the Grammy to John Prine.”  Prine’s final single, “I Remember Everything” won that Grammy for Best American Roots Song in 2021.

The sisters also gave fans a rollicking cover of Fiona Apple’s “Heavy Balloon," but the rest of the set was devoted to their latest album Mind, Man, Medicine, released this Spring. They opened with the western swing of “Paperweight” and closed with the heartfelt acceptance of “Never Walk Away.” In between, they played seven other songs from the new album. They ranged from the sexy (“not an adjective we often here associated with our music”) “All the Ways” to the lovely harmonies of “Planted.”

Laura apologized for singing the second verse of “All the Ways.” The album cut has Ray LaMontagne join her on the duet. She then proceeded to go on a several-minute monologue describing LaMontagne’s voice – “like a warm biscuit dripping with real butter” – before Lydia again cut her off so that they could sing.

For much of their set, Laura and Lydia were backed by a steady, unobtrusive trio. Jacob Navarro added some nice accents on slide guitar while Jesse Proctor and Navid Eliot kept things crisp on drums and bass respectively. They added a lot to the range of the evening, especially on the up-tempo Apple cover and the slower country blues of “Same Water.”

But the sisters may have been at their best during the three-song break that came in the middle of the set, when the background players left the stage, and Laura and Lydia crowded around an old-fashioned radio mic (the bad-smelling one). The innocent beauty of “I’ve Got Your Back” and the wonder of parenthood revealed in “I Can Never Be Without You Anymore” are best suited to some simple orchestration and angelic harmonies.

Jon Muq, a gifted young songwriter, born in Uganda and now residing in Austin, Texas, opened the evening with a brisk nine-song set that featured his expressive high tenor and his charming, self-deprecating wit as he told stories of his journey from Africa to the USA, and of the creation of the songs he performed.

“When I moved to America, I was weird,” Muk explained. “But fortunately, my friends were honest.” Muk released his first album earlier this year, produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. He is worth watching.

The Secret Sisters have been worth watching for over a decade now. This was the end of their brief Summer tour, but they will soon be hitting the road again in support of Ray LaMontagne, where Laura promises, you can hear the buttery biscuit of a voice joining in on “All the Ways.”

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