SingOut, Spring 2010 Publication
Coming Home Review
By Chris Stuart
Anne & Pete Sibley are the recent first-place winners of Prairie Home Companion’s Great American Duet Sing-Off. They are also winners of my own personal Duet Act Whose Songs and Singing Bear the Greatest Chance of Being Sung and Heard a Hundred Years From Now. Great songs, great singing, scary-good harmony blend, and good people—if you like that kind of thing.
This is their fifth recording and each one has gotten deeper into my skin, so that anytime they put out something new it takes a place somewhere in my blood and marrow. I swear, if they record anymore, I’m sending them my medical bills. I’m hooked on them.
This album has 14 songs, of which 11 were written mostly by Anne, and some by Pete or both, one song by A.P. Carter, “Sow ‘Em On the Mountain,” a traditional song, “Wayfaring Stranger,” and a song by Mick Hanley, “Past the Point of Rescue.” There are no highlights on this album—it’s all exceptional, like a Jackson, Wyoming, high prairie, where they live. Anne Sibley has songwriting instincts that amaze and inspire. The song “Coming Home” seems to reach back and bring up memories from ancestors, and “Someone to Save Me” is now on my top-ten desert island list of songs.
Coming Home was recorded and engineered by Ben Winship at his studio in Victor, Idaho, and it’s breathtakingly well recorded—crystal clear, mixed with the interplay of vocals and instruments just right.
These folks should have a touring schedule of 300 shows a year, but I hope they don’t go that route. I want them there in Jackson, Wyoming, writing great songs, and recording gems, like this. They’re onto something up there and it’s a joy and pleasure that we can listen in.
Bluegrass Now, Clarksburg, WV, August, 2007
Band to Watch Column
By Dave Higgs
Anne and Pete Sibley’s arrival on the national acoustic music stage has been a refreshingly unconventional ride. But, then again, everything about this husband and wife duo from Jackson, Wyoming is refreshing and unconventional.
Even though they grew up in small adjoining Connecticut towns, the couple didn’t meet until their sophomore years in high school choir. “Yeah, I would say it was probably love at first sight,” Anne nostalgically recalls. “Music was really a powerful thing for both of us and always has been.”
The two pursued their classical vocal training throughout high school and college. When they immigrated to Wyoming in 1999, they were singing primarily show tunes and popular music. Bluegrass, old-time and folk music weren’t even blips on their respective musical radar screens! That intolerable state of affairs was to change a year later when they attended their first of many Jackson Hole Hootenannies. “We couldn’t believe how accessible the music was,” Pete recalls the excitement of their introduction to a whole different world of music. “We thought, ‘this is what we have been searching for because all of a sudden I could play my one or two guitar chords and Anne and I could sing together.”
The two returned the following week, having worked up a Phish tune and a song from a Florida college garage band, and have never looked back. “It felt like destiny for sure,” Anne states. “We loved how it was such a shared music that was so passionate and full of expression. We just ate it up.” With the help of a tape of duet singing given to them by a friend, Pete and Anne delved into the repertoire of such renowned performers as Tim & Mollie O’Brien and Gillian Welch & David Rawlings. They then enlisted the aid of their classically trained voices and put the finishing touches on one of the sweetest, most soulful and hauntingly beautiful duets in the business. “We’ve had to forget some of our classical training,” Anne grins. “We use the parts of it that are really helpful [and discard] the rest—like not singing on the consonants.”
Anne plays guitar, writes most of the original material and handles the majority of the lead vocal chores. Pete plays the guitar and clawhammer banjo and concocts the exquisite harmonies that are the hallmark of the Sibleys’ ethereal sound. “I love knowing that there are maybe three or four places I could be going to at any given time,” Pete sets forth the basis of his approach to harmony singing. “Sometimes I will come in singing more of the fifth or baritone part and then I can come in really tight to help the song build.”
When performed by such vocal masters as Anne and Pete, a spellbinding duo has the capability of taking the listener to places a full band could never dream of going. It’s a more intimate art form, capable of delivering devastating emotional payloads, truths which are not lost on the Sibleys. “I love the subtleties of the duo,” Anne shares her love for the genre. “We can hear each other so well with just these two instruments. It’s so great to just focus on the song, keeping everything simple.”
Anne & Pete focus on thirteen tracks on their latest project, Will You Walk with Me, recorded in Ben Winship’s Henhouse studio in Victor, Idaho. They cover a handful of tunes from the standard repertoire such as a sweetly rendered acappella version of “Calling My Children Home,” a bluesy version of “I Feel the Blues Moving In” (replete with some righteous harmonica playing from John Kuzloski) and an inspired version of “Gold Watch and Chain.” It’s the eight originals that steal the show, however.
Pete wrote “Rooster Call” in honor of an actual rooster that tormented them while camping at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas. “A few hours after pitching our tent, we realized the folks next to us had distinguished themselves and their campground by having live roosters walk around and crowing,” Pete grimaces. “In honor of that rooster, instead of putting him into the frying pan like other songs, I decided to [vent my frustration] on the banjo.”
The title track was inspired by Pete’s grandparents whose love transcended their separation caused by World War II and remained steadfast for over fifty years of marriage. “Can you imagine if you had to say goodbye to someone and not know if they were ever going to come back?” Anne asks plaintively. Anne wrote “Silver Ring” about her maternal grandmother who always knew how to make her laugh. “When thing were not always so light in life, she’d be there with humor, affection, stories and songs,” Anne explains.
There’s power in Anne’s words, which contain vivid imagery, a poetic lyricism and a storyteller’s skill. “We had this big burly giant of a man come up to us after hearing “Silver Ring” who told us he had just been bawling during that song,” Pete smiles. “That was the last thing I ever expected to hear from him, but just another example of how Anne gets into those universal truths in her music.”
“We’re always amazed by the connections we make with audiences,” Anne marvels. “We wouldn’t give up talking to people after a show for anything. They’ll remember a line in a song and want to know what CD it’s on. That just gives me goose bumps.”
The Times Argus, Montpelier, VT, March 30, 2007
Superior Young Traditional Duo Plays to Benefit Vermonters
By Art Edelstein Arts Correspondent
One of the best parts of being a music reviewer is receiving an album from a previously unknown performer or group that is of superior quality. This is the case with Anne and Pete Sibley who will perform Friday, April 6, at the Barre Opera House and Saturday, April 7, at the Big Picture Theater in Waitsfield.
The Sibleys, who hail from Jackson Hole, Wyo., are making their first East Coast appearance for three performances. We, in Vermont, are very lucky to have this talented duo here.
Normally opening acts get little reviewer attention, but in this case we’ll make an exception. When the Sibleys open for Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem at the Opera House it will be yet another excellent reason to get a ticket for a performance which benefits the Wellspring School. While Arbo and her band are fairly well known in central Vermont, and play a top-rated variety of bluegrass, traditional and contemporary acoustic music, the Sibleys would not normally be a draw. However, this couple’s music is superior and could stand on its own for a full concert.
This guitar and banjo duo performs bluegrass, traditional standards and original songs with an honest simplicity of style and strong vocals. Anne Sibley is one of the best singers to come out of this genre in a long time. Her alto pipes produce a tone as clear as a Rocky Mountain stream, and she emotes a lyrical warmth and deep understanding for the style of music she sings. There is no gimmickry here. Her lyrics are true to the genre she and her husband Pete have immersed themselves in.
On the opening track to their 2006 CD “Will You Walk with Me?” on “The Road Song,” the Sibleys sing: Love is like this ride/ Down a long and dusty road/ You close your eyes/ You don’t look back/ You have to go. Time stands still/ The wind slows down/ Around this hill/ I turn the bend/ And there you are/ Coming home again.”
This song has just a strummed-guitar accompaniment provided by Pete Sibley. There’s a lot of John Denver’s “Country Roads” in this song, but that song was one of the best to come out of the country/folk style.
The Sibleys keep their performance focused on the songs and vocals which are all strong. When the material is of the highest caliber the singer needs very little backup instrumentation and the Sibleys understand this. Pete Siblery plays banjo and guitar. He is a solid but not flashy player. Anne Sibley joins her husband on guitar when he switches to banjo, but her vocals are the focus of their performance.
The Sibleys follow in the footsteps of other duos such as Tim and Mollie O’Brien, Gillian Welch and David Rawlins, and Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin — groups who have kept the bluegrass/country duo style popular in today’s music. The Sibleys are as fine a duo as these better-known performers. Since they are young, in their 20s, I suspect it will take a few more years before they receive the attention they deserve. Until then, consider this short visit to Vermont a chance to hear one of the best of the up and coming duos in acoustic music.
Planet Jackson Hole, November 30, 2005
Anne & Pete Sibley 'Will You Walk With Me'
CD Reviews by Richard Anderson
I have no doubt that, years in the future, musicians will be covering songs written by Anne and Pete Sibley. Maybe not “Calling Me Back to Oklahoma,” the lone original on their debut disc, maybe not “Think of This River,” the title track from their 2004 release, but quite possibly something off “Will You Walk With Me,” their newest release, and most certainly, if the Jackson couple continues on their current trajectory, some song they pen in the coming years.
That trajectory has been a careful and steady refinement of their obvious talents, demonstrated once again by the 2005 release, once again recorded, mixed and mastered at Ben Winship’s Henhouse in Victor, Idaho. The 13 tracks show the results of a busy year of gigging and woodshedding. Pete is noticeably more nimble on guitar and especially the banjo on this album; Anne, the primary songwriter of the duo, is becoming quite good at sketching out a story with as few words as possible; even their vocal harmonies – always their strong suit -have grown tighter, warmer, more subtly nuanced.
A colleague quipped the title of this disc should have been “Get A Room,” and indeed the Sibleys can come off as almost too adorable and tend toward the precious. Anne remains deep in a phase of poignant reflection about life, companionship, the passage of time, growing old. It’s tempting to read something into the idea of two fresh-faced youngsters, the darlings of JH Hootenanny set, being so wrapped up in this old-time acoustic music thing; it’s a little Harold and Maude-ish. But, on the other hand, their love of this style of music making is so clearly genuine that, well, who are we to judge?
— Richard Anderson
Planet Jackson Hole, July 23, 2004 edition (Vol. 2, No. 32)
Anne & Pete Sibley, 'Think of this River'
CDs in Brief, by Richard Anderson
By now, just about every man, woman and child in Jackson Hole must have heard Anne and Pete Sibley sing a song or two. The two are ubiquitous performers – which is just what you need to do if you want to make a living playing music -and their debut CD of last year attained the Teton County equivalent of a certified gold record, having sold at least several thousand copies by now.
What might be less known is that the husband-and-wife folk duo can also pen a darn pretty song, coo. This won’t remain a secret for long, since their sophomore recording effort, “Think of This River,” focuses primarily on originals. And what great songs! Particularly the title track, which is as fine as a song as Gillian Welch, Nancy Griffith, Erica Wheeler or just about any contemporary folky could have written.
The labels “bluegrass” and “folk” have been applied to so many varied projects that they barely have meaning anymore, but the Sibleys strive for orthodoxy without contrivance, as evinced by “Rosaline” and “How Did You Find Me Alone.” On “These Hills of Tennessee,” the couple strikes an authentic, old-time chord, with Anne invoking just enough twang (and not too much) to bring to mind the Carters, early Loretta Lynn, or whoever may be your favorite country crooner of a generation or two ago. “Carry Me Over” finds them in fine, authentic gospel form, with four vocal parts thanks to a couple of their guest musicians. Throughout the disc, these guests include fiddler Ryan Foxley, fellow warbler Carolyn Groves Winkler and of course Idaho mandolinist Ben Winship, in whose Hen House Studio the disc was cut.
Other tunes fall squarely in the blue-grass realm — not newgrass or jamgrass or acid grass or whatever the latest, hottest hybrid is – and there are a few nice covers, as well. I especially liked Pete’s pensive banjo intro to Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More.” And the a cappella version of the traditional “Have You Seen That Turtle Dove” is almost other-worldly.
If you have been stranded on a desert island for the past two years or if you think you just don’t go for “this kind” of music, you might think again and find an opportunity to hear the Sibleys soon, because someday, I have no doubt, they’ll be too busy taking their act on the road to perform for the little old home crowd.
— Richard Anderson
