Credit: Photo by John Anderson

Secret Sisters

Zilker Park, Sept. 16

Some acts shouldn’t play festivals. The Secret Sisters, two women with an acoustic guitar passed between them and only one CD out, couldn’t capture the imagination of a healthy assembly no matter how pretty their harmonies or charming their banter. At the end of their hourlong set, the audience was but a handful. It certainly wasn’t the songs. Time-tested classics from Hank Williams, George Jones, the Everly Brothers, and Patsy Cline; a couple of obscurities from Skeeter Davis and Patience & Prudence; and a few originals made a neat stylistic fit with a sound that brings to mind 1958. Thus it’s no surprise that T Bone Burnett champions the Alabama natives; they’re a natural fit with his O Brother, Where Art Thou? aesthetic. An intimate venue – or even Bass Concert Hall, where they wowed a full house opening for Ray LaMontagne and Levon Helm last fall – and not a open field would’ve been more appropriate for what they so gorgeously accomplish.

This article appears in September 23 • 2011.

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