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Born and raised in Newfoundland, the Ennis Sisters have climbed aboard the national stage the old fashioned way through hard work and a passion for what they do. Although "ennissisters" is the girl’s major label debut, they have already sold thousands of records as independent artists. In 1997, their debut album Red Is The Rose was named Folk Album Of The Year at the Newfoundland and Labrador Music Industry Awards (MIA). A year later they won Group of the Year and Female Artists of the Year. Two years after that they were walking up to the winner’s podium again but this time to accept the award for Album of the Year for their recording 3. Those recordings also earned the girls national recognition when Maclean’s Magazine included them as one of the Top 100 Canadians to watch and YTV chose the Ennis Sisters as top five finalists in YTV’s 1999 Young Achievers Awards.
Like most families in Newfoundland, the Ennis household was always full of the traditional music of home and Ireland. And like other homes on the island, the reverie of kitchen parties always led to song. But Maureen and Teresa Ennis had aspirations beyond those parties. "Whenever we’d have career days," Maureen recalls, "I would draw myself on a stage. Being a singer is all I ever wanted to do." To that end, Maureen and Teresa were taking singing lessons when their teacher suggested that Karen should join them so that they could enter the Family Music West competition. Although she wasn’t a natural at first, Karen worked even harder than her sisters eventually becoming the one they could all count on to hit the hardest notes.
Maureen picks up the story, "We didn’t think that this was going to be a career for us. It was supposed to be fun. Five weeks later we made all the money back that we had put into the record. Soon after that the record sold-out and we had to press some more." That first album not only gave them a best-selling calling card, it also introduced them to producer Mark Murphy who has since become Maureen’s longtime songwriting partner. Encouraged by their success at home, the Ennis’ took their show to Halifax in 1998 to showcase at the East Coast Music Awards. This marked the first time the girls had performed outside of Newfoundland and Maureen still remembers playing in that room full of music industry executives as "the scariest thing of my whole life." "Dad taught us a lot about business and trust of each other. We eventually even learned to let go of each other." One by one, the record companies called but the girls’ father said not yet. lose their place in line. The family decided that they’d be fine with that, if it was true. But they believed in themselves and that’s all that mattered. Eventually the labels stopped calling. All but one that is. "From the beginning, Warner always said, ‘Take you’re time. Whenever you’re ready," Maureen states appreciatively. "Every month there would be a call just asking how the family was, how my songwriting was going and how Teresa was doing in school. That meant a lot to us."
What was not supposed to be a career had now definitely turned into one. The Ennis Sisters could now be seen on stages throughout North America. They have made appearances at numerous festivals including The Stan Rogers Folk Festival, the Montreal Celtic Festival, the Winnipeg Folk Festival and the prestigious Merlefest in North Carolina. In the spring of 2000, the Ennis Sisters were ready to finally take the next step. Their parents, who had guided their career to this point and had traveled with them to all of their shows, were ready to step aside. The group signed on with manager Andre Bourgeois who had already been instrumental in building the international success of Natalie MacMaster. In February 2001 everyone’s patience paid off as Warner Music Canada and The Ennis Sisters signed a deal at the East Coast Music Awards in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. That same weekend they were awarded an East Coast Music Award for Roots/Traditional Group of the Year. With the contract signed, the girls got work preparing for their major label debut.
The Ennis Sisters entered Great Big Music studios in the spring of 2001 with producer Tim Thorney and emerged a few months later with a shimmering recording of eleven new songs that highlight not only the group’s soaring vocals but the immense depth of Maureen’s songwriting skills. "I was afraid to fail as a songwriter," says Maureen somewhat matter-of-factly, "But I was in a songwriting workshop with Bruce Guthro and Great Big Sea’s Alan Doyle who complimented me on my songs. When you get recognition from your peers, your confidence is bound to pick up."
"When I hear what our songs mean to people it makes me want to sing them even better," says Maureen. "It makes me want to reach as many people as possible." |
Hi Maureen, Karen & Teresa! Thanks for allowing us to do an interview with you for The Celtic Cafe - Canada.
When did you decide
that you wanted to be singers for a career?
It was never a planned career. We grew up in a
very musical family. Our father plays the accordion and our mother
plays guitar and piano. There was always music being played in our
home, whether it was coming from our parents or whether it was
coming from the radio or the record player. We were immersed in Traditional
and Irish music from start so it was only natural that we picked it
up. We eventually ended up in voice lessons and our teacher decided
to enter us in the "Family Music" category in the Kiwanis
Music Festival. Someone heard us sing there and asked us to sing our
first "real" gig for the Welcome Wagon for pregnant women.
We were each given some clothes hangers and thought we had made it
big time (HA!HA!)
It just kind of snowballed from here and we were asked to play for many different festivals and functions. We eventually convinced dad to let us make a CD, promising him that we'd go door to door to sell them if we had to. The CD was released in 1997 and to our amazement, sold out of the first shipment of CD's within 5 weeks and made dad's money back. We did a showcase at the ECMA's in 1998 and were approached by all the major record labels in Canada. I guess it was probably at this point that we took a serious look at the possibility of making this a career. While we didn't sign any deal at this point, we worked as independent artists over the next three years to test the water and see if it was what we really wanted to do. And, of course, our love for the music and the career grew stronger. In the fall of 2000, we signed on with Andre Bourgeois and then signed a deal with Warner Music Canada in 2001. For someone who is new to your music, how would you describe it?
We find it hard to describe our sound. We treat each
song the way it needs to be treated. That may mean having one song
sounding more pop than country and another song sounding more country
that Celtic. We try to keep the music very broad and let the song evolve
the way it needs to.
What musical background do each of the
members have? Do you all have formal training?
Apart from being in a nurturing home environment that gave us our start in music, we were all involved in school choirs and bands, and we were all, at some point, in private voice lessons which allowed us to fine tune our singing. Do you have any other musicians in your family? Are your parents musical?
Music is a huge part of our Irish culture. It was
passed down to us from generations before. I remember us sitting
around at kitchen parties as little girls and hearing our
grandfather sing an old Irish song and seeing our grandmother
playing the piano. We wanted to be just like them. Of course, as I
mentioned before, our father plays the accordion and our mother
plays the piano and guitar so we were always amazed by their musical
abilities as well.
Maureen, how long have you been writing songs?
I've been writing music since age 8. However,
I never had any confidence in myself as a song writer or even thought
of myself as a song writer until recently. While I do still
write music on my own, since 1999 I've been doing a lot of co-writing
with Mark Murphy. We've been able to build a great writing
relationship that seems to work very well for the Ennis Sisters.
What instruments does the band play?
Although Maureen usually only gets to play guitar
on stage, she also plays piano and fiddle. Karen plays tin
whistle, flute, bohdran, and she step dances. Teresa is the
professional hand clapper and she also adds step dancing to the group.
Congratulations on your signing with Warner Music Canada. When did this all come about? Have you been pursued for a while or did this just happen all at once?
We were first approached by the record labels in
1998 at the ECMA's in Halifax, NS. We had a main showcase and
after our set, to our surprise, we received a standing ovation from
the audience. When we got down off the stage, there were
representatives from most of the major record labels backstage to meet
us. It was very overwhelming and one of the most exciting and
memorable moments of our career. Of course, we wanted to sign a
deal right away but our Father, who managed us at the time, suggested
we wait until we were absolutely sure that this was the route we
wanted to take. At the time Teresa was still in high school and we
hadn't really had much experience with touring or any other aspect of
the industry. Even though it was disappointing for us to not
sign a deal right at that time, we found that waiting was the best
thing we could've ever done. We needed that time to grow
musically and emotionally. Warner Music Canada stuck with us
through those couple of years and they understood that we needed that
time to grow as people and as musicians. We'd get a phone call
from someone at Warner every now and then just to ask how we were
doing.
Then, in the fall of 2000 when Andre Bourgeois began to manage our career we felt we were ready to sign a deal and try to take this career to the next level. We finally signed a deal with Warner Music Canada in February at the 2001 ECMA's in PEI, and it was one of the most exciting times in our lives! We ended up with a great deal that above all gave us creative control over our music and our career, something we probably wouldn't have gotten three years earlier. We're in control of our career and our destiny. How does it feel now to be on a major record label instead of being independent?
We reached a certain point in our music career
where we knew that if we wanted to take things to the next level, and
reach as many people as we could with our music, we had to get a deal
under our belt. We were finding it very difficult to function as
independent artists, because there is so much work involved and very
limited resources available to do it.
Warner has made it so much easier for us to be able to concentrate on the music and not have to worry about getting the CDs in the stores and our music out to the radio stations. They have marketing and promotional teams whose job it is to try and get as many people as possible across the country to know who you are and what you're about which hopefully will translate into album sales and more fans. They have been able to get our first single played on most radio stations across the country and get our video added on both CMT and MMM!! We really didn't understand about how this worked until we walked into one of the local record stores here in town and saw a lager than life poster of us in their window. We couldn't believe our eyes and couldn't hide the excitement either. Warner have been nothing but exceptional so far. We are so lucky to have them on our side. We feel we are being taken more seriously as artists and women in the music industry which is very important. How do you choose the tunes you're going to record?
Maureen is the song writer of the group.
What happens is she'll write the tune (or co-write it with Mark
Murphy) and she'll sing it to us at a rehearsal. Usually, if
Karen and I are excited about it right away, it's a keeper and it
has to stand strong with the three of our voices and a guitar.
That was the formula we used on our latest recording, "Ennissisters",
and we are very proud of how the recordings turned out.
Because the lyrics were written about our life experiences, we can
relate to the songs, which makes them easy to perform.
After having so much success on the east coast independently, the rest of Canada is now able to hear you with "It's Not About You" receiving extensive airplay across the country, both on radio and CMT. Where were you when you first heard this tune on the radio and saw it on CMT?
We were in our living room, in the middle of a
little house cleaning (a very rear thing for us :-) ) when we heard
the single played for the first time on the radio. It's funny, because
even though we'd heard the song a million times already, there was
something very exciting and exhilarating about hearing it come through
the radio. It was finally starting to happen after months of hard work
and patience!! Well, we all started to go nuts and ended up making an
even bigger mess in the house.
Seeing the video on MMM and CMT was even more exciting than hearing it on the radio because we knew it was being seen on a national level. We were sitting around Mark's house, in the middle of a rehearsal, when it came on CMT for the first time on the "Screening Room." We were way too wound up afterwards to continue rehearsal and ended up calling all our friends to see what they thought of it (we had alerted everyone about it before hand :-) ). Where was the video for "It's Not About You" filmed? The video was shot in Toronto back in September. It was our first experience with video and it happened to be a night time shoot. We sang the song more times than any of us can remember and had to drink lots of coffee to stay awake and alert! We had a great director and crew working with us and made that first experience a great one. Can't wait for the next one. Do you feel that you had to change your style of music with your new CD on Warner Music?
We never felt pressure from anyone to change our
style of music or the direction we wanted to take it. We all felt
strongly about doing an all original album because it gave us a
chance to show people the real us. All the songs were written about
us, for us, and we are able to give people a glimpse into our
personal lives, something that wouldn't have been possible had we
decided to do covers.
The formula for the songs was very simple: if they sounded good with three voices and a guitar they were recorded. It was decided very early on in the recording process that we'd treat the songs the way they needed to be, and if that meant not having fiddles and whistles on every song, then that's the way they'd go down. We tried to make the background instruments as broad as possible so the songs could be played on CMT and on MMM, on A/C radio and on county radio. It's funny but because these songs are the way they are, we were able to open for the pop act Sugar Jones just a month after opening for the Chieftain's and we will be doing as opening spot for the Wilkinson's tour in January, who are a country act. What do you enjoy to do when you're off the road? What have been some of the highlights of your career so far?
We have been grateful for everything that has
happened to us so far in our career, both good and bad. We are so
fortunate to be able to experience so much and we don't take
anything for granted. So, while it's hard to pick out any one
event over another, I think we'd all agree that our showcase at
the 1998 ECMA's was one of those moments we'll never forget. It
was our first time playing off the Island and we had no idea how
other people would take our music. After our set was over, not
only did we receive a standing ovation, but we were approached by
all the major record labels in Canada. We were on cloud 9. It was
at this point that we took a serious look at making this a career.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years?
We'd like to be still doing this in 5 or 10 years. We
never set unreasonable goals or goals that are too far out of reach. We
stay focused on the task at hand and do what we have to do at that
moment in order to get the next place. We are very aware of how fickle
the music industry and are very grateful for every opportunity we get to
perform. We will be patient and make sure we are making the right moves
and the right decisions along the way. We would love to make this a
career, just like any other person who makes their job a career.
When will fans across Canada get to see "The Ennis Sisters" on tour? Is there a release tour planned for this new CD? From November 20th until December 9th, we did a promotional tour across Canada to let people know who we are and what we're about. After Christmas, in January, we'll be touring Canada with the Wilkinson's. We're really looking forward to getting out there and playing these new songs for everyone and we couldn't have wished for a better way to do it. (note: The Wilkinson's Tour has been postponed until later in 2002 when The Wilkinson's new CD is ready...keep an eye on The Ennis Sisters Website for new dates when they are announced). Is there a place that you have yet to tour that you would like to visit?
We would all love to go to Ireland some day. We'd love
to visit the place where our ancestors are from and experience the place
we've grown up singing about and hearing our whole lives. That would be a
dream come true!!
Now for some more entertaining questions!
What's your favorite movie/TV show?
I think we all agree on three shows that we love.
We love The Simpsons, Frasier and Ed. Ed, if you're reading
this, please call :-)
Who are your favorite singers/instrumentalists?
I think it's safe to say that we're big fans of
all kinds of music but of course we have our favorites. We're
all huge fans of The Corrs and The Dixie Chicks. Teresa is
obsessed with Bachelor Girl , Maureen is a huge Sheryl Crow fan and
Karen loves everything!
Best of luck with your career in the months and years to come! Maureen, Karen & Teresa (The Ennis Sisters) |
"[The show] came closest [to a rocking party atmosphere] with the winsome Ennis Sisters of Newfoundland, who whooped and leaped about in the show's few uptempo party tunes, Love Is Teasin' and the sea shanty Haul Her Away. Newly signed to Warner Records, the trio showcased stunning harmonies on the Dermot Henry song Summer In Your Eyes, and Maureen Ennis's moving ballad Rainy Days, adopted by Newfoundlanders as an anthem for parents who have lost their children." - Marla Cranston, Halifax Daily News "Maureen Ennis's Rainy Days proved the most touching song of the evening. Leading their threefold, sweet, young voices she sang of separation and loss with powerful simplicity. The Ennises are a cheerful trio, bright and bouncy and full of excitement which spills over the footlights like water over a dam. They deserve, and are surely soon to get, a complete program on their own." - Stephen Pederson, Halifax Herald "As the first harmonies filled the air, I was immediately transplanted to a Celtic world of wonder…. to a humble little cottage at the end of Ennis Road, glistening in the snow, filled with family, friends and happiness. Desperately grappling for intelligent musical critiques, I finally just allowed myself to be carried away by the beautiful voices of the Ennis trio, Maureen, Karen and Teresa. Young talent, pure and delicate harmony and musical effervescence - these were thoughts that mingled in my head as I listened to the familiar sound of Silent Night. The notes of flute and acoustic guitar washed over me as a surprising selection of lesser-known Christmas tunes unfolded." - Newfoundland-Labrador.com, Review of "Christmas on Ennis Road" |
For the latest tour dates, please visit The Ennis Sisters website - http://www.ennissisters.com |
For more info on The Ennis Sisters, check out their website at http://www.ennissisters.com Fan Mail: Ennis Sisters c/o ABC Entertainment Inc., 1426 Highway 202, Kennetcook, Hants County, Nova Scotia, B0N 1P0, Canada. Email: music@ennissisters.com Canada Booking Info - S.L. Feldman & Associates, Vinny Cinquemani & Richard Mills, Tel: (416) 598-0067, Fax: (416) 598-9597, Email: mills@slfa.com, Website: http://www.slfa.comUnited States Booking Info - Herschel Freeman Agency Inc., Herschel Freeman, Tel: (901) 757-4567, Fax: (901) 757-5424, Email: hfreeman@herschelfreemanagency.com, Website: http://www.herschelfreemanagency.com To order The Ennis Sisters CD's - in Canada, visit HMV's website, in the US, visit Portland America's website. Listen to &/or purchase MP3's of some of The Ennis Sisters Music at EFolkMusic.com If you're interested in more Canadian Celtic Music, visit The Canadian Celtic Music Website - http://www.islandviewcreations.com/canadacelticmusic |
In music there’s
nothing quite like the sound of three voices singing together in perfect
harmony. And these days, there’s nothing quite like the Ennis Sisters.
With their major label debut, "ennissisters," Maureen, Karen and Teresa
showcase their beautiful triad of voices on eleven of Maureen’s
wonderfully crafted songs.
But we’re already getting ahead of
ourselves here. Let’s go back to those voices. The Ennis Sisters are
family. They were raised by parents who not only encouraged their
ambitions but taught them not to be too anxious and full of themselves. In
a world in which newspapers and magazines seem to be full of stories of
stage parents who have pushed their children to strive for success to
satisfy their own failures, the Ennis’ can be held up as parental role
models.
"Our first gig was playing the Welcome Wagon
for Pregnant Women," says Maureen. "We sang ‘Red Is The
Rose’ and one other. We loved it and we wanted to play as often as we
could. A lot of times we’d sing for food vouchers that would give us a
choice of hamburgers or fries."
After the showcase the room was abuzz and the
girl’s dressing room was filled with suitors from every major record
label. The next day they performed at a packed Halifax shopping mall as
word had already spread around town about these three voices. Each of the
record label presidents were there too.
Later that same year, their second recording,
Christmas on Ennis Road led to their own CBC Television Christmas Special,
which was broadcast throughout Newfoundland and Labrador. The record was
released on the heels of their performances in the Celtic musical Needfire
at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto in the summer of 1998.
In the time since they first started performing
together, Maureen had become quite a prolific songwriter. As they entered
the studio, the girls made the decision that this record, unlike the
others, which were a combination of original and traditional material,
would be all original songs written by Maureen and Mark.
The Ennis Sisters have plenty of reasons to be
confident. The release of their major label debut (
