Life & Work with Leanna Price of The Price Sisters

Today we’d like to introduce you to Leanna Price. Them and their team share their story with us below:

Music has always had a resounding presence in the lives of twin sisters Lauren Price Napier and Leanna Price. Growing up, both of their parents sang traditional and old-time country songs. As the sisters grew up hearing duet harmony, they naturally became accustomed to singing together themselves.

Lauren and Leanna were gifted instruments for their eighth birthday and began taking lessons at age nine, though they didn’t make as strong an interest in music until their mid-high school years. The girls then began attending as many festivals and workshops as possible.

Both were recipients of Bill Vernon Memorial Scholarships at the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in 2014 and attended the annual IBMA conference for the first time that fall. In 2017, Lauren and Leanna each completed their Bachelor’s degrees in Traditional Music from Morehead State University.

During the spring of 2016, the girls were signed to Rebel Records and subsequently recorded and released an EP that August, thus beginning the pursuit to tour professionally as The Price Sisters.

The Price Sisters have now performed at numerous venues and festivals across the United States as well as in China, Ireland, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The sisters released their first full-length album for Rebel, ‘A Heart Never Knows,’ in the spring of 2018. In 2019, they hired their first official touring band and hit the ground running.

While Lauren and Leanna front the band and are recognized for their twin-sister harmony singing, each band member is an accomplished musician in his or her own right, having garnered accolades from those in the business whom they admire.

The band is made up of young multi-instrumentalists and vocalists and has been showcasing a traditional, yet fresh and creative sound to audiences throughout the past couple of years.

In 2016, Lauren has also become known as an accomplished instructor in her own right, she was the youngest and first female instructor invited to teach at the Monroe Mandolin Camp for the years 2017, 2020, and 2021, and just instructed courses at DelFest Academy, a precursor to The Del McCoury Band’s monumental Memorial Day weekend festival.

Leanna has been a featured artist in Fiddler magazine and presently works as an apprentice in set-up and repair at Nashville’s The Violin Shop. Banjo player Trevor Holder was awarded first place on the banjo at the prestigious Old Fiddlers Convention in Galax, VA, in 2019. Bobby Osborne II, on bass, is no stranger to bluegrass music, having made his career thus far playing music with his father, Bobby Osborne.

Conner Vlietstra is not only a talented guitarist and vocalist but is skilled on many instruments and well-versed in material stemming from the pre-bluegrass and country music catalogs.

Bluegrass Unlimited magazine has featured articles on The Price Sisters on a number of occasions, and the group has garnered significant press through such outlets as No Depression, For Folk’s Sake, The Bluegrass Situation, and the revered Eddie Stubbs Show.

After the release of the Sisters’ first full-length record in 2018, the girls and band performed roughly 120 dates throughout the year, with most of the summer and fall dates centered around the promotion of the album.

The start of 2019 brought about a series of opportunities that were both exciting and challenging. Over a period of 10 days, The Price Sisters, for this occasion, Leanna and Lauren only, were contracted as 2019 artists in residence with the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s ‘Bluegrass in the Schools’ program. During that time, the sisters performed at 24 elementary schools throughout the Owensboro, KY, area.

The performances centered around interactive, highly engaging, and participatory assemblies with students ranging from 4 to 14 years of age. In February, The Price Sisters headlined both nights of the historic University of Chicago Folk Festival and conducted an afternoon workshop with emphasis on sibling vocals and blending harmony singing.

In the fall of the same year, The Price Sisters were nominated for the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Momentum Band of the Year, as well as being selected as an IBMA showcase act the same year.

In 2019, Lauren was nominated for Momentum Vocalist of the Year, and in 2020, for Momentum Instrumentalist of the Year. Leanna was nominated in 2020 for Momentum Vocalist. The Price Sisters band ends the year in 2019 with a month-long tour across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland as part of “The Bluegrass Jamboree.”

In 2021, the group was invited to be part of the lineup for the California Bluegrass Association’s “Turn Your Radio Online” web concert series, which The Price Sisters recorded live from Nashville’s ‘world-famous’ Station Inn.

The band held a busy touring schedule throughout the year, with highlights including being among the lineup at the first Delfest “Lite” festival, making their debut at the Bluegrass Hall of Fame’s ROMP festival, and being featured again as an official showcase act for 2021’s IBMA World of Bluegrass.

Currently, 2022 is shaping up to be the best year yet for the group, with a debut performance at DelFest in Cumberland, Maryland, festivals across Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Colorado, Washington State, and the band’s first tour of Canada in July and August.

Currently, Lauren and Leanna are most excited about their newest recording, which has been in the works since late last year. Working together with Ronnie McCoury on production, this first project to feature the entire band is highly anticipated.

Look for special details to be released on that soon!

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
To quote Flatt and Scruggs, there have certainly been times where the road has indeed looked “rough and rocky,” but we are thankful to have met several friends along the way who have continually offered their help and support.

Navigating the change of scenery throughout the course of the pandemic proved somewhat difficult as was the case for most, but we are blessed to still have the ability to be out here doing what we love to do on the other side of it all.

Since 2019, we have had a couple of personnel changes within the band, but feel that the group of guys working behind us currently, Bobby, Connor, and Trevor, are without a doubt the best we have ever had the pleasure of making music with.

Each of them is so talented in their own right, and collectively, we feel that we are beginning to really carve out a bluegrass and roots sound that is unique and distinguishable. That is extremely exciting, to say the least, and we are especially looking forward to the release of some new music, happening very soon.

Throughout recent years, Lauren and I particularly have had the honor of getting to know and work with a handful of our biggest influences; Lauren, Mike Compton, Ronnie McCoury, I, Jason Carter, and Raymond McLain.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I feel that Lauren and I are best known for our duet style of singing. Brother duets were an extremely important part of early roots and country music, and we take a lot of influence from the singing styles of the Blue Sky Boys, the Delmore Brothers, and the Monroe Brothers.

We are blessed in the fact that we have grown up with a built-in singing partner, and I honestly do feel that being twins has aided us in our singing. Lauren and I oftentimes will move the same way and literally can finish each other’s sentences – we’re so in sync with what the other is doing, I think it does carry over into our phrasing and inflection while singing.

Lauren is very well known for her prowess on the mandolin, particularly carrying on the style of mandolin playing popularized in bluegrass music by its founder, Bill Monroe. Monroe especially valued the playing of his longest-tenured fiddler, Kenny Baker, whose playing was characterized as a perfect match for Monroe.

Lauren and I both draw large influences from that vein of bluegrass music and have for the most part stuck with that style. We aren’t by any means afraid to try something new but are trying our best to use our influences as teaching tools and jumping points for our own music, not just to copy one particular sound.

How can people work with you, collaborate with you, or support you?
We are very active on our Facebook page as well as our Instagram, and enjoy working with audiences on both platforms.

Our tour schedule mostly consists of music festivals and theater-style shows, and all tour-related and professional information can be viewed on our website, www.thepricesisters.com.

We love interacting with our followers on social media, and it’s so much fun especially when new faces will reach out to us following a performance.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thepricesisters.com/
• Instagram: @thepricesisters
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PriceSistersBluegrass/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWtxXMSygio

Image Credits:
Marc Shapiro Media, Jay Strausser Visuals, Tara Linhardt, and Jason Herman