Sam and Louise Sullivan are a brother-and-sister band based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They grew up in Oregon, singing various old American and British folk songs that they learned at a school on an old farm on the Tualatin River. In 2001, they moved to New York and fell in love with traditional music, Sam discovering the mandolin and the guitar stylings of the Reverend Gary Davis, Louise playing fiddle at a weekly Irish session in Manhattan and singing in the Young People's Chorus of New York. As a family band, they played everywhere from Carnegie Hall, to Housing Works Books, to sea shanty events at the South Street Seaport. As brother and sister, they endured long family car trips to Elvis Presely’s and Woody Guthrie’s birthplaces, contra dances in New Hampshire and old-time festivals back in Oregon. In college, Sam and Louise studied literature and visual arts, and then moved to Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly (and Sisterly) Love. In Philly, Louise started her own ceramics business and Sam taught high school English. At some point, instead of writing poetry, Sam started writing songs for Louise to sing. Home recordings led to more live shows, as they set out to make a pop band, to try their trad chops on songs in the tradition of the songwriters they loved. Their first EP, Sam and Louise was made using a USB microphone during the pandemic in between loads of laundry.
Then they met Kevin Basko and Emily Moales, who taught them how to use recording equipment and helped them switch on the amplifiers. Nowadays, they rarely demo their songs. Sam brings the songs to Louise often for the first time when they meet up at Kevin’s house, where they play the song with an acoustic guitar a few times and then cut the take right away. They made Papier Mache, their first full-length, on Kevin’s reel-to-reel machine in South Philly. Last year’s Sweet Enough gained traction despite all odds. Playing and recording with friends – Kevin Basko (Rubber Band Gun), of History New Jersey, along with Emily Moales (Star Moles), and the drummer Jem Seidel – what they’ve ended up with is a band that wants to make sell-out-the-arena pop songs, but can’t lose its trad chromosomes. Despite the bright lights, Sam and Louise can’t shake their love of folk ballads and 70 harmonies, or their admiration for bands like the Roches, Richard and Linda Thompson, singers and songwriters who know how to both rock and roll and hold the right note and performers who understand the pricelessness of blood harmony. It makes sense: their mother is a ceramicist who has created a self-taught, folk-inspired immersive visual language. Their father is a writer who has spent years chronicling the history and ecology of America’s highway rest stops and sludgy waterways. It seems like Sam and Louise are destined to carry on the family business. “It’s just really beautiful, well-crafted folk pop,” Jeff Tweedy says. “Just lovely. Lovely songwriting, lovely playing.” Their new record, Love & Devotion, has been stitched together across many late night recording sessions. Kevin forced them to sing through their ramshackle tunes, live and raw, and build out tracks that adhere to their intentional if wobbly cores. On Love & Devotion, Sam and Louise are trying – and maybe failing, but still trying, or trying in their own way – to go pop. No matter how hard they try, no matter how many digital elements they incorporate, they can’t manage to lose that sweet, old-time feeling.
