Taking the country music scene by storm, sisters Kelsi, Kassidy and Kristyn Osborn, a.k.a. SheDaisy, are a talented trio enjoying the rewards of success with their platinum-selling album, The Whole SHeBang. The debut, which was released over a year ago, is still riding high on the Top 10 of the country music charts, and SheDaisy proudly continues to sell out concert halls, garner rave reviews and impressive nominations, including a Grammy, an American Music Award and most recently, a CMA Horizon Award. In town to promote their newly released Christmas album, Brand New Year, on Lyric Street Records, we spoke to SheDaisy about the whole musical shebang.
     InsideCx: Ten years ago, you had a record deal on RCA and actually recorded an entire album that was never released. What happened?
     Kristyn: It fell through because they didn't know what to do with us. But we just picked up where we left off and kept going. We knew we had the rest of our lives ahead of us.
     Kassidy: I think it was more about the fact that country music wasn't ready for a bunch of young girls. We were teenybopper young. Looking back, we're grateful it didn't happen, because it was a little before our time and I think it would have killed our careers really early had something happened.
     InsideCx: You didn't shop around for another deal until 1997. Why did you wait so long?
     Kelsi: We wanted to hone our skills and take advantage of the time we had. We did demos and we also went to school and had normal jobs and lived like normal people. We got deeply embedded in the community and that was important to us. Musically, we didn't play out a lot. We were never weekend warrior club people where we would do three sets a night. We'd do showcasing and short sets and that was enough for us to know that we wanted to move on to bigger venues. We wanted to be in the studio and create something that would cause a demand for us to go out there and do those kinds of gigs.
     InsideCx: Was it relatively easy to get another record deal?
     Kristyn: Lyric Street was probably the fourth place we went to. There's a stigma attached to female groups, so we were up against a lot. We went to a couple of other places first, but at that point The Dixie Chicks hadn't come out, so the other companies just looked at us and said, „Oh, it's three girls, it's not going to work." They hadn't seen anything like this work for a long time. Plus, our music was really progressive and really bold. We were saying things that women have been wanting to say for years, but putting those words to music was another thing. On top of that, label heads are mostly male. I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but Lyric Street just jumped in with both feet. They listened to us and knew it was what they wanted. They were very liberal, and a lot of women work here and make very important decisions. It's a good place to be.
     InsideCx: Kristyn co-wrote the songs on the album. Do the sisters get
involved in the process at all?
     Kassidy: As soon as any song is written, Kristyn will normally bring it to us and say, 'What do you guys think?' She's really good about it and we're really honest about how we feel, and she knows what will work for us.
     InsideCx: When it comes to songwriting, what works best?
     Kristyn: Originally, I started out writing a lot of my own material, and then when we got a record deal, it was too many people involved in the process. Now I've kind of weeded people out and I end up writing stuff with my friends. I've also tried to find the time to go back to writing on my own a little bit. It's important for me to do that because sometimes I get caught up in the whole scheduling appointments to try and write and I'm not really good at writing on command. It's more about what inspires me and what I've been thinking about and what I'm going through.
     InsideCx: Vocally, is it easy deciding who is going to sing what part on the songs?
     Kelsi: We try to make sure to have it be interesting and focused. For the Christmas album we took turns singing lead a lot. It's funny, because individually we all have our own sound but when we sit down and sing together, we blend.
     Kristyn: Being family is what makes it easy. What makes it complicated is that we want to try and make sure that every arrangement that we do is fitting for the song. It gets more complex because we want to be very creative. We treat our voices like instruments and come up with parts that are sounds or rhythms. There's a lot of different things we do with our voices. It's not just about lyrics and vocals. It works out really nice.
     Kassidy: We can never do something normal or predictable. It has to be different. We go crazy. If it takes two days to figure out half the song or whatever, then that's what we do. It's a lot of hard work.
     InsideCx: What has been the most memorable experience for you so far in your career?
     Kelsi: I think for all of us it was the Grand Ole Opry. We were able to sing on stage for the first time and our families happened to be in town with us. It was an overwhelming experience to be able to walk out on that stage and feel the spirit of the people from years before. To know that there were so many musical legends who performed there before us was amazing.