Katherine and Kristen Veayo — aka The Veayo Twins — are 16-year-old identical twins from central Maine who have achieved a bit of fame in the three years of their playing live. They recently won the 2012 MAMM SLAM — Maine’s High School Rock Off — beating out 11 other bands for $1,000 in cash, recording time, gigs, studio tours and TV and radio appearances (like 92Moose, WKIT and WTOS radio). Kristen is a guitarist, songwriter and vocalist while Katherine is a drummer, keyboardist and vocalist — they have a seven-song, self-titled CD out. In a recent telephone interview they talked about that release as well as the show they’ll bring to the L/A Arts’ Dufresne Plaza in Lewiston at 6 p.m. Aug. 31.

Q: One of my all-time loves in music is sibling harmonies — a quality you young ladies have in abundance. Is it something you have to work at or does it just come naturally to you?

Kristen: Well, the harmonies just come naturally. Katherine is the one to be talking to because she’s always had a knack for it.

Katherine: Ever since I was little, she’d sing to CDs and I’d want to sing the back-up line so I’d sing behind her — I learned how to do it that way. We always did it that way. She’d always sing the lead and I’d sing the back-up vocals. I love doing that and since we’re twins it’s kind of easy to hear each other’s emotion and where we want to flow and so on.

Q: The seven songs on your CD . . . those are all your own compositions, correct?

Kristen: Yeah, I wrote all of those.

Advertisement

Q: When you do a show, in addition to those seven songs do you have other originals and possibly some cover tunes, as well?

Katherine: We actually do do a couple of covers — “You and I” by Lady Gaga, “Free Fallin'” by Tom Petty — you know, modern covers. And we do older ones, too.

Q: How do you pick the songs you cover? Is it something that just resonates with you?

Kristen: We kind of choose ones that have a good line in the song like ones that are…

Katherine: Catchy!

Kristen: Yeah, catchy and ones that a lot of people would know.

Advertisement

Q: Now, Kristen, you say you wrote those seven songs — are you writing all the time?

Kristen: Well, it depends. I can’t sit down and just write a song, the songs come to me. One came to me in a dream recently, which was kind of cool, but right now none have really come to me — hopefully, some will come soon.

Katherine: We have a lot of other originals that we haven’t recorded yet. We have a few more that we play in our set. We recorded seven of our eleven songs and she actually has some more put away that she hasn’t brought out yet which we’re going to do pretty soon.

Q: If it’s alright with you two, I’d like to talk about the show you’ll be doing as part of L/A Arts on Aug. 31. Do you know how long a set you’ll have?

Kristen: I’m guessing that it’s probably going to be a couple of hours but I’m going to have to check the schedule on that.

Q: So it will be the seven songs you recorded, other ones you’ve written but not recorded and some covers, correct?

Advertisement

Kristen and Katherine: Yes, exactly!

Q: Who do you have as backing musicians?

Katherine: Sometimes we’ll just play as an acoustic duo — just me and Kristen — and other times we’ll bring in some other musicians that we know. For example, when we did Alive At Five in Portland we had Alan Jones on lead guitar and Mike Scarpelli on bass. At another show we did early last summer we have Adam Parvanta — from Headstart — on drums and we had Easton Morang from Winthrop play lead guitar.

Q: Now, the Lewiston gig — will that be with other musicians or your acoustic duo?

Kristen: We’re thinking about having a full band for that gig.

Katherine: But we haven’t really decided. We’re also thinking about doing the acoustic duo in Lewiston.

Advertisement

Kristen: Yeah, we’re kind of caught in between those two things. We haven’t made a decision yet.

Q: Is there anything you would like to pass on to the folks reading this article?

Kristen: Just to tell people about our website — theveayotwins.com — and they can check out all of our upcoming gigs and events there. It tells where they are, as well. Oh, and we also have a Facebook page they can check out.

Lucky Clark has spent over four decades writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@megalink.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.

filed under: