The Wolff Sisters will make their central Maine debut July 30 during the “Waterville Rocks!” concert series. Photo by by Denis Semenyaka

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (heaven forbid!), I really like chatting with folks for the first time, especially those who will be performing up in our fair state. Such is the case this week as I made the acquaintance of Ms. Rachael Wolff via the phone between Sweden, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts. Seems that she and her two siblings, Rebecca and Kat a.k.a. The Wolff Sisters, will be heading up our way to be a part of the “Waterville Rocks!” concert series on Friday, July 30, as they support their latest album, “Queendom of Nothing.” Reached at her home in the south of Boston, Rachael was more than happy to field my inquiries, like my opening salvo…

Q: Let me begin by asking, have you ever played in Maine before?
Wolff: We have performed up in Maine. It’s not our usual spot, it’s hard to break in up there, but we’ve played at One Longfellow Square a couple of times and then we’ve played at a few smaller spots just as a trio at some restaurant. But One Longfellow is the biggest place we’ve played up there.

Q: Now when you come up to be a part of the “Waterville Rocks!” concert series, will that just be as a trio, too?
Wolff: That will be the full band and the cool thing about the shows we’re doing this summer is that the rhythm section we have is from a band up in Maine: Chris Ross and the North. So it’s Ryan Curless on the drums and Caleb Sweet on the bass, that band, Chris Ross and the North, was just taking a break so we were friends with those guys and we said, “Hey, come play with us this summer!” and they were like, “Yeah, let’s do it!” … it’s a fun time with those guys.

Q: So there’s definitely a Maine connection here, as well.
Wolff: Yeah and they’re the ones who got us to Waterville.

Q: Well, I’ve been on your website listening to songs and familiarizing myself with what you do. I hear Americana, country, but also the blues, as well. I don’t want to pigeon-hole you but how would you describe your sound to someone who is unfamiliar with your music?
Wolff: That’s the thing with our band, it’s always hard to tie down to one thing because there are so many influences from each different sister coming into the mix; but I would say basically that Americana or folk-rock is kind of what we call ourselves. It’s not so much country but I think Americana encapsulates all of that.

Q: Yeah, it’s a good genre, it reaches far enough so everybody can be included at some point.
Wolff: (Laughter) Yeah.

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Q: Well, let’s see, when did “Queendom of Nothing” come out?
Wolff: That came out in October of 2019, a few months before everything shut down.

Q: Are you working on something new at the moment?
Wolff: Yes, because we didn’t get a chance to tour on that album we spent the pandemic writing and we were actually able to figure out how to get in the studio safely, and we recorded three songs. We released one song already as a single called, “Boston Town,” which came out on May 1st. The two other songs will be released, one in the summer and one in the fall, as singles, and then the goal is to get back into the studio and finish recording and maybe put out a full album in 2022.

Q: Now when did the three of you get together as a band? Was it back in 2015?
Wolff: We’re three sisters so we started playing as a trio very young, like as teenagers, just at local coffee houses or like high school talent shows, all this sort of small-town stuff. Then the full band outfit and the more rock ‘n’ roll sounding group started in 2015, so bass and drums entered then, that’s the year that we say it all really started.

Q: Well, all told, I think you’re going to like playing in Waterville and after the lack of live music for so long, folks up here will be really happy to have concerts happening again.
Wolff: Yeah, and we’re definitely excited about it. It’s just hard to break into Maine and get an audience so we’re glad that it’s a cool outdoor show where people can just walk over and check it out.

Q: Now when you do get out and tour is it just in the New England area?
Wolff: We’re always bouncing around. Obviously the past year for everybody was such a weird thing so we didn’t do anything, except for a few livestreams, but actually the past two weeks we were in Connecticut, we were in Rhode Island, we were in New Hampshire. So we’re always bouncing around when we can just to play different venues, in the summer we do a whole bunch of outdoor stages, like Waterville.

Q: Do you ever get out of the Northeast region?
Wolff: In 2018 we went on a big run down south to Knoxville and back up just along the East Coast.

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Q: Now, looking at the photos in your EPK {Electronic Press Kit}, who’s who?
Wolff: On the beach photo it’s Rebecca on the far left, she’s the oldest sister and she plays acoustic guitar and sings. Kat is in the middle and she plays all the keys, any organ or piano or accordion you hear, that’s her, and I’m on the far right and I play electric guitar and I sing, and Kat also sings. So everybody sings, we take turns on leads and we all sing harmonies. And the picture with the hay in the background it’s Kat on the far left, I’m in the middle with the hat and then Rebecca is on the far right.

Q: Just out of curiosity, what can folks expect from your performance that day?
Wolff: It’s going to run from 6 to 8 p.m., I believe, and the full band will be there so it’s going to be a really rocking Americana set with a lot of sister harmonies, all original music, a lot of storytelling in the songs. I think maybe it’s like the Rolling Stones mixed with Brandi Carlile mixed with Neil Young, that sort of stuff happening. We grew up listening to all that older 60s/70s music and it just comes through in our music, we don’t try to copy it, we just let it influence us, we were lucky that our parents just would listen to that stuff all the time and so we got exposed to really cool stuff that I don’t know if we would’ve found out about otherwise.

Q: Is there anything, Rachael, that you’d like me to pass on to the folks reading this article, especially seeing this is an area debut for The Wolff Sisters?
Wolff: Just maybe that we have the new single, “Boston Town,” out on all major streaming platforms and anywhere you can buy music on line, that’s the biggest news we have right now. And we’re very excited to be coming up there to perform.

Lucky Clark has spent more than 50 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.

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