Matney Sisters: Transcript

Siouxland, Anglo-American gospel and boogie-woogie
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JAMIEE: Our music is very personal. One of the things, I think I feel the closest to God when we're singing.

I'm Jamiee Haugen and I am one of the Matney Sisters.

We all grew up in South Sioux City, Nebraska, and the Sioux City, Iowa, area. My sister Pam lives in the Sioux City area, and Chris and her husband live in West Des Moines. And then Shelly and her husband live in Dakota City, Nebraska.

PAM: We really are sisters. Jamiee and I are the oldest, and we drop down about five years for Chris. And then about six years under Chris came Shelly.

When Jamiee and I were eight and nine years old, our father started teaching us to harmonize. And then when Chris was old enough to join in, she started singing with us three-part harmony. And then Shelly was—Shelly is actually a lot younger than Jamiee and I. But when she was old enough, then we started all four singing, but actually didn't sing professionally until we were—I believe the year was 1984 was when we decided to do something a little bit different than just singing together in the basement and at the family reunions and, you know, taking our music and sharing it with other people more than we did otherwise. Always from the start we agreed that we all wanted to keep our priorities: our family first, our husbands and, you know, families first.

Saturday nights, well, that was—with four girls, that was hair-washing night and pin curls. So while that was going on, Dad—I remember he always had the Grand Ole Opera playing. And so we would gather around the radio and listen to the scratchy, crackly Grand Ole Opera and heard so many of the old, old time: Ernest Tubb and Hank Snow and Hank Williams.

Dad's siblings all played guitars, you know, and learned instruments when they were young. And Dad oftentimes performs with us and, you know, plays background music with us and sings. And Mom, although she has a great voice, would never be caught on stage singing or performing with us.

I was thinking about Dad performing with us up on stage, and Mom always sitting in the audience, a lot of times giving us the thumbs up, sound good, thumbs down, sound is too loud or the instruments are too loud. But not only that, when we're performing, she's just always, always been there for us, more or less sitting on the sidelines not being heard vocally, but I called it in a song that I wrote "Singing to us with her heart." She's just always been our silent singer. (Singing)

We like to include everyone in as though we're just sitting in a rec room, and they are able to be a part of what we're doing. And I think that inclusiveness kind of comes from our mother.