Theo & Brenna have a new single which officially releases tomorrow, and we are pleased to give everyone a sneak preview at Bluegrass Today.
And before you remark that they make a handsome couple, Theo and Brenna McMillan are a brother and sister duet team from Kentucky who made the move to Nashville to pursue their musical dreams. The two share both singing and songwriting duties, and front a band of very talented pickers there in town, but for the new single, it’s just the two of them assisted by Gaven Largent on reso-guitar and Evan Winsor on bass.
Brenna takes the lead on Let Us Breathe Again, a song they wrote together when the music stopped in Nashville – and everywhere else – when local and state authorities closed things down in reaction to the virus.
She told us that she wrote the first draft, and finished it with her brother’s help, and sees the song as a sort of shutdown diary.
“We spent the first month or so of the shutdown in our house looking out at the world, kind of in disbelief and confusion for awhile. We got to watch a robin build a nest, have eggs, and feed her babies right on Theo’s windowsill. That was a lovely distraction and encouragement for us. There was so much fear at the beginning of the virus, and so many people had to adjust their lives and finances to survive. So it’s a song of the times for the most part, just observations on what I saw happening around me.
I refer to personal situations of my friends in the song as well, but the overview is people scrambling to try to school their children or switching jobs, scraping by, not being able to see relatives, stores closing right and left. It was mayhem, as we all know!
The last verse is a hopeful mindset towards some sort of return to normalcy… and to me, that’s going to all of my favorite bars in Nashville and listen to my friends play and watch folks dancing. I was thinking about the Local, on West End, where strangers have the chance to come hang out at a real honky tonk and dance with whoever they want, to Chris Scruggs or Timbo’s music on Sunday nights. And that is just something unheard of now, everyone is afraid of strangers. So it was a grasp at people being okay with each other again after all of this.”
It’s a lovely and thoughtful song, and we second her desire to see things get back to normal soon.
On one level, Theo & Brenna are seeing some return to normalcy, as they have a number of shows this weekend in and around Nashville. You can catch them on Friday night (9/25) at The Station Inn, on Saturday at The Local, and on Sunday for a fish fry at Grace Baptist Church in Springfield.
Let Us Breathe Again will be available tomorrow wherever you stream or download music online. Radio programmers can get the track now at AirPlay Direct.
