Larkin Poe on Fame and Family

Megan and Rebecca Lovell, the sisters behind Larkin Poe, and I sat down with me at their very first Bourbon & Beyond. They were newbies in the business, in awe of all the giant acts. Things have certainly changed as they came back one Grammy richer and had a packed audience.

What hasn’t changed with Larkin Poe of the dedication of these two to keep it family first. They genuinely enjoy spending time together singing and helping out with causes. One of those is mental illness, something clear in the macabre poetry of their famous ancestor, Edgar Allan Poe.

It was really fun to sit down with them six years after our first conversation, and talk about all the success they’ve had since then.

Catching Up with Larkin Poe

Marcia Frost: I sat down with you in 2018 at your first Bourbon & Beyond. How is this one different?

Rebecca Lovell: Right.

Megan Lovell: Oh, my gosh, it feels like a different lifetime. Truly.

ML: Unbelievable. It's really good to be back. We're coming off a Grammy win this winter and an Americana award (Duo/Group of the Year) this week. We're just feeling a lot of gratitude. Happy to be back.

MF: It seems like everyone still talks about your music in different ways… country, rock, blues… You just won the Grammy for ‘Contemporary Blues.’ How do you describe your music?

RL: We call it roots rock'n'roll, which is intentionally vague. We’re very multifaceted. We have a lot of musical loves and want those to be represented in the music that we make as a whole, so being able to pop around between our bluegrass roots, the southern rock that we grew up listening, the blues that we adore, and trying to put our unique spin on it.

Especially from writing from a female perspective, I feel is a little bit more of a rarity in this specific space of guitar music, which is ever changing. Thank God we're having more and more women's writing voices express. At the Americana Awards this past week we saw all of the talent and the majority being female was just rewarding.

MF: I love the fact that you two are still close because there's so many bands with siblings and they go on the road and, you know, 20 years later, they're still not talking.

ML: I think anybody with a sibling knows how fraught the relationship can be, but you know, we are very much on the same page. We love the same kind of music. We want to connect with people in similar ways so that makes it a little bit easier and lets us be able to remain close and to be on the same page and to continue making music.

RL: It requires the commitment to keep coming back to the same page, because I think what you're describing too, with sibling bands, it's very easy to grow apart and to perceive your differences more so than your similarities. I think we are very different people.

We understand what a gift it is to share this type of closeness and to have someone who really, truly knows me better than anybody in the world.

RL: Everybody coming together for the musical experience.

MF: Now you're on the big stage and you're featured and it's just a different kind of fun.

Do you still like coming here to Bourbon & Beyond?

RL: Anytime that it's just a hop, skip, and a wobble up the road from our beds! It's like such an incredible experience to play.

ML: The one thing that never changes is the love that we feel for music and the love that we feel for performing for people. We're very thankful to be able to get out on the road and be at a lot of festivals this year. The energy is just unmatched.

MF: Festivals are just so different. And this one with the food and the bourbon kind of has another twist to it. Do you like bourbon?

ML: I do like bourbon. I don't find myself drinking it too much. I don't drink much in general, but I do enjoy a nice bourbon every now and again.

MF: What surprised me this year that I didn't see too much previously is a lot more bourbon cocktails. They're not pushing the ‘you have to just drink it straight’ and they're making some interesting cocktails.

What's can we expect on the new album? I know it's not being released until January.

RL: We have released two tracks so far. We've released the first single “Blueforia” and then on Friday we released “If God is a Woman,” which is going to be really fun. We're going to debut another couple tracks from the record before the release.

ML: And I think from single one to two to three we're going to be doing exactly what you were describing, with us being very multifaceted. It goes from the Southern rock track with “Bluephoria” to a bluesy track with “If God is a Woman and our next single is definitely leaning back into our Americana roots

MF: I was speaking with the Group One Million Strong this week and they said that you were big supporters of their movements with mental illness and substance abuse. Can you talk a little bit about that?

RL: Yeah, I think that the music industry at large can isolate individuals into spaces where the reliance on substance and the holding off in depression is sometimes seen as like an appropriate cope. Opening up the conversation, shedding light, so that people don't feel alone so that people can find communities that will help support them and make healthy choices for their mental health. That's something that we really celebrate One Million Strong for.

We have a song called Mad As A Hatter which we wrote for our grandfather. So, it’s definitely a very near and dear cause to our heart.

MF: Your videos are simply focused on the music, you don't have any wild and crazy things, but you look like you're having fun. Even though you're not dressing up and bringing in all these actors and all this kind of stuff. Are they fun to do?

RL: We do enjoy it. We enjoy making videos, especially because we always treat the videos very homespun. I think it's an act of trust to like the minute the cameras in your face to try and remain yourself. We've always shot the videos ourselves or had the videos shot by people that we know and have intimacy with. That allows us I think to be able to present our authenticity to our fans directly.

ML: It's one thing that we can say about Larkin Poe. There's not a lot of smoke and mirrors.

Kind of ‘What you see is what you get.’ It's a very authentic thing, you know, and we like it that way. I think it allows us to connect with people.