WARD THOMAS
The Hampshire country sibling duo have risen remarkably – from Radio 2 acclaim to number one on the charts. Here’s how they did it.
Hampshire Dixie Chicks devotees turn ears with their harmonising country and British. Head over heels: Ward Thomas’s Lizzy (right) and Catherine. “It’s like milk and tea, we blend really well.” “WE’VE NEVER DRIVEN A TRUCK… WE SHARE A FORD FOCUS.”
“We did our last A level the day before flying to Nashville,” recalls Lizzy Ward Thomas. “I should have cared about that last exam, but I didn’t.” From Petersfield, Hampshire, Lizzy and twin sister Catherine then found themselves in a room with some of Tennessee’s finest. “It was incredible how in tune they were with each other, like they spoke their own language,” Lizzy adds. “We recorded four songs one day, it was unreal.” Perhaps the girls nicknamed Scruff One and Scruff Two by their local convent school – for falling short of “neat and tidy” standards – were never destined for university. For starters, their parents, the singer and drummer of ’70s covers band The Swamp Donkeys, practised at home. But it was their Canadian cousin who moved over when the twins were 13, bringing Dixie Chicks and Carrie Underwood records, who is really to blame. “We grew up on a livestock farm in the Hampshire countryside,” Lizzy explains, “but when we heard the Dixie Chicks’ kind of storytelling and authenticity and honesty, that was it for us. We also discovered that country suited our voices.” Blessed with harmonies only blood relatives can muster, the twins started writing at their “artsy” sixth form college with songwriting teacher Matt Greaves; the demos reached music teacher Anne Bailey, a former Nashville session singer who secured the girls the session that produced 2014’s debut Ward Thomas album From Where We Stand. Soon, two Hampshire girls were topping the iTunes country chart: no mean feat. A deal with Sony followed, alongside new co-songwriters (including Shelly Poole of Alisha’s Attic). The new album, Cartwheels, “is influenced by country but not a country record, it’s much more a mix,” vouches Catherine. “It’s as much Fleetwood Mac and The Beatles as Dixie Chicks.” Lyrically too, Ward Thomas aren’t diehard country traditionalists: no songs about trucks, then. “There’s this running joke in Nashville, that if you sing about a truck, you’ll get a hit,” says Lizzy. “But we’ve never driven a truck… we share a Ford Focus. One reason I think they liked us in Nashville was we never pretended to be like them. We wrote from our British perspective.” There’s a predominance of country-proof heartache, though. “Often it was four girl songwriters in a room, and we shared stories of what we’ve all gone through,” says Catherine. “Inevitably you’ll come up with heartbreak stories. But there’s songs about sisterhood, anger, happiness, reflective songs. It’s called Cartwheels because there’s a cartwheel of emotions.” As twins inseparable since birth apart from six weeks last summer – “we took a break from music, and did our own thing” – isn’t there a good chance of sibling burn-out songs down the line? “You can be around someone a lot and drive them mad,” says Catherine. “But we’re so used to each other, we can’t imagine it another way.” Lizzy reckons she’s the “drama queen” and Catherine is “the rational one. It’s like milk and tea,” she concludes. “Very different, but we blend really well together.”