Maddie & Tae

CAA’s Blake McDaniel went to Taps & Tapas to check out one act, but found himself blown away instead by teenagers Madison Marlow and Taylor Dye – Maddie & Tae – doing a few songs, including what became last summer’s breakout hit “Girl In A Country Song.”

“These two girls get up and start singing and, the first note that they hit showcasing their harmonies, blew me away,” McDaniel told Pollstar. “You’d think they’d been singing together for 10 years. It was so tight, it was like they were sisters. It was like a slap in the face.”

Maddie & Tae’s music and video response to “bro country” struck a chord and earned the duo a ton of notice. But one novelty song does not a career make. A second single, “Fly,” dispels any thought that Maddie & Tae are merely a one-hit country confection. They are as deep as that hit was wide.

“Now it’s about expanding the music, to say more – and show people their depth as songwriters and vocalists, not to mention players,” Red Light Management’s Haley McLemore told Pollstar. “‘Fly,’ the new single, is the same kind of empowerment/coming of age song the Dixie Chicks’ ‘Wide Open Spaces’ was. This is what it means to be young, hopeful and ready to chase your dream,” McLemore said.

The excitement reached Rob Light, CAA’s head of music in Los Angeles, who joined the Nashville office in making a successful pitch to sign Maddie & Tae.

“You can teach people to sing, you can teach them to dance, you can teach them to write songs, you can help them make great videos; you can’t teach people charisma,” Light told Pollstar. “That ‘it’ factor that draws people to an artist is something unique. And the ones who have it, just have it. And I believe these girls have that thing.

“I could see more to them than one song. They had a swagger to them that said these girls are special. It’s real, we’re all going to discover them together, and they are going to be around for a long time. They’re an incredibly charismatic, really strong duo. I have really high hopes for them, where they’re going to end up and where they want to go,” Light said.

Dierks Bentley saw it immediately and worked to get them on his summer tour, according to McLemore, and that’s where they’ll spend some 40 dates next summer as well as flying solo as headliners or on co-bills.