The Kinleys

Now, some 20 years later, as the musical that inspired The Kinleys to pursue a singing career makes a massive comeback effort, the country duo is making a well-earned splash of their own with their freshman release, Just Between Me And You.

In the beginning, though, the sisters did have some doubts. Heather said they were worried that the image of them being twins would be harmful to their career. “We were scared at first that people would see the twin thing and go, ‘cutesy twin act’ or something,” she said. “We really want to be taken seriously for our music and I think that we have, which I am proud of.” But it did take some time for The Kinleys to reach that point.

The two sisters treaded a path early on that took them from Philadelphia to Nashville to follow their country music dreams. “We were 19, and actually, some guy in Nashville, some younger kid, he said, ‘I can manage you. You guys just need to move down here. Be down here in two weeks and get stuff going,'” Kinley said. “We said, ‘Wow, two weeks. OK. So we have to move.’ And that, obviously, never panned out. But it got us down there.”

The girls spent the next six years in Nashville practicing their country sound while waitressing and “doing anything to get by until we got the record deal about two years ago,” she said. And scoring that recording contract with Sony’s Epic Nashville was no easy task.

“I guess we had been crashing parties and trying to meet all the people that we could. And we were putting on showcases a lot, too,” Kinley said. “First, we did [a showcase] for Giant [Records] and they turned us down.” Then the twins were turned down by Sony Music Nashville’s Doug Johnson. But in the process, the Kinleys hooked up with their current producer, Russ Zavitson, and songwriter Tony Haselden, and they gave the girls their much needed break.

“[Zavitson and Haselden] said, ‘We see potential in you guys, we want to work with you,'” Kinley recalled. “And we said, ‘Gosh, sure.’ And then, like a year-and-a-half later, two years later, we got signed with Epic and Doug Johnson, the same guy who turned us down two years before.”

Before securing that all-important record contract, the sisters did the usual stream of gigs at “little clubs” around the Nashville area. For almost two years, they went “wherever we could play that would pay us,” she said. “We played little places over dinner and things like that, just a duo, me on guitar and Jenn on piano. So it wasn’t like we played big clubs or anything.”

Those days are now long gone for The Kinleys. The girls have already done a radio tour in support of their debut recording, released last September. “It was a trip — meeting all the radio people,” she said. “You just have to learn how to understand where they’re coming from, which is a different perspective. Some of those people are really used to artists coming out — and couldn’t care less — and some people really appreciate them. You gotta kind of hang in there.”

And the twins are hanging in there with manager Bill Simmons of Fitzgerald-Hartley and William Morris agent Rob Beckham on their side. They hooked up with the agent and manager through a series of interviews with various agencies. “It seems like our team has just totally, totally come together in a wonderful way. I feel really blessed that we’ve got such a great team behind us,” she said. “I hate to think of it as a business, although it is, because we’re all like buddies.”

Another buddy that the twins can boast about is Sony Music President Thomas Mottola. “Yeah, he’s behind us, which is just an unbelievable feeling, you know?” Kinley said. “We just went to the Grammys and saw him there. He’s always supportive of us. It’s just such a great feeling, the head of Sony. I mean, wow. You couldn’t ask for more.”

It seems that The Kinleys are slowly shedding their rookie images with the help of a successful management team and Sony Music’s prexy. However, the girls are still getting accustomed to their present situation. “It’s real intimate when just Jenn and I are playing. It’s a little different with a whole band and big crowd. But that’s a learning curve I’ve got to get over.”

The Kinleys will have plenty of time to get over that learning curve. They are on a lengthy tour which goes well into October with various dates in support of Clint Black and Trace Adkins. “Tonight’s our first gig,” she said of the March 12th show in Rockford, Ill. “So I’m sure it’ll be fun just standing on the sidelines and watching Trace’s hip swing and Clint playing guitar.”