For the delightfully named Moody Little Sister, the past few years have marked a period of growth. In that time, the husband and wife duo, Naomi Hooley and Rob Stroup, lived in Oregon and Alaska before finally landing in New Mexico.
While for some, uprooting and replanting might create chaos, it was within this time that Hooley found what she calls her “true voice.”
“Our sound has changed a lot in the past few years,” reflects Hooley. “Especially after moving to New Mexico. Our lives are closer to the land and physical labor. It changes a person to be in sunshine almost year round and work hard, and it changes your music, too. I am feeling with this new chapter in life that the grit and dirt in my life, and in my voice, is more of a true expression of who I have always been, but didn't know where that voice belonged... my voice and my expression belong in the desert.”
The track “Big Ole Blue” is a direct expression of this journey. Hooley adds, “‘Big Ole Blue’ is the search for a place to belong, and finally ending up in an actual place where you can reside as your best self.”
Their most recent album, Wild Places, was an opportunity for Hooley to put everything she’d gained as an artist and creator into practice.
Hooley remembers feeling like she was “[moving] into a chapter of letting my voice fall out of my mouth rather than force it. I feel like my entire self is involved in the musical process now, as though I needed almost a decade of live performance to wake up each section of my being, and now I am walking to the stage as a whole, entire artist.”
Now, the band is looking forward to launching a Kickstarter to fund their next album, which they hope to release and tour behind in 2019. You can follow them on Facebook for updates on when they’ll come back to the Pacific Northwest.
