For Powell River-raised, UVic-graduated country/roots duo Twin Kennedy, it’s all about spreading positivity, strength, and love through music. For their latest single, “Wise Woman,” the two—identical twins Julie (vocals/fiddle) and Carli Kennedy (vocals/guitar)—teamed up with Nashville-based country singer Mallory Johnson to add to the narrative around feminism and equality. The song is being launched in a month-long rollout in support of Women’s History Month.
All it took was a late-night writing session and the three singers had formed the new song, which also has a music video featuring powerful women that have inspired the trio’s lives. Johnson says that sometimes with a girl’s night, productivity can take a back seat to cheese, wine, and good times, but that wasn’t the case on the night the song was written and recorded into an iPhone.
“Carli was like, ‘I do have this song idea, and this title, and a bit of a verse written and I really want to play it for you guys,’” says Johnson. “Immediately, before she even started singing, I had goosebumps… It was just magical and emotional in the moment.”
Johnson says that before the trio went about writing or critiquing the song, they shared stories about being women in a male-dominated industry, and talked about the struggles that come from that, and the lessons that are learned.
“Sometimes our stories, our voices, our opinions aren’t always as valued, or we feel like we have to prove ourselves more than some of the guys,” says Johnson. “That’s not always the case, but we were just talking about some of those challenges.”
Carli grabbed her guitar, sat beneath the strung-up patio lights and played more or less exactly what can be heard on the track now, which she says is a rarity in songwriting.
“It just came out. We all started singing in harmony,” says Carli. “In my recollection, it all just flowed out. We finished. We were like, ‘Wait, what did we just do?’”
Cali says it was lucky that Julie had the recorder running on her iPhone.
“I literally live for songwriting sessions that go [like] that,” says Julie. “That is not every day. Those are the stories you hear because those are the magical days, but there’re so many days where you don’t even finish the song.”
The three agree that the song was intentionally structured in a way that would take the listener on a journey through a woman’s struggle with equality, starting with the lyrics, “Another year still looking younger than my age/That don’t matter, I’m told to lie about it anyway,” and eventually progressing to, “I’ve learned saying no won’t make me weak/And turning a blind eye won’t hide what you don’t want to see.”
“The first verse is like these messages that we hear that we hope that the next generation of women don’t get told,” says Julie. “Like ‘Play nice,’ ‘Play house,’ all those things. ‘Don’t stir the pot, don’t speak up too loud.’”
Julie says that those are things all women have been told, sometimes in an outright way, but often times, it’s much more subtle.
“That was definitely what we wanted to say first,” she says. “Put it out there and be blunt with it… As women, we’ve all felt that.”
The message to women is that “we have to be there for each other.” To men, the message is to be a “wise man,” says, Carli—be willing to listen, and to also have those conversations. Equality is something that can be fought for, says Julie, but, hopefully, one day, it won’t have to be.
“We can fight for this beautiful world where we can now live and all have our voices heard,” she says, “and we’re really hopeful for that.”