Mount Barker country music duo Ella & Sienna use coronavirus lockdown to expand fan base
Siblings Ella and Sienna have spent the past two years performing as a country music duo. But the COVID-19 crisis has given the Mount Barker siblings an unexpected boost. SEE THE VIDEO
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Move over, Nashville. Country music’s rising stars can be found in the Adelaide Hills.
The McClean sisters, Ella, 17, Sienna, 14, of Mount Barker, have used the COVID-19 crisis to help boost their fan base.
Their weekly, livestreamed loungeroom concerts are now attracting about 800 fans a week – up from just 40 in the early days of the lockdown.
The duo, who perform under the name Ella & Sienna, hope their online success will capture the attention of their musical idols – Kasey Chambers, Missy Higgins and Casey Barnes.
“It would be pretty cool to do a livestream with one of them because we really want to get our music out there,” Ella said.
“We currently have three original songs we started feeding into our set but we’ve been working pretty hard on writing more, especially during this isolation period.
“So hopefully we’ll get to record soon because our long term goal, when we’ve both finished school, is to go on tour in Australia.”
The sisters have performed together for two years and, as with many artists, had to think fast when live gigs were cancelled due to coronavirus.
“We had gigs booked for a whole six months of the year, but that obviously fell through because of the restrictions,” Ella said.
“So we were like ‘what are we going to do?’, because music is such a big part of our life and we wanted to keep it going.
“We saw quite a few other artists doing these loungeroom sessions, including Casey Barnes, who is a big country influence of ours … so we thought ‘why not us?’.”
While there was no money to be made from online gigs, Ella said their Facebook livestreams had helped grow their fanbase.
“So of course, we now want to keep the momentum going and hope people will again support us this weekend,” she said.
Watch the sisters live at their Facebook page, Ella & Sienna, live at 7.30pm this Saturday.