America’s Sweethearts, a New York City-based trio that’s performing in nine Montana towns this month, evokes the swinging sounds of the 1940s and the tight female harmonies of groups like the Andrews Sisters.
Soprano Carly Kincannon, founder of America’s Sweethearts, fell in love with the music of The Andrew Sisters – and the group she calls The Sweets – after moving to New York City from Indiana with dreams of making a career on Broadway. While she does have an impressive resume as a vocalist and actor, she says organizing and singing with America’s Sweethearts not only helped her feel at home in the Big Apple, “but the moment I met these inspiring women, it filled a void in my life that I didn’t even know I had. They welcomed me into a family filled with respect, passion, and creativity.”
The entire company is comprised of 11 singers – four sopranos, four mezzo sopranos and three altos – who tour the nation as trios, sometimes singing to recorded music (as they will during their nine Montana stops), and sometimes with a piano or jazz ensemble.
Since Kincannon founded the company in 2016, America’s Sweethearts have performed across the U.S. including shows at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City and the National WASP WWII Museum in Texas, as well as theaters and cabaret settings.
With colorful costumes and crystalline harmonies, they deliver selections from the Great American Songbook, classic Broadway, pop tunes from the 1950s, and jazz. A set list might include such familiar tunes as “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Sing Sing Sing,” “It’s My Party,” “Lullaby of Broadway,” “It’s In His Kiss (Shoop Shoop Song),” “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” “Fever,” “I Will Follow Him,” and many more.
For the group’s founder, America’s Sweethearts offers an opportunity to explore the evolution of harmony through the decades.
“Take The Andrews Sisters, for example,” she writes. “They were such a huge hit, and not only because they were beautiful, classy dames in the 1930s. Their music and their incredible, intricate harmonies were an inspiration in a time when there was much darkness.”
She hopes the same can be said of America’s Sweethearts, whose goal “is to spread nostalgia, joy, and human connection through harmonies and music.”
The group swings through Montana with stops in Lewistown Oct. 8, Butte Oct. 10, Anaconda Oct. 11, Superior Oct. 13, Eureka Oct. 14, Polson Oct. 15, Conrad Oct. 16, Hobson Oct. 17, and Fort Benton Oct. 20.