The music business is littered with sibling acts who became almost as well known for the feuding between them as the hits they created.
The Everly Brothers. Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks. The Robinson brothers in the Black Crowes. Noel and Liam Gallagher of Oasis. Those are some that immediately come to mind.
Peters Township natives Hannah and Lauren Hobbs were already tightly bound as identical twins, but the sisters have been moving in tandem since they both graduated from Wake Forest University in 2014, trying to build a music career as a duo. Given all their togetherness and all the rivalry that can color sibling relationships, how do they manage to keep the conflict to a minimum?
“You always have that love for each other, but you certainly butt heads,” Hannah explained. “And we absolutely have those moments when we get on each other’s nerves or we disagree about how we should handle things or what the next step should be.”
She continued, “At the end of the day, we’re both so passionate and we love this dream, and even if we don’t agree all the time, we know the end goal is to be successful. We find a way to work through it and compromise.”
Country music capital Nashville, Tenn., has been their home for the last five years, but they still make it back to the Pittsburgh region to perform, particularly during fair and festival season, and will be at the Washington County Fair Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
Playing under the moniker the Hobbs Sisters, the 2010 graduates of Peters Township High School have opened for national acts like the Charlie Daniels Band and Lady A, and consider female country singers from the 1990s like Shania Twain and Reba McEntire to be key influences. They’ve released four EPs in the last decade, and put out their first full-length album, “Turn It Up,” in 2021. The release of the album was a result of COVID-19 and the downtime that grew out of it. The Hobbs were poised to release another EP, but the additional songs they crafted during lockdowns made a whole album seem like a better option.
The depth of the pandemic “was a time when we had to sit down and re-evaluate our business model,” Lauren said. Much of their income came from touring, and, she noted, “it was definitely a switch to try to figure out how to still connect with your fans and get your music out into the world when you couldn’t go physically meet people.”
The sisters first began singing when they were young, in a church choir. A grandfather played banjo and guitar, their dad was a big country music fan, and, according to Lauren, “We just really grew up loving country music. … It was the soundtrack of our childhood.”
From the get-go, Hannah explained, “it was a package deal.”
And though they hope to eventually make music their full-time pursuit, for now the two are both substitute teachers during the academic year in a school district near Nashville. Lauren explained, “It’s a great schedule for a musician because we have evenings off and summers off. And that allows us to put as much energy as we can into music but still keep the lights on.”
For additional information on the Washington County Fair, go online to washingtonfair.org.
