At first glance Alpharetta's von Grey sisters appear to be average teens. They sometimes dream of life as pop stars and might dance around the house singing into a hairbrush.
“That’s always kind of every girl’s dream,” said Annika von Grey, 14. “It’s really easy to have daydreams about walking around having fans that know you, and kind of have all the glamour and the hype."
The four sisters are far from average and hype is not what they shoot for. At ages 10 to 15, Petra, Fiona, Annika and Kathryn are musicians and singer-songwriters. On Thursday, they'll open for Sarah McLachlan at Chastain Park Amphitheatre.
“We’re in this for the music. That’s really what drives us,” Annika said.
Since 2009, von Grey, as the group is known, has worked hard to put its stamp on rock, pop and country songs at local art and music events. Earlier this year the sisters opened for country singer Candy Coburn at Smith’s Olde Bar.
Last spring they won Lilith Fair’s local talent search and were scheduled to perform at Lilith Fair’s Atlanta show. The tour was co-founded by McLachlan, and when the Atlanta show was canceled von Grey was invited to perform at the singer’s Chastain Park concert.
Music has been away of life for each of the sisters since age 5 when they started classical music training.
“Music just kind of grew into a family hobby and activity,” said their mother, Jill von Grey, who home schooled the girls until last year. For years a typical day started with visits to classical music lessons. While waiting for a daughter in a piano or violin lesson, Jill von Grey and the other girls delved into school work.
To better manage their music time, the girls decided to return to home school this month.
“When they decided they wanted to venture into [performing different genres], they had already worked years learning their classical disciplines. It was just something my husband and I naturally supported,” Jill von Grey said. (Michael von Grey owns a medical data company based in India.)
Summer vacation yields nearly 30 hours a week of band practice in the family’s finished basement. Equipment cords surround a variety of instruments. There’s a banjo, cello, keyboard, violin, fiddle, viola and a slew of guitars -- 10-year-old Petra is surprisingly at ease on slide guitar.
John Briglevich, a producer at Atlanta-based Sonica Recording, describes the von Grey girls as craftsmen, well beyond their years in writing. Briglevich, who has a client list that includes rockers, rappers and singer-songwriters, said their focus and humbleness is rare.
“They have all the tools to make it happen on a big scale and need just a little more seasoning and life experience,” he said.
Briglevich produced what could be the group’s first hit, “Rise Up,” which they wrote to raise money for the Nashville Red Cross and victims of the spring flood.
“The song meant a lot to us because [Nashville] is a very musical town,” said Fiona, 12. “We put it on sale on our website, and people could choose the amount to donate.” So far, the singers have raised nearly $800.
“Songwriting is a group effort,” said Kathryn, 15. “Someone will just start writing lyrics and then we will kind of build off that. Somebody will just start playing the melody and we all just kind of join in.”
They draw from school, social life and family to write songs, Annika said.
"We don’t have a lot of life experiences to pull from, but we embrace the fact that we can write about the simple things," she said.
CONCERT PREVIEW
Sarah McLachlan, featuring the Alpharetta group von Grey. 7:40 p.m. Thursday. $38-$73. Chastain Park Amphitheatre, 4460 Stella Drive N.W., Atlanta. 404-733-5012. www.livenation.com, www.vongrey.com.
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