Onstage and Behind the Scenes, Cohesion Propels Girl Tones

Girl Tones, the White Stripes-styled drummer and vocalist/guitar sister duo from Bowling Green, Kentucky, has garnered recent attention online and in the festival circuit. The guitar riff of their single, “Again,” became a popular TikTok sound last year, nearly a year after its release. After playing Austin City Limits Music Festival this past October, Kenzie Shultz and Laila Crowe returned to the Live Music Capital to share two versions of the South by Southwest stage: a panel on cracking into rock stardom in the digital streaming age and a presence-heavy performance at Hotel Vegas.

Dressed somewhat inconspicuously in stylish business casual button-downs, Shultz and younger sister Laila laid relentlessly into their instruments at Hotel Vegas, summoning a storm of distortion and hair tossing that whipped the cold front-bearing crowd into a delighted commotion. “I wasn’t expecting that,” I heard not one, but two attendees remark when the sisters wrapped their set. Shultz, after commanding the audience to clap and form a modest mosh pit, joined the revelers, guitar still in hand, without missing a note. Crowe, fiercely precise in backing vocals and on the drum kit, held the throne with an equally intense incisiveness. Their well-oiled set was tightly timed, effortlessly energetic, and loud.

On the far more subdued Downright conference stage earlier in the day, the sisters discussed their shared aesthetic vision: a desire to dress cohesively and appear as a recognizable unit as an early form of branding, something they’ve elaborated on as label imprints Parallel Vision and Big Loud Rock have helped them expand into the initially uncomfortable territory of filming short-form content. 

Whispers of the illusive industry plant accusation surfaced when nascent fans noted that elder sister Kenzie, née Crowe, now bears the last name Shultz, a surname shared by another set of musician siblings from Bowling Green: Matt and Brad Shultz of Cage the Elephant. Brad made the Girl Tones his first addition to his recently launched label, Parallel Visions, who sent industry-seasoned co-founder Daniel Oakley onstage with the duo for their panel. No one seems eager to explain this relation. I can only assume that there may be a good number of Shultzes in Kentucky and report that Kenzie is not married to either Brad, nor Matt (a Redditor suggests Kenzie is married to the youngest brother of the family, Daniel). 

Aside from the fact that this sort of scrutiny does seem to dog women musicians inequitably, let me offer at least two arguments for casting aside the nepotism allegation: One, having the professional backing of a local band done good has boosted the career of many indie rockers. Two, Girl Tones, like most bands accused of being industry plants, put in a decade of work generating what they call “local buzz,” eventually selling out storied Bowling Green venue Tidball’s “more than Cage the Elephant,” Kenzie says. Watching them perform for a pleasantly surprised crowd Monday night, it wasn’t difficult to see why. 

The musicians, and their label representatives, didn’t offer any groundbreaking advice to artists, managers, and independent label upstarts with questions in the crowd, but focused on the importance of behind-the-scenes cohesion. Lining up single releases with content creation, promotion, and press opportunities, and communicating across teams to adjust that timeline when, say, a snippet goes viral, was the path to success they presented. If you ask me, though the mechanisms have undoubtedly changed, the magic of what it takes to catch global attention as an emerging artist still isn’t dissimilar from what it takes to catch a crowd’s attention on stage: a combination of practice, timing, and opportunity.

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