Petersfield country stars Catherine and Lizzy Ward-Thomas are back with a fifth album, tour and a bun in the oven
It’s been seven years since Ward Thomas made history by becoming the first British country music act to score a Number 1 on the Official Albums Chart and life for the Petersfield twin sisters seems just as busy now as it was then.
When I catch up with Catherine and Lizzy, they’re 4,000 miles away in their second home, Nashville, Tennessee, arguably the birthplace of country music and the city they have been visiting to record music since they were Sixth Form pupils at Alton School. Their fifth studio album, Music in the Madness, is just a few weeks from release but the pair are already writing material for their next record.
‘Our plan is to try and keep music coming out all the time so although we’re working up for an album release, we like to come out here and work on new stuff and keep moving the vision forwards,’ they tell me as they wander around Nashville’s Percy Warner Park. It’s 8am and the sisters are jet lagged, having landed in the city only a matter of hours earlier, but they are buzzing with excitement.
‘There’s such a wonderful music community out here, you’re literally living and breathing music, it’s like no other place. It’s very inspiring so we just love coming out here,’ says Lizzie, adding that the city has changed dramatically since the sisters first visited when they had just turned 17. ‘It was a big town then and now it’s a huge city. It’s very different to our rural Hampshire home.’
There is another reason the almost 29-year-old self-confessed ‘country bumpkins’, who grew up on a farm in rural Hampshire, are determined to get more material behind them.
‘I’m actually expecting a baby,’ Catherine beams as she announces she’s pregnant with her first child with husband, Rob, who she wed last year in a typically Ward-Thomas style ceremony that dispensed with cake-cutting and bouquet-throwing rituals in favour of a huge party in a garden marquee. At the time of the interview they’ve not officially announced the news but fans reading this will be aware. ‘We want to get as much written and ready for the next chapter so when the baby comes, we can take some time out but still have music to release.’
With promo for their latest album, a single and 13-date UK tour, there’s quite a lot to fit in before the baby boy’s arrival in May. Indeed, Catherine reveals she’ll be 37 weeks pregnant on the last date of their tour. ‘That’s going to be interesting,’ Lizzy giggles, although she is clearly thrilled at the prospect of becoming an auntie.
In fact, the sisters don’t seem phased by the timescale at all but then they’re used to achieving a lot in a short space of time. Since their second album, Cartwheels, topped the album charts in 2016 and the pair became known as Britain's first country stars, they’ve gone on to make three more albums, been awarded the Country Music Association’s Jeff Walker Global Achievement Award and have toured and recorded tracks with the likes of James Blunt, David Gray, Tom Jones and Jack Savoretti.
‘One of my fondest moments was when Jack covered Human [by The Killers] on his European tour and he asked us to join him for it,’ says Lizzy. ‘It went down so well and then we went back and did it at Wembley and that was released as a single.’
Last year, the sisters played Glastonbury for the third time, appearing on the Avalon stage ahead of Lamb and Hoosier. ‘You forget the magnitude of the festival when you’re not there but it was a really special return for us because we were playing later in the evening on the Saturday,’ Lizzy adds. ‘There’s nothing quite like Glastonbury I don’t think any other festival can live up to it.’
Having had to cancel an acoustic tour more than once due to the pandemic, it’s clear the sisters are stoked about being able to perform live again. And in a first for the duo, the songs from their new album, Music In The Madness, were recorded with their band, bringing their live chemistry into the studio.
The album is a prime example of how the sisters look for light in troubled times and an uplifting reminder of what really matters. Love, family, unity and the healing power of music are recurrent themes on the record, which they begun as war broke out in Ukraine and the world went into a post-Covid tailspin.
One of the album’s key tracks, an acoustic spine-tingler called Love Does, sums it up beautifully, says Catherine. ‘It’s about thinking of all the things that push you to the limit and what it is that makes you carry on,’ she explains. ‘Brexit, Covid, Ukraine…the last few years has been a lot for many people and the best way that we could try and make sense of it was to try and find a way of making music in this madness.’
‘We tend to get inspired by being overwhelmed,’ adds Lizzy. ‘And then we channel that into our creativity.’
While this year looks like it could be the busiest yet for Ward Thomas, the sisters say they are pretty good at keeping a work/life balance, making sure they spend plenty of time in the countryside around their homes on either side of Petersfield with their dogs, horses and chickens.
‘We are such home birds,’ they say in unison. ‘We’re already missing Hampshire and we’ve only been here in Nashville for 12 hours! We’d never wanted to live anywhere else.’
Music in the Madness is out now. Ward Thomas will be appearing at Southampton’s Central Hall on April 15. For tickets, visit wardthomasmusic.co.uk
