April Shafer first put instruments in her daughters' hands when the girls were still pre-K. They were busking on Columbia sidewalks when their ages had barely reached double digits and were performing publicly as the Burney Sisters when Olivia was 13 and Emma was 10. That was 2017, and for three years, Olivia (ukulele, guitar, banjo) and Emma (fiddle, cello, guitar, bass, piano, kitchen sink) were mainstays of the Columbia music scene, graduating from nursing home gigs to the Rocheport General Store to headlining spots at Rose Music Hall to main stage sets at Roots N Blues. The girls toured regionally, developed a loyal following in St. Louis, became members of mid-Missouri hillbilly-roots band the Kay Brothers, released oodles of beyond-their-years original songs and generally gasted the flabber of anyone who saw how good these kids already were.
In 2019, youngest sister Bella, then nine years old, officially made the Burney Sisters a trio, playing the bass and adding a third layer of family-tuned vocal harmony. The homeschooled girls continued to tour and record extensively as a trio, scoring dates opening for some of their heroes, including Willie Nelson and the Avett Brothers, until a major shakeup rocked Burneyland earlier this year: Oldest daughter Olivia, who had turned 18, decided to leave the group.
To get the whole story, I recently climbed aboard the Burney Sisters' RV, parked behind the Big Top in Grand Center where in a few hours the girls would be taking the stage as part of Pines Fest, the now-annual festival curated and headlined by the Mighty Pines. Up close in conversation, Emma, who turned 16 a few days earlier, and Bella, now 13, look and act more or less their ages, something that has been a source of incredulity in the past.
After all, beyond some Faustian bargain at some crossroads somewhere, how could these kids get this good this fast? How could these tweens reach such a level of instrumental accomplishment and performance poise, holding their own on stage with professionals four times their age? How could they possibly write such emotionally authentic lyrics about adult subjects — love affairs, breakups, marriage, mortgages — at age 12? While other girls were in their bedrooms making their Elsa dolls sing "Let It Go," the Burney Sisters were mesmerizing thousands from the stages of major festivals.
So did anyone ever accuse them of fudging their ages? "Oh, all the time," Emma says. "People always thought we were lying. It was awkward for us. I would be, like, 'I don't know what to say to you. We're not lying.'"
Bella chimes in to say that their mom started having fun with their precocity: "She does this thing where she has people guess how old we are. I've seen someone guess we are, like, 25."
Emma celebrated her 16th birthday by getting her first tattoo, a large cowgirl on her right upper arm that looks not unlike Emma herself, with similar raven pigtails. The cowgirl is smoking a cigarette, with the smoke forming a heart, a juxtaposition that seems to fit Emma's current transformation as her adolescent freckles and dimples yield to a septum piercing and cat eyes drawn sharp enough to kill a man.
Bella, for her part, exudes a golden-age-of-Hollywood glamour while still playing a big silvery five-string Valenti that looks like it weighs more than she does. Yet when she plugs in on stage and starts playing spidery scales all over the fretboard, other bassists of any age in the audience see what this 13-year-old kid is doing and must be tempted to go home and run over their own basses with a backhoe.
April says what looks like her daughters' freakish talent in reality comes down to hard work, which was mandated in the early years as part of their homeschooling regimen. "Monday through Friday, they each had to [practice] an hour on their own and an hour with their sisters," April says.
And did the girls ever resist? "Oh, yeah," April says as the girls nod in agreement. "It's like school. At the time they didn't know what they were doing, didn't know the shapes, so practicing was a chore. But now they're proficient, and it's the most exciting time for me. I don't have to say much. They are down there dabbling and experimenting on their own."
"Down there" refers to the basement of the Burneys' Columbia home, familiar to anyone who tuned in to the Sisters' pandemic-incited live streams, in which the girls played original songs and covers surrounded by musical instruments hanging on the walls. That kind of access to stringed instruments, in fact, was another of April's early strategies. "My mom would place instruments all around the house and see if we would gravitate toward them," Bella says.
Olivia first took to the ukulele after finding one for a dollar at a garage sale. Emma took a few Suzuki-style violin lessons early on but had no patience for the classes' rigid structure when all she wanted to do was bust out fiddle tunes. By age eight, she was teaching herself guitar by watching YouTube videos. "I practiced in the laundry room so no one could hear me," she says laughing.
Bella learned the bass to give her older sisters a rhythmic foundation on which to expand their melodic instruments, and in typical Burney fashion, jumped straight into the deep end of the pool.
"The first songs I learned were [Duke Ellington's] 'Caravan' and [Stevie Wonder's] 'Sir Duke,'" Bella says. "Our method is that whenever we pick up an instrument, we learn a super hard song and then the rest becomes easy. 'Caravan' is a really hard one I learned when I was 10, and I've been playing it ever since."
April and the girls agree that homeschooling was fundamental to the girls' quicksilver musical growth. "We had just moved to the [Columbia] area and had to decide which school we wanted to put Liv in for kindergarten," April explains. "We met a family at the park that had an older child with them, and I was curious why they weren't in school. She explained what they did for curriculum and how they did a ton of interesting excursions together and with other homeschooling groups, and I thought, 'How badly can I screw up kindergarten?!'"
April was accustomed to new challenges. The three Burney girls were all born in different cities — Olivia in Tulsa; Emma in Hamilton, New York; Bella in Iowa City — as the girls' father and April's then-husband continually relocated as a collegiate strength and conditioning coach, eventually landing a job at Mizzou.
Once in Columbia, April found herself transitioning to divorced homeschooling mom and then multitasking manager of the Burney Sisters as the girls became up-and-coming musical prodigies.
As many hats as April wears in managing her daughters' career, she is careful to avoid the aggressive maneuvers one might expect from "stage moms." She encourages the girls to call their own shots whenever possible and never set out to compel the girls into show business in the first place. Still, when their talent became unmistakable, she felt obliged to help maximize their opportunities. "I had zero knowledge of the music industry," she says. "But I just sort of dug in. Who can we talk to? Let's find resources. Let's become friends with people in the local music scene. And people really embraced them."
In 2017, April met John Shafer, a trumpet player for Columbia-based roving band the Mobile Funk Unit, who added mariachi-style trumpet to the Burney Sisters' song "Say It to My Face." The two fell in love, married in 2019 and both now work full-time to keep the Burney Sisters in business. April is the band's manager, booking agent, publicist, merchandise handler, webmaster, fanclub overseer, roadie and RV driver. ("Our stepdad backs the RV in sometimes," Bella explains helpfully.) John serves as the Burneys' soundman and instrument tech, often seen during shows running around with an iPad adjusting levels on the fly.
On the road, April also assumes the role of, you know, mom, which means she has to find the balance between protecting the girls and letting them find their own way. "I want them to have some separation from me," she says. "They have so many opportunities to meet amazing people. But I do get a little nervous because guys think they're 20." However, Emma jumps in to allay her mom's fears. "We're really good at fending people off," Emma says. "We're already watching out."
The whole operation was cruising along when Olivia started to experience burnout and developed an aversion to the road and officially left the band in February 2023. April and the girls tread carefully when talking about Olivia's departure, but it's clear that the experience took an emotional toll and initially left the future of the band in serious doubt.
"We had a lot of intense conversations for a couple of months," Emma says. "Do I do solo stuff? Do Bella and I stay together as a duo? What is Olivia going to do? Should we change our name?" Ultimately, Emma and Bella decided to continue on together under the same name. After all, they are still Burney sisters.
Still, challenges persisted, including the fact that the bulk of the Burney Sisters catalog was written by Olivia, who also handled lead vocals on nearly all of the band's original material. Would the band play Olivia's songs without her?
"At first I didn't feel right singing [Olivia's] lyrics because they're from her heart, even though I did arrange a lot of those songs," Emma says. "But we are putting some of those back in. We're relearning them in our own style."
With the transition to Burney Sisters 3.0, Emma talks about adjusting to her role as the band's primary singer/songwriter. "I didn't like my voice for a long time. It wasn't until like 2019 or 2020 that I started liking my voice. And I didn't write a song until I was 11," she says, as though such a timeline makes her a late bloomer.
Indeed, longtime Burneys fans were accustomed to Olivia taking center stage, commanding shows with her anguished, distinctively stretchy vocals and confessional lyrics. But it was Emma who was always the instrumental ringer in the band, with gorgeous cello playing and with blazing fiddle chops that could stand up with the best pickers on any bluegrass stage in the country.
Moreover, when Emma would take over vocals, she sang with astounding clarity, soulfulness and power, channeling Stevie Nicks and Lake Street Dive's Rachael Price in equal measure. Plus, behind the scenes, it was Emma who took Olivia's melodies and chord progressions and built both the instrumental arrangements and the vocal harmonies. To many, Emma was a frontperson waiting to break out.
So when Olivia left, Emma knew she had to pick up the pen. "I don't write 20 songs in one night like Olivia, but I had a few, and this has pushed me to write a lot more. Bella has written a song or two, too," Emma says, quick to credit Bella with the prodigious growth necessary to reinvent the band. "Bella and I both had to step up as lead performers in this band. We both push each other to learn more."
"It's pretty inspiring," April says. "I told the girls, 'You built a skill for years that you can still move forward and make it whatever you want it to be'." April admits, however, that from a business standpoint, moving forward without Olivia wasn't easy. "It's not seamless," she says, noting that the new duo had to prove that they were as good — or better — than ever to keep getting booked and getting paid as much as before.
It appears to be clicking. The Burneys just returned from a well-received tour of Canada and a lineup spot on the latest Camayo Cruise to the Dominican Republic and Aruba, sharing a bill with Tweedy, Andrew Bird, Trampled By Turtles and many others. Camayo was a thrill-a-minute for the Burneys, as the band Joseph invited them on stage to sing with them and Shawn Mullins became a new Burneys fan, taking in their entire set. "Jeff Tweedy was walking on the beach, and he comes up to us!" Emma says. "He said, 'My son showed me a video of you guys playing, and it sounded great.'" As her sister recounts the story, Bella puts her hands over her face at the wonder of it all.
At Pines Fest last month not long after we spoke, Emma and Bella, backed by a drummer, played a set heavy with covers (Fleetwood Mac, McCartney, Billy Joel) and new Emma originals, including songs like "Struggle to Find" and "Half Hearted Sorry" that are defining a fresh Burney Sisters sound, a beautiful folk-soul hybrid that is ushering the band to a new peak. Bella, playing with arresting grace and power, is emerging with her own unique vocal personality, and at one point shifted over to the piano to allow Emma to pick up the fiddle.
I can't help but think it's a sign of things to come. Just before their set, Bella expressed confidence and unstoppability in typical Burney fashion, vowing to do whatever it takes to push the Burney Sisters to the next level. "Just tell me what to learn, and I'll learn it," she told me. "I'll figure it out."
Editor's note: A previous version of this story gave the wrong artist for one of the songs that Bella Burney used to learn bass. It was Duke Ellington's "Caravan," not Van Morrison's. We regret the error.
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