January 10, 2024 — After a pair of covers — a chart-topping, grassy version of Gabe Dixon’s “All Will Be Well” and the 90s country flavored “Make Me Stay or Make Me Go” — sextet Sister Sadie (nominated for this year’s Best Bluegrass Album GRAMMY) shift into a more contemplative mood with their new Mountain Home Music Company single, a glistening original ballad.
“I don’t write too many love songs,” confesses its lead singer, Dani Flowers. “Most of the songs in my catalogue are admittedly pretty depressing. But ‘If I Don’t Have You’ is just that — a love song about loving someone so much that everything you’ve ever wanted or hoped to accomplish now pales in comparison to the need you have to be with that person.”
Cast almost as a conversation between Flowers’ vocal and co-writer Deanie Richardson’s fiddle, the track gets off to a luxuriant start with a full statement of the melody from the latter that sets up the opening verse’s simple, plaintive statement that leads inexorably to the memorable chorus:
I could climb the highest mountain
Make my dollars by the thousands
I could have it all and then some
But I’d still be sad and lonesome
If I don’t have you to hold on to
When the nights are long, when the day is through
Everything I have, or anything I’ll do
Don’t mean half as much if I don’t have you
With a delicious harmony line contributed by fellow Sadie — and recent recipient of the IBMA’s Female Vocalist of the Year award — Jaelee Roberts, and a gentle accompaniment built on delicately rolling figures from banjo, mandolin and piano, the track adds a surprising new dimension near its end by resolving its suspended rhythms into a more active feel before Richardson returns to bring the performance to an end in a lingering coda.
“Dani came to me with this sweet melody and the first two lines of this song,” the award-winning fiddler recalls. “We finished it that day. This is my favorite kind of love song: simple melody and simple lyrics. It doesn’t get much better than Dani’s angelic voice singing about how going through life and experiencing the most amazing things wouldn’t mean half as much ‘If I Don’t Have You.’”
“If I Don’t Have You” is streaming in Dolby Atmos spatial audio on Apple Music, Amazon Music and TIDAL. Listen to it HERE.
About Sister Sadie
Sister Sadie, which launched in the wake of an ostensibly one-off show at Nashville’s World Famous Station Inn in 2012, has both embraced and transcended its all-female identity, earning acclaim that includes being named as the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year in 2020, as well as Vocal Group of the Year in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Members range from acclaimed veterans to rising newcomers, who have won individual recognition, too, with founding member and fiddle player Deanie Richardson named as Fiddle Player of the Year in 2024 and banjo player/vocalist Gena Britt — SPBGMA’s reigning Banjo Player of the Year — having participated in three award-winning collaborative projects.The lineup is rounded out by 2024 IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year and Mountain Home recording artist Jaelee Roberts (guitar), Dani Flowers (vocals and guitar), bassist Maddie Dalton, winner of one of IBMA’s Momentum Instrumentalist of the Year Awards in 2023, and mandolinist Rainy Miatke. The band’s previous release, SisterSadie II, earned them a GRAMMY nomination for Best Bluegrass Album in 2019.