Mother Lion

Being born into a musical family has its perks. Faith and Vanessa grew up helping their pastor parents raise money by singing and performing in churches all over the northeast. By middle school, they were songwriting daily, developing their sound while being influenced by jazz, classical and musical theater. 

In 2015, life separated the two sisters. Faith traveled to Turkey to continue her education journey while Vanessa married young. Now, after 6 long years apart, they're finally back, and they're planning on making up for lost time. "Over those years we just dreamt together so often of making music together again, and now that it's finally here we're not taking it for granted."

They wasted no time as they launched their ambitious dream for 2021: releasing a song every Friday for the entire year. Determined to remain uninhibited in their creative journey, they chose to stray from the usual path of album creation and instead challenged themselves to a new, unique sound every week. 

"Honestly, the song-a-week challenge gave us more freedom to play around with genres. We're not trying to put together a cohesive album. Each song lives in its own world of sound and energy. Each song gets to be what it wants to be."

The duo emphasizes the importance of keeping the song's process in-house: Faith produces a demo, they write and record the song, and Vanessa edits the vocals before handing the project off to Vanessa's husband for mixing and mastering. "Everything's in-house, which is the only way this endeavor would work. If there's a problem with the mix, the solution isn't an email and 24-hours away. It's a walk up the stairs - problem solved."

In July 2021, Vanessa and Faith decided to end the song-a-week challenge due to the expanding nature of their projects. "Our dreams are big and laughable sometimes, but we don't care. There is no plan B for us - it's all or nothing. And hopefully we can inspire a couple people along the way to risk it all too. It's worth it to live a life you're proud of, to chase after a dream that feels so much a part of you that it can't be ignored. That's what Mother Lion is for us. The dream that couldn't be ignored any longer."

They released their singles in three thematic EP's, together known as the Conception Project. The Aphrodite EP displayed Vanessa's romantic tendencies; the Athena EP explored Faith's psyche; the Artemis EP brought those differences together and gave us an intimate look at their sisterhood.

As much satisfaction as the creation process was, the sisters realized their passion for inviting their listeners into their family. "Live-streaming was the perfect space for us to not just get to know our audience as listeners, but as members of our actual family, as sisters and brothers and uncles and friends. We can't imagine building anything without our live-streaming community."

You can hang with Mother Lion every Wednesday night at 7 pm EST on Twitch (@motherlionmusic).