Midnight Sirens is a new music duo featuring Robert and Maggie Anthony. They’re releasing their singles U. V. Rays and The Admiral today, August 19th.
You might know Robert.
But then again you might not know Robert.
He won’t say whether or not he is in Lord T & Eloise, a Memphis band featuring performers who go incognito.
“I wrote some guitar riffs for a group called ‘Lord T & Eloise,’” Robert says. “And worked with them a little bit.”
And you might know Maggie, who is Robert’s wife. She was in a popular quartet, The Owens Sisters. They were on America’s Got Talent.
But she’d rather you don’t know that she was on America’s Got Talent.
“I was 16,” Maggie says. “And I was so nervous. It was awful. I literally am so embarrassed.”
Robert and Maggie, who have been married three and a half years and are the parents of a daughter, Pearl, joined forces for Midnight Sirens during the pandemic.
As for the name, Robert says every time they tried to put their child to bed or tried to record, they heard ambulance and fire sirens blaring down North Parkway. They had to change their recording location because there were so many sirens, Robert says. “We moved to our shower stall.”
Consequently, he says, “There are a lot of sirens in the actual recording.”
Robert and Maggie are a match made in music heaven. “I have three older sisters,” Maggie says. “When I was 15, we started doing four-part harmonies together. We would play at bars and stuff. It was really interesting because I was 15 playing in these bars. We would do covers of popular country songs. That was kind of our niche.”
As The Owens Sisters, they performed songs, including Wagon Wheel and Down to the River To Pray, with their dad, Andrew Owens, on guitar. “We actually did Free Falling. We made it a country song.”
When she was 16, Maggie and her sisters moved to Nashville to pursue their careers. Maggie did a lot of songwriting while she was there, but, she says, “We were very young. It didn’t turn out how we anticipated it would.”
That also was the same year they made their ill-fated appearance on America’s Got Talent. She and her two sisters appeared on the show at Madison Square Garden, but none of them were prepared, she says. “I was so scared. Thank God, you can’t find it on line. I’m truly blessed.”
When they returned from Nashville, Maggie had to get “back in the rhythm of a normal life. I continued doing home schooling and graduation. I put music on the back burner. But when I was 17, me and my sister, Andie, started a group together. We called it ‘Zuster.’”
Describing “Zuster,” which is a Dutch word meaning “sister,” Maggie says, “It wasn’t Southern or country or anything. It was like electronic folk. ‘Electronic’ is kind of the wrong word. It had elements of electronics like a synth keyboard. It had guitar. It was very based in harmonies.”
Zuster released two singles, including Do You Want Me with a video, on the Blue Tom label at the University of Memphis. “I think that one is still up. But I don’t think they ever put out the actual album we were working on.”
The song, which she and Andie wrote, is “just about really loving somebody and wanting them to feel the same way.”
Maggie then decided to take a break to figure out what she wanted to do. “I never really thought I would do something on my own. Singing harmony live with myself is almost impossible. So, I took a little break. And then I met Robert.”
Robert recalls the first time he heard Maggie sing: “It was this huge, crazy party and I thought, ‘What is that sound?’ And I followed it and she was out there singing.”
He saw her again about three years later at a friend’s house. “She whipped out her guitar and started playing these original songs. And I was just really blown away by her songwriting, her lyrics.”
He told Maggie, “Wow. You’re deeper than your age.’ We started talking. We were friends for a while and then we started dating.”
Robert found “a lack of pretense” in Maggie’s lyrics.
In addition to playing country songs for him, Maggie also played songs by Melanie. “I was like ‘Where did you hear this?’”
He discovered Maggie “had the ability to come up with an original song with a catchy hook. Original catchy choruses. Songs that have a complete melody. “
Her lyrics were “way beyond her years, as well. She was singing powerful lyrics about deep subjects.”
Maggie already was familiar with Robert’s work. “I had heard about his bands through the grapevine,” she says.
But, she adds, “I didn’t listen to any of his music or anything, like Lord T & Eloise.”
“Never met them,” Robert interjects.
She liked Robert. “He’s very witty and clever. He’s a great conversationalist. He’s just good at making people feel at ease and comfortable. He made me laugh. We’re just very kindred spirits. A lot of people in my life think we’re very, very similar. Other people might disagree.”
Maggie finally saw a Lord T & Eloise show. “I liked it,” she says. “I thought that it was unique. And it’s just something you have to see to believe. When I first saw his live show, I was floored. It was just an extremely well-orchestrated performance.”
And, she says, “Robert is the creative direction of each show.”
But Robert won’t admit he’s the “Lord T” in the group. “I’ve never been in the room with those guys,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to shake their hands.”
Midnight Sirens began during the pandemic and so did his piano playing, Robert says. Their daughter wanted him to teach her how to play a child’s Yamaha keyboard, but Robert, who plays guitar, didn’t know how to play the piano. “I started to play it, much to Maggie’s annoyance.”
He played it all the time, Maggie says.
In addition to learning how to play the piano, Robert thought there was “an ‘80s vibe” to the sound of the Yamaha.
Midnight Sirens “started on a cheesy Yamaha,” but, Maggie says, “It really shaped the songwriting aspect of it. I’m used to writing deep, not sad, but maybe, songs. And this Yamaha keyboard was so silly, it really kind of lightened up my songwriting in a very healthy way.”
“I was writing songs with the intent for Maggie to sing them,” Robert says, adding, “I wanted to record an album with her since I met her.”
Maggie recalls when she became captivated by Robert’s songs. He was playing The Admiral, which he describes as similar to “an epic folk song,” on the Yamaha. “I was sitting in the bathtub, just a normal day” she says. “I heard him playing this song on this cheesy Yamaha keyboard. I thought, ‘That song makes me feel so happy.’ And it turned from a normal bath into the most magical bath I’ve ever had in my life. That’s when I realized I want to live in his music.”
“Literally, it was after six months of me annoying her she started writing these songs,” Robert says.
Maggie originally thought, “I have nothing to write.” But “something clicked” when she heard that song. Maggie took his lyrics and made them “singable,” Robert says. “I have a tendency to overwrite.”
“He writes these epic novels,” Maggie says. “When I sing, I like to use less words to create kind of a picture, more descriptive words that are slightly vague, but you understand.”
She shortened Robert’s lyrics and “put a girly spin on them. There’s a different perspective when a man’s writing it. He wrote the basis of the ‘novel.’ And I took it and chopped it up and whittled it down.”
Maggie “popped out 12 songs start to finish,” Robert says. “She would go in our shower stall where our microphone is and she would come back out with these songs totally written with all the parts.’
Writing the songs was “kind of an escape from Covid. You’re locked up in your house. So, we created this happy little cymatic universe.”
They later reproduced those silly and fun rhythm and beats on a Roland Juno-60 vintage keyboard from 1982. “I said, ‘We can record that vibe with a good keyboard,” Robert says.
Elliott Ives, a songwriter/co-producer and a longtime studio and touring guitarist with Justin Timberlake, heard UV Ray, one of the songs written on the Yamaha, at Young Avenue Sound, which he co-owns. “He thought it had some potential,” Maggie says. “And so did some other people.”
They played some of the songs for Blair Davis at Young Avenue. “He got really interested in it when he heard it,” Robert says. “He agreed to mix the whole record for us.
“We did the method for this super old school. Meaning there are no punches, no loops, no pre-set sounds, no auto tune on any of the vocals. And everything was done in a single performance. Including the vocals. Which is how they used to do it back in the tape days. A kind of throwback approach that makes for a more dynamic vibe. I hope.”
And, he says, “Ryan Peel is playing drums on these alongside my digital beats, which helped a lot.”
Describing U. V. Rays, which has a “bossanova beat,” Maggie, who wrote the song, says, “I was kind of imagining myself in an dreamworld of being on a sailboat with this man who happens to be my husband. And kind of playing on the Ra sun god kind of concept. Honestly, just a moment in time with my husband in a dreamworld escape.”
She’s never been on a sailboat, but, Maggie says, “After writing this song, I feel like I lived that song.”
Footage in the U. V. Rays video was taken at his sister’s house, Cielito Lindo, in Palm Beach, Florida, Robert says. “We were just kicking it,” he says, adding, “That video, honestly, was vacation footage.”
He wanted to shoot a music video, but nobody wanted to. They were “just having fun sitting in the sun. I thought, ‘OK. I’m going to shoot that.’ We were in my sister’s magical backyard with this giant beehive, iguanas everywhere.”
As for their writing styles, Robert says, “Maggie has more of a tendency to sing traditional old music where I’m coming at it from an outer-space angle. I want to vibrate you. And adding a lot of disco elements to it.”
He describes his music style as “if Abba/ELO had a baby in the South.”
“I grew up writing all these country songs with these four-part harmonies,” Maggie says. “Consequently, I wound up writing songs with the same method. A lot of the structure of the melodies with harmonies remind me of the Southern kind of music background that I have. But it’s not country.”
Robert and Maggie are going to do a full-length Midnight Sirens album. It will feature their songs, which Robert describes as “a weird fusion of retro and new school.”
“With a little Southern twang to it,” Maggie says.
To watch the U. V. Rays video, click here.
To listen to U. V. Rays and The Admiral, click here.