With their debut album, the Tigirlily Gold Sisters make their move (exclusive)

A debut album, a shiny new ACM award, regular appearances on the Grand Ole Opry, bigger crowds: It’s all next-level career stuff these days for Kendra and Krista Slaubaugh, aka Tigirlily Gold. But none of it rocks their world quite like the change the sisters are about to make.

Kendra, 28, drops the bombshell about Krista, 26: “She’s getting her own place.”

How big is this? Except for the one brief semester Kendra went to college, the sisters have never lived apart. And even given all of their recent accomplishments, they know this is going to have a much deeper impact on their lives.

But make no mistake: Sisterhood is still powerful.

“Forever and ever, our sisterhood is the most important thing to us — and our love for each other,” Kendra says. “And that always comes first. We love making music together. We love creating. That will never stop. But at our core, we are sisters.”

That bond, the sisters have discovered in their 14 years as a formal duo (of course they have always sung songs together), is also at the heart of their music. It is undoubtedly the sound that comes from their recently released album, Blond: two strong and bold female voices who live their lives and love on the stream of their own blood harmony.

It’s been a journey, Krista says, to capture that sound — to find that sisterhood in their songs. Both agree they arrived at their destination in 2021, when they wrote the title track, “Blonde,” an irreverent pledge of allegiance to peroxide dependency and a “Dolly Parton state of mind.”

“We’ve since identified it as a girl group energy,” Krista says. “It’s all the things we’ve been saying, with the confidence and the fun. There’s something about women coming together and making music. It just makes you feel unstoppable. We don’t filter, because we try to keep it real. So I think when we stopped trying to be…”

“…cool,” says Kendra (because finishing a thought is second nature to these sisters).

“…too artistic and cool,” Krista continues seamlessly, “and we stopped writing what we thought people wanted us to write, and we just wrote what we really liked and what we had to say uniquely, and then it clicked for us. And that was ‘Blonde.’”

“Blonde” video

Appropriately, the song is the first of 10 tracks on the album, which also includes their two smash radio singles, “Shoot Tequila” and “I Tried a Ring On,” their current chart-topping single. Eight of the songs are sisterly co-writes and breathe the women’s backstory, from “Hometown Song,” a nod to their youth in tiny Hazen, North Dakota, to the sultry, sexy “End Up Us,” which evokes Kendra’s five-year marriage to childhood sweetheart Jared Olson, now a Nashville photographer.

Leona Lewis’s 2007 mega-pop hit, “Bleeding Love,” is the album’s only cover and is a nod to the Slaubaughs’ Nashville dues years, playing grueling four-hour sets of covers in the honky-tonks of Lower Broadway.

“We just got bored of playing the same songs over and over again, so we just came up with our country version of ‘Bleeding Love,'” Krista explains. “It was a song that no matter what audience we played it to, they would light up and start singing at the top of their lungs. When we stopped playing on Broadway, we always kept it in our live set.”

Album producer Shane McAnally was the one who suggested it as the last track on the album.

Other notable projects are, for better or worse, inspired by Krista’s romantic misadventures, including “Stupid Prizes,” a custom-built live anthem that, as Krista puts it, “makes Kendra cry.” The regretful “I Tried a Ring On” also reflects on Krista’s experiences with a breakup, though the song didn’t start out that way when she wrote it with Nashville songwriters Pete Good and Josh Jenkins two years ago.

“I was in a relationship at the time, and when we wrote the song, I was imagining how I would feel if we broke up,” Krista recalls. “And then, a few months later, we broke up. At first it was just something I hoped I would never have to go through, and then it was something I went through.”

Don’t worry, she’s had the final say since then. Not only did the duo deliver a triumphant performance of the song at this year’s ACM Awards Show after being named New Duo/Group of the Year, but Krista is also now happily dating country artist Walker Montgomery, the son of ’90s hitmaker John Michael Montgomery and nephew of Montgomery Gentry’s Eddie Montgomery.

The two young artists met after a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend told the sisters’ mother that Montgomery might have a long-distance crush on Krista. “It’s a true story!” Kendra interrupts as Krista recounts the tale. She made the next logical move and slid into Montgomery’s DMs. They had their first date (an adorable game of mini golf) in December, and made their first public appearance together in May on the ACM Awards red carpet.

Video “I tried on a ring”

Krista says sharing the same career has been an unexpected bonus in the relationship. “I actually like it because we’re away at the same time,” she says of their respective touring schedules. “He understands what I do. We’re both very supportive of each other. We’re not competitive with each other. We care so much about music, and it’s our passion. But we also have a whole life outside of music, and our relationship is very much based on that. We love each other very much, and we love music too.”

Crucially, Kendra approves of the match. “I’m the toughest critic, probably more than my parents,” she assures. “He treats her so, so great, and he just adores her. It’s just the sweetest thing to see. They both deserve each other, and they both make each other so happy, and I love seeing that.”

Krista confirms her current state of bliss with a broad grin: “All good here. Album. Boyfriend.”

She can add to that list Tigirlily Gold’s dozens of Opry appearances (and counting) since their May 2023 debut, a high-profile appearance on a recent Dolly Parton TV special, opening slots on arena tours for Parker McCollum and labelmate Walker Hayes, and even an Instagram shoutout from one half of country’s most famous female duo, Wynonna Judd: “Carry the torch, girls!”

Soon, the sisters will both receive something else: their ACM trophies. The reserve trophy they received in May was quickly snatched away, but everything about their ACM experience made it “the best week of our lives,” says Krista. “That award made it all worth it. All the work we put in, all those nights we were there, what do we do?”

Kendra adds, “And to know that the country music industry is behind us and supporting us and encouraging us and believing in what we do is just a huge affirmation.”

Once the actual hardware arrives, Kendra says, “it will be like winning the prize again.”

This time in the plural: Both sisters quickly inquired with the ACM officials whether they would each receive their own trophy.

“We’ve had to share closets and bathrooms in our lives,” says Kendra, “but we don’t have to share our ACM awards!”

That’s no small feat, considering the sisters will soon be living at two different addresses. They’ll be moving into separate homes in a few weeks — another sign of their growing success, since their living arrangement was more of a way to save money. Kendra and her husband have now been able to buy a house, and Krista saw that as her cue to finally get her own place.

“We live about half an hour apart,” Kendra says.

“So we’ll be a little bit separated…” Krista says.

“…It could be good for us…” Kendra interrupts her.

“…which is probably a good thing,” Krista says, echoing her sister as she finishes her own thought.

Kendra elaborates on the expected benefits of having two households: “When we’re together, we find it really hard to turn the music off, so it would be nice if we could have a little bit of a private life outside of the music.”

But it’s worth repeating: Sisterhood is still powerful.

The Slaubaughs note that even when they’re not on the road, they still plan to see each other every day. And even when they’re apart, they’ll never really be far away. As Kendra says, with some sisterly relief, “Thank goodness there’s FaceTime.”