Jeff and Sheri Easter never get a break from each other. They have been married for more than two decades and playing music together since their debut album Thread of Hope in 1994.
The gospel duo joined The Cowboy Channel to talk about how they got their start in music, whether or not they ever argue, and more.
TCC: What led you to country gospel music?
SE: Both of us were brought up in gospel music families, my family was the Lewis family, and Jeff’s family is the Easter brothers. So the cumulative of our families I think we figured one time around 156 years, because both of them about 58-60 years a piece, and me and Jeff, we’re still working on ours.
JE: And my dad and them loved the old George Jones, Merle Haggard, when they got saved they wanted to start doing gospel music and so they kept doing their country style and put gospel lyrics to it. That’s pretty much the way I was raised, lyrically we’re just…the whole thing about us, we’ve been married – this June will be 39 years – and we just love encouraging people, loving on people, telling them everything’s going to be okay going through the bad stuff just hang on.
SE: And every album we’ve ever recorded, there’s always one at least, great love song because I feel like the families need to be encouraged in that way as well.
TCC: You both come from acclaimed musical families like you said, and now you’ve raised your own musical family you’ve gotta be proud of that.
SE: Very proud, our three children all three of them are musically involved. Our son plays and writes and sings and records, our daughter has the most beautiful gorgeous voice, everybody loves Morgan’s voice, and then our baby daughter, Mara, is 18 years old. We have a 35, 30, and 18 year old, she was our anniversary gift to each other for the 20th. She’s a singer in high school, involved in her high school musical theatre program. So they all love music and we’re happy that they do.
TCC: Its also got to be pretty special to be doing what you love with the person that you love.
JE: That’s right! It is, it’s fun, we toured the first three and a half years with her family, the Lewis Family, the first family of bluegrass, so we did a lot of bluegrass festivals, got to hang out with Sonny and Bobby……… but when we went out on our own New Years Day of 89’, just starting out in a Mazda 626 and now we travel in our own tour bus, but yeah, it’s fun we’re together.
SE: 24/7 365 days a year, we work together, we play together, and the first thing people ask us is “Do you ever argue?”
JE: We do not argue, we have intense moments of fellowship.
TCC: You have to have such amazing memories together from all your time spent on the road, if you have to think of the first memory that comes to mind what would that be?
SE: For us as Jeff and Sheri, the first one is getting to sing with her for the first time in 1984 we were just dating, and they let us sing a song together and that was a highlight.
JE: Well and because we had never sung (together) before so it was this beautiful surprise, and we said hey we sound really good together. And I gave up singing because being raised southern gospel, bluegrass and country, on my solo album which we won’t talk about 40 years ago, one minute in the song I’d do a Jean Watson lyric and then I turn into bluegrass and then you hear Ronny Milsap and its like I couldn’t make up my mind who I was.
SE: So are you saying that I was good for ya?
TCC: A whole career of music, family and fellowship, but what’s next, what else is on the agenda?
SE: I’ve got to be honest I love what I do, I’m passionate about it, my grandfather was on the stage doing this as long as I can and the other thing is I have the personality that if I were to retire, I would go and work just as hard, maybe harder, for free, so I’m just gonna keep making a little money at it.
JE: My hobby is old cars……so I love making things work, I was raised in a junkyard and I like taking old junk and fixing it and she did the same thing when she got me. And so we just have things we enjoy doing it we love traveling and getting to sing together and like I said encouraging people and like I said being together. You know marriages and people see us and I let them old men know its cool to tell your wife you love her.