Annie & The Caldwells

Annie Earl Caldwell (vocals), Deborah Caldwell Moore (vocals), Anjessica Caldwell (vocals), Toni Rivers (vocals), Willie Joe Caldwell Sr. (guitar), Willie Caldwell Jr. (bass), Abel Aquirius (drums)

“My family is my band.” For Annie Caldwell, this sentence is not a metaphor. Her band and her family are one and the same, her way of life. Hailing from West Point, Mississippi, this family clan plays powerful, fiery, deeply spiritual soul music, with touches of gospel and funk, throbbing with street life, sweat, suffering and love... in short, authenticity.

At 16, Annie was already singing alongside her brothers in The Staples Jr. Singers, a teenage group that released a single album in the 1970s. During a performance at a church in West Point a guitarist in the audience asked, ‘Who is that?’ That musician was Willie Joe Caldwell. Annie would later marry that Willie Joe and found a group with him.

While raising their children, Annie opened Caldwell Fashions, a shop on West Point's main street that since the 1980s has become a point of reference for women dressing for conventions and Church of God In Christ anniversaries. Everything changed when her eldest daughter was invited to sing in a school competition... and chose to sing blues, i.e., music that did not speak of the gospel. ‘We thought that if we didn't do something, the devil was going to take her,’ Annie recalls. Thus was the family group was born: as a way to protect their daughters and, at the same time, channel the music they loved most.

Two decades later, the band's line-up remains virtually unchanged. Their songs speak of the things that have happened to them: births, illnesses, losses, resilience. Real life turned into collective catharsis on stage, from a female, intergenerational perspective.

Their third and latest album, Can’t Lose My (Soul) (2025), is the fruit of twenty years of hard work. Recorded in their village, in a church near their home. Everything was recorded live, together, as a family, seeking to preserve the emotion, rawness and authenticity of each song.

The Caldwells remain down to earth: they all have day jobs, Annie's shop is still open and their music comes from exactly where they come from. A sound where faith, disco, soul and real life come together without artifice. Gospel to dance to, to heal and to believe in.