Jypsi was recorded live at American Songwriter by Brian Threlkeld.

A hurricane hit the American Songwriter office on a recent Tuesday evening and left almost as quickly as it came. This is the only explanation we’re left with after the four members of Jypsi (sisters Amber-Dawn, Scarlett and Lillie Mae and brother Frank) moved in on us for a quick recording session.

We were peering out of the second story window of our Nashville office, looking down at 16th Avenue, watching the colorful shadows parking and getting out of their cars. A bright pink mohawk was carrying a fiddle case, and others were pulling pink polka-dotted suitcases on wheels. But whatever Jypsi looked like out on the street, when they came up the stairs and down the hall, they transformed into the most professional musicians we’ve seen in such close proximity in quite some time.

Coming straight from a three-hour residency at Layla’s Bluegrass Inn, they set up in our office without skipping a beat. We did a quick mic check and were started rolling. The group’s main singer, 17-year-old Lillie Mae, conveyed a startling understanding of the heartache of country music as she sang the first tune, “Free.” Peering straight into her eyes from across the room, singing harmony vocals and flat picking a Martin guitar, stood the group’s only male representative, Frank Rische. Twin-fiddler and singer Amber-Dawn and mandolin player Scarlett anchored the sound of the band and the older sisters seem to serve as the group’s leaders.

If you catch Jypsi down at Layla’s, you’ll see them taking audience requests and knocking out true renditions of songs from country music’s golden age-”Route 66″ or “Apartment #9.” For our recording session, they played updated country numbers that conjured up the same emotions as the old tunes. (The songs they played in our office, “Free” and “You Don’t Know What Real Love Is” were written by Bobby Nicholas and appear on the eponymous album Jypsi released through Arista Nashville in May 2008, available on iTunes.) After about ten blissful minutes of brother/sister harmony, the band launched into the Frank Rische-penned instrumental “Kandi Kitchen”-a barnburner of a fiddle tune. The music flowed for what seemed like just a few hypnotic minutes. Then, as quickly as they arrived, they were gone, and we stood transfixed on the events that had just occurred.

To read Jewly Hight’s profile of Jypsi, click here.