-- Corey Moss, with additional reporting by Jonathan Cane
They perform as the Beu Sisters, but they might as well be the Beu Bunch.
Candice, Christie, Jilaine and Danielle Beu's story reads like the script for the perfect sitcom, a "Partridge Family" for the "TRL" generation.
The sisters and their four other siblings were born to a New York couple who co-starred in "A Chorus Line."
After spending their early years growing up on Broadway, the Beu girls and their family moved to tiny New Smyrna Beach, Florida, where each of them developed different interests. Candice began drawing and painting. Christie learned to surf and even won the Women's East Coast Surfing Championship in 2000. Jilaine took to sewing and costume design. And young Danielle, well, as she puts it, "I don't really have a particular thing ... except for boys."
Between all of that there's been one common thread keeping the Beu Sisters close: they love to sing together. So much so that they decided to try making a living at it — or, as it would go in a cheesy sitcom theme song, they decided to chase their dreams.
The Beu Sisters were eventually discovered by Steve Greenberg, the man responsible for bringing Hanson and the Baha Men to the masses. And last week their debut album, Decisions, was released on his S-Curve Records.
Along the way, of course, there have been countless comical moments. Like the day at the airport when everyone from the ticket counter workers to the security guards to the cafeteria cooks asked them to sing.
"Then we get to the gate and the two ladies that we sang for at first were at the gate are like, 'Listen, we have a proposition for you. If you have a couple of CDs and you'll sing for us again, we'll bump you up to first class,' " Christie recalled. "We're like, 'Yes, all right.' So she gets on the loudspeaker for the whole terminal, 'We got a 20-minute delay here so we're going to have some live entertainment from the Beu Sisters.' "
"It was great," Candice said, sarcastically. "We were dressed in our lovely travel gear. We had our pillows with us. And there were all these little kids around our feet."
In most sitcoms you would cue the laugh track here, but the Beu Sisters take care of that themselves.
"We just laugh and laugh and laugh," Christie said. "I don't know if anyone else actually thinks we're funny, but we think we're a riot."
Every good sitcom also has their sentimental moments, and the Beu Sisters have lived just as many of those. Like when they read Billboard's review of their single "I Was Only (Seventeen)," particularly the part where the writer calls it "an emotionally fraught ballad that is unpretentious and stunningly beautiful in its simplicity," and when he notes, "these gals are simply wonderful."
"It was unbelievable," Christie said. " I had to call the guy who wrote the review and was like, 'Thank you so much. I love you.' "
"I was crying," Candice admitted. "I had to read it again to make sure that that was really there."
The raving review episode is one likely to repeat. Decisions is chock full of unpretentious pop-rock tracks, with a little something for everyone mixed in. Think the Bangles meet the Dixie Chicks.
The album is also aided by a strong stable of producers and songwriters, including David Kahn (Sublime), Stephen Lironi (Hanson), Mark Hudson (Aerosmith) and Mike Mangini (O-Town). Anna Waronker and Redd Kross' Steve and Jeff McDonald also contributed, on the jingly "My Christmas Was in June," giving the group some indie cred.
Don't get the wrong idea, though. The Beu Sisters are not a manufactured band. The siblings wrote nine of Decisions' 13 tracks and arranged the vocal parts themselves.
They work harder than a typical sitcom family — a small hitch — but they enjoy every minute of it.
"I think it's always been in our blood, and so it's something that we've always loved to do," Candice explained. "As children we didn't play like normal kids do. We didn't play house. We didn't play school. We played Broadway show in the living room."
If only there were cameras to catch the action.
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