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These gals live to entertain
The Miller Sisters, Candice Miller Kwiatkowski and Karee Miller Jaeger, get into St. Patrick’s Day spirit by going green during a performance at the Mangy Moose Saloon.
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Few teenagers have business cards. Far fewer consider themselves professional performers, like the Miller Sisters did.
And do. Karee Miller Jaeger, thirty-one, and Candice Miller Kwiatkowski, twenty-nine, have made their own way as singers, from their roots in a small Minnesota town to stints in Nashville, Kodiak, and Reno, and now raising families in Victor, Idaho. In the Tetons, they juggle their duo act, the Miller Sisters, with a five-person band, Bootleg Flyer, and the long-standing eight-member Mandatory Air. In great demand, the sisters already have a gig lined up as far in advance as July 3, 2012.
Making music for a living is a life they enjoy—obvious to all who have seen them on stage. Bright banter peppers every performance. When not singing, the sisters are smiling. St. Patrick’s Day at the iconic Mangy Moose Saloon found them winging green goodies into the crowd and sharing Irish humor.
Onstage, their dynamism draws everyone in, including the likes of Lisa Marie Presley, who approached them after a Mangy Moose show three winters ago. So taken with the two, Presley made time for them on her vacation. Soon after, her husband, Michael Lockwood, flew Mandatory Air out to Ojai, California, as a surprise at Presley’s fortieth birthday party. Karee was three months pregnant at the time, a fact that comes out late in the animated telling of the story.
Candice and Karee have established themselves as mainstays of the local music scene. Last summer at the Spud Drive-In in Driggs, Mandatory Air won Grand Targhee’s inaugural Battle of the Bands, beating out a bevy of local acts by popular vote to play the opening set of Targhee Fest. There they christened the stage for the big names on board: moe, Los Lobos, and Michael Franti and Spearhead.
Opening day of Targhee Fest found them double booked, a predicament the band embraced. They went straight from the Targhee stage back down to the valley to sing at a wedding.
