Folk music, faith, and family harmonies

The Branson, Mo.–based bluegrass band the Petersens is proof that the family that plays—and prays—together stays together.

“Some families aren’t meant to do full-time business together,” says Katie Petersen, the main songwriter. “So we were very cautious, like ‘O.K., we’ll do it for one year, and if we like each other more, we’ll do it for another year.’ And God’s grace has just been on it.”

Indeed, it has. The Petersens’ new album Father, a Moment With You is a stylistically varied, roots-music smorgasbord with zero bad cuts—kind of like the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack if it were composed of gospel originals and a sprinkling of hymns. The “Father” in its title, by the way, refers to God. But the Petersens’ earthly paterfamilias is important to their story too.

The year was 2004, and Lt. Col. (Ret.) Jon Petersen, his wife Karen, and their four children happened upon a bluegrass festival near the Gettysburg Battlefield, where, according to the group’s website, Jon “saw families … playing music together and not watching TV or playing video games and decided our family would also become a bluegrass band!”

The exclamation point belongs. Not only did Karen, who plays bass and holds a master’s in music education, see to it that the Petersen kids learned the requisite instruments—Katie fiddle, Ellen banjo, Matt guitar, Julianne mandolin—but the kids also matured into first-rate singers, both solo and together. (The “adopted” Petersen, Emmett Franz, who joined on dobro in 2017, isn’t bad either.) Now, over 20 million Spotify streams and 300 million YouTube views later, they’re one of America’s most successful family bands, performing to enthusiastic audiences twice a week at Branson’s Little Opry Theater and touring as their schedule allows.

Yes, they have been offered a record deal. “It sounded great,” Katie admits. “But a friend of ours who reads a lot of those contracts read through it and said, ‘I would just suggest not this time.’ So we took her advice.” “Besides,” adds Ellen, “we all like being in control of what songs we sing and when we come out with albums.”

And they come out with albums often. Their “Complete Collection CD Bundle” contains 14 titles spanning a dozen years. What songs they sing could be summarized as a little of everything and a lot reflecting their faith. Perhaps as inspiring as the latter—especially in the age of “deconstructing”—is the fact that the Petersen siblings have reached adulthood with their faith intact.

“It helps to have a group of people around you that share that grounding in the Lord,” Katie says. “When—not if—you go through a hard time with your faith, you have, like, five other people right there that are still moving towards the goal.”