Hard enough to hold an edge; soft enough not to break. Austin, Texas duo Kristin Davidson and Carolyn Phillips live that balance and express it in their music. Their songs take root in the story-telling traditions of folk and country and flourish with textured harmonies, revealing an intimate look at the human condition and one’s search for meaning.

Hardened and Tempered released their second album, Hold the Line, in January 2021. It debuted at No. 3 Album and No. 5 Artist on the FAI Folk DJ Chart, received international acclaim from radio and print outlets, and made top lists for 2021. Joining forces again with Grammy award winning producer Lloyd Maines, the nine songs highlight Davidson’s intelligent songwriting and Phillips’ gift of harmony. “[A]s strong as Davidson and Phillips are on their own,” writes Rachel Cholst of Country Queer and Adobe and Teardrops, “the songs on Hold the Line really take flight when their harmonies kick in.” The storytelling shines a light on sorrow and captures with the keen eye of a street photographer glimmers of backbone and resilience. Special instrumental guests include Maines (Terri Hendrix, The Chicks, Jerry Jeff Walker, Joe Ely), Dennis Ludiker (Asleep at the Wheel), and Mark “Speedy” Gonzales (Grupo Fantasma). The album was engineered, mixed, and mastered by Pat Manske (Wood & Wire, Ray Wylie Hubbard) at The Zone Recording Studio in Dripping Springs, Texas.

Hold the Line is the follow-up to The Trailer Sessions (2017), which received accolades from radio and print outlets throughout the United States. Influenced by Davidson’s time living in a trailer on the Texas-Mexico border and lonely stretches of highway heading, if not home, to where home might be, The Trailer Sessions explores the mythology of the open road and the haunting relationships between person and place. Some of Austin’s finest instrumentalists (Lloyd Maines, Richard Bowden, Jane Gillman, Riley Osbourn, Terri Hendrix, Bukka Allen, and Pat Manske) weave new characters of sound into the lyrics’ stark landscapes to reassure the listener that, with music, no one is ever really alone.

The Austin Chronicle described The Trailer Sessions as “11 neatly wrapped songs driven by slick harmonies, impressive fingerpicking, and lovelorn tales.” No Depression found that “Phillips and Davidson balance each other perfectly in their harmonies and playing.” The album was selected as a “best of 2017” album by radio stations throughout the United States, and “Ricochet” was included on NPR’s “A Not-At-All-Exhaustive LGBTQIA+ Country Playlist” (June 2020).

But a funny thing happened shortly after the release of The Trailer Sessions. Davidson, a zealous freedom fighter for the indigent and their equal treatment in criminal law, was called upon to argue (successfully!) at the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Phillips finished her PhD in nursing. Inspired as an oncology nurse practitioner by the care of her patients and their families during the dying process, as well as the burnout and compassion fatigue suffered by so many healthcare providers, Phillips’ scientific research focuses on the effects of storytelling through music to cope with the complex emotions during grief and trauma.

While their activism keeps them fighting in the trenches to serve the needs of others, music is personal, the essence of home, where love and compassion fortify connection. In 2016, Phillips and Davidson co-founded Songs for the Soul, Inc., a 501(c)(3) organization that uses songwriting and storytelling to support the wellbeing of society’s professional caregivers. Songs for the Soul provides a multi-dimensional program for small groups of professional caregivers that uses expressive writing, storytelling, self-care skills, and music to help them address the grief and suffering that is part of their work. Two guiding principles of the organization are that the healthcare workers attend the programs for free, and the songwriters are paid for their participation. When COVID hit, Songs for the Soul channeled its efforts into the Soul-a-Gram program, which used music to connect with frontline healthcare workers and pay songwriters who had lost sources of income. Through their own songwriting contributions to Songs for the Soul’s programs, Davidson and Phillips’s songs have been recognized by the National Academy of Medicine and received an Excellence in Communications award from The University of Texas at Austin.

While Hardened and Tempered are no strangers to sorrow, the songs on Hold the Line explore the transformative power of hope, the kind that seeds itself in and arises out of despair. It is what keeps our eyes on the horizon when we reach dead ends (When the Harvest Comes; Counting the Cars). It seeks out connection when we are lonely and uncertain (Breaker, Breaker; Crossroads). It is beauty in unexpected places (Magnolia) and a reckoning of self (Beer Bottles and Broken Hearts). And it is the kind of hope for humanity that empowers us to keep showing up for the good fight, to make good trouble, and to know that the good work is the work of a lifetime (Hold the Line). Sometimes, that nitty-gritty hope is all we have for strategy (Wide Awake at Midnight). But, “[t]he pointed wisdom of Davidson’s lyrics is perhaps most apparent on “The Republican River,” which is named after a midwest waterway but serves as a metaphor for environmental and political upheaval across the decades, from the Dust Bowl era to contemporary times,” observes Peter Blackstock of the Austin American-Statesman.

Before COVID, Hardened and Tempered toured nationally, and they look forward to doing so again once the pandemic ends. Their favorite stages foster connection with the audience and include the historic Opera House in Red Cloud, Nebraska, Carnegie Hall in Lewiston, West Virginia, Mansion on “O” in Washington, D.C., and Austin’s own iconic Saxon Pub and the dearly departed Threadgill’s. They have been regional folk finalists at the 2018 Kerrville Folk Festival and official showcase artists at the 2017 Southwest Regional Folk Alliance conference. They have been performers at the National Women’s Music Festival in Middleton, Wisconsin in 2021 and 2022.