US group Annie & The Caldwells were taken to the hearts of the UK back in October this year (2025) when they sang two songs on BBC TV’s “Later…With Jools Holland”; showcasing their emotionally-charged and authentic gospel-soul music.
Since then, many have gone on-line expressing a desire for the opportunity to see the Mississippi family group live over here.
That wish is fulfilled when Annie & The Caldwells tour the UK from 28th January 2026, kicking things off with a night at the iconic Ronnie Scott’s in London, before shows in Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester and Bristol.
They are then back on these shores in July for Love Supreme Festival in East Sussex and Birmingham’s Mostly Jazz, Funk & Soul Festival.
Sir Elton John is a big fan of the group and their fabulous debut album, “Can’t Lose My (Soul)”, which was released via Luaka Bop records in March this year. He says: “A great, great record that I insist you go out and buy”.
The seven-piece group is fronted by Annie Caldwell and her daughters Deborah Caldwell Moore and Anjessica Caldwell, plus goddaughter Toni Rivers.
The musicians are all family too; eldest son Willie Jr. on bass and youngest son Abel Aquirius on drums. Annie’s husband Willie Joe Caldwell Sr on guitar. The family are from West Point, Mississippi.
When Annie was 16 years old, in Aberdeen, Mississippi, she played in a band with her brothers – The Staples Jr. Singers, a group of teenagers with a single album recorded in the 1970s.
One day, the Staples Jrs. were singing on a church programme in West Point, when a guitarist who played with one of Annie’s brothers in another band heard her and said, “Who is that?” That moment Annie met Willie Joe Caldwell, Sr., her husband of the last fifty years, and the co-founder and guitarist for the Caldwells.
Annie and Joe got married so young that their parents had to sign for them. They started their own family, and Annie opened a store on Main Street in West Point called Caldwell Fashions – still going strong since the 1980s.
Things changed for the Caldwells when their eldest daughter was old enough to be invited to sing at a high school talent show. The Caldwells were shocked that their daughter was singing the blues. The blues for Annie, means any music of any genre that doesn’t speak the gospel.
“We thought, if we don’t do something, the devil’s going to get her,” Annie said. “We decided we better get these children because people wanted them to sing in places where they played the blues, and I didn’t want that.”
So Annie and Joe started their own group, which pulled from the music their kids loved: The Gap Band, Chaka Kahn, Bootsy Collins. “We started singing ‘Is My Living in Vain’ by the Clark Sisters,” Annie said, illustrating how the group infuses gospel with grit and street savvy. Two decades later, the constellation of family members in The Caldwells is more or less the same.
Their real troubles and experiences; as an intergenerational family run by women, are at the centre of their music: Memories of a daughter’s birth or a brother’s recovery from an illness spill into transcendent moments onstage. “I feel like the message is often for me first,” Annie explains, about the songs she writes. “But so many ladies come up crying and say, I feel like what you were saying was for me.
The album “Can’t Lose My (Soul)”, is 20 years in the making. They recorded it in West Point down the street from Annie and Joe’s house, at a church where Joe plays guitar every other Sunday, and where his father used to be a deacon.
It was produced by Ahmed Gallab, [aka the artist Sinkane], who together with the engineer Albert DiFiore drove a mobile rig down from Nashville and turned the back room of the church into a control room.
As a producer, Gallab saw his role there as making sure that “each song felt as powerful, as raw, and as genuine as the family dynamic behind it. The goal was always to stay true to the feeling behind the music,” which is why “everything was tracked live, in their church, together as a family.
“Hearing Annie’s voice for the first time was like witnessing something rare,” Gallab said of the recording session, “Like you’re in the presence of a force of nature that’s been here long before you. It’s visceral, almost like it’s coming from her soul. You can feel every part of her life, every little piece of her journey, in each note she hits. It’s pure talent: no effort, no pretence, just real and raw.”
“And working with Deborah was like tapping into pure fire,” he said. “She’s feisty, no doubt! That spark, that intensity she brings, spills right into her music. The tough love that these girls gave each other. Calling each other out when one wasn’t in key. It was pretty funny.”
The songs on the album centre on themes of spiritual struggle, redemption and grace. It is uplifting, and blends genre such as gospel, soul, disco and r&b. They take you to church but this is not a record purely for a Sunday morning; if you wanna shake a tail feather and get in the groove, this is for you.
“Can’t Lose My (Soul)” is surely a shoo-in for many “Best Albums Of 2025” lists, and most definitely their BBC TV appearance with Jools Holland on 19th October this year will notch up many, many views on YouTube and BBC iPlayer.
- All the “kids” in the family have day jobs: Willie Jr. is a fork lift driver in Tupelo, Abel Aquirius drives hospital patients to their appointments, Anjessica works in customer care for an insurance company, Deborah is a beautician, Toni is an elementary school teacher; and Caldwell Fashions is still open five days a week, and by appointments, when Annie and her family aren’t travelling to shows.
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