Growing up, Karli Osborn loved to sing and dance with her older sisters. But when Kelsi, Kassidy and Kristyn Osborn left for Nashville, 6-year-old Karli was left behind in Magna.
"I remember thinking," Karli said, "if I was a little bit older, I would move out there with them."
Now, about 15 years later, The Osborn Sisters have become the country sensation SHeDAISY, and with Kelsi giving birth to twins, Karli is finally joining her sisters in the music world.
This won't be Karli's first time onstage with her sisters. She's been a special guest several times at their performances, starting when she was 4. But this is her first tour. And she's excited to get on the road.
"It's seriously been something I'd hoped would happen," Karli said by phone from Nashville, where she was packing for a three-week California tour with her sisters. "It's like a big reunion."
This "reunion" started about a month early, when Kelsi suddenly had to go on bed rest and Karli was called in to take her place. Karli had to learn 25 songs in about a month, but the real refiner's fire was hosting a national television show on the cable CMT channel her second day on the job.
"I didn't have time to get scared or nervous," she said. "I just went in there and did my thing."
Karli also took Kelsi's place in SHeDAISY's newest video, "In Terms of Love." That experience was not at all what she expected. "I thought it would be like a performance, where we'd all be out there at the same time and do our thing. But I was in front of the camera by myself with about 50 crew members watching me."
She had to lip sync for the video, but because of a film technique that requires her to sing fast for the recording to slow down, she had to perform the song double-time. "I felt like a chipmunk, and my sisters were just on the side laughing at me, like, 'Oh my gosh.' But I got more comfortable after like the sixth hour."
Now that the video's been released, Karli, Kassidy and Kristyn are off to perform eight shows in California. Karli's first taste of tour life could be challenging, but her schedule will become even more hectic in the fall because she's still in college at Lipscomb University in Nashville.
Karli, a business-management major and music minor, only has one semester of school left, and she plans to finish up on the road. She said everyone on the bus is going to help her study — a different way of looking at group projects. "I'll be doing homework all the way up till showtime, and then my nose is back in the books."
Of all the changes in her life these days, she says the hardest is the lack of consistency. All through college, she starred on the women's basketball team, and that meant a strict study-practice regimen that's been missing in the music business. "Here, it's all about adapting and adjusting every time I go to perform."
But the benefits outweigh the drawbacks by far. "I get to sing and make money. I'm with my family, and I'm with a really good band."
As for whether her joining SHeDAISY is permanent, Karli said that's up to her sisters. "We'll see if they want a quartet. It's up to them; this is their thing. I'm just trying to do the best I can to put myself in a position where, if they need me to be there for them, I can be."
Meanwhile, new mom Kelsi and her daughters, Savannah Marie and Adyson Amilia, are doing wonderfully, Karli said. The twins look like "little porcelain dolls."
Oddly enough, in a family with a famous sister act, so far the next generation of Osborns are all girls. "It's like we're breeding subs," Karli joked. "We're having little SHeDAISYs."
E-mail: jcloward@desnews.com