Pop Music : This Trio Isn’t From Dixie : Don’t confuse Shedaisy with--or compare them to--that other famous female country group.

NASHVILLE —  Shortly after Lyric Street Records president Randy Goodman signed the country music trio Shedaisy to a recording contract, he set up a concert to introduce the three sisters to booking agents and artist managers.

Afterward, he warmly greeted Kristyn, Kelsi and Kassidy Osborn. He told them how glad he was to have met them, how happy he was that they had become the first act signed to the new, Disney-owned country music label, and how appreciative he was that they had gambled with an unproven company instead of holding out for one of Nashville’s more prominent major labels.

That’s when Kristyn decided to reveal a secret they’d been hiding from him: They had met before, and Goodman had advised his label against signing them.

“My first reaction was, ‘Oh great, I’ve just signed them and already I’ve made a major artist faux pas,’ ” Goodman says, chuckling at the memory.

As it turns out, that first encounter came in 1989, when the sisters were teenagers. At the time, Goodman was an executive vice president at RCA Records, and he attended a showcase for the trio with RCA Nashville president Joe Galante.

“As soon as they mentioned it, I absolutely remembered it,” Goodman says, recalling that the show took place in a recording studio owned by country music singer Ronnie Milsap. “We went upstairs and these three little girls sang for us. I remember walking back with Joe, and we said, ‘Man, good luck with that.’ I mean, they were little girls. Back then, being female and young, that was the kiss of death in country music.”

Oh, how the times have changed, and so have Kristyn, Kelsi and Kassidy Osborn. As Shedaisy, the three women are the hottest act to emerge in country music since the massive breakthrough of another female trio, the Dixie Chicks. It’s a connection that makes it easy to think of Shedaisy (a name drawn from an American Indian word for “my sisters”) as Dixie Chicks II, even though the two acts’ musical flavorings are quite different.

On the success of only one Top 5 single, “Little Goodbyes,” the group is fast approaching the 200,000 mark in sales for its debut album, “The Whole Shebang,” which came out in May.

“One of the things we’ve done is let them take the lead in a lot of the situations and provide the vision,” Goodman says of Shedaisy. “They know what appeals to a young audience because they’re part of that audience.”

However, for the three sisters, it’s been an arduous trek.

“When people find out we’ve been here for 10 years, their jaws drop,” says oldest sister Kristyn, 24, who co-wrote the 11 songs on the trio’s album with a variety of collaborators, including popster Richard Marx. “They just kinda shake their heads and say. . . .”

When she pauses, Kassidy, the youngest sister at 22, completes the sentence: “You must’ve been embryos!”

The three explode in a chorus of laughs, as they often do during an interview at Nashville’s Masterfonics Studio, where they recorded their album.

Despite the 24-hour-a-day pressures that accompany this level of sudden pop-culture success, the sisters remain lighthearted and bright-eyed, even though they’ve been in constant motion while crisscrossing the U.S. since late June.

“We know how rare a chance like this is, and we’re really ready to work hard,” Kristyn says. “That’s one thing we’re really happy about--we know what this means. We’re not going to take anything for granted.”

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Kristyn, Kelsi, 24, and Kassidy grew up in the rodeo center of Magna, Utah, three of six children raised in the Mormon religion by David and Robyn Osborn.

“We think living there, and the whole way we were raised, really helps us now,” Kristyn says. “We grew up with a lot of values, and that’s a really important influence on how we are.”

Kelsi was 11 when she played the lead in the musical “Annie” at Utah’s Sundance Summer Theatre. Afterward, she and Kassidy formed a duo that sang at state fairs and retirement centers. Kristyn eventually joined them.

Encouraged by the response to the sisters’ performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before a Utah Jazz basketball game, the girls’ father put together a package featuring pink cassette tapes and photos of the three girls in frilly dresses and ‘80s big hair, and he blanketed Nashville with the tapes. After getting a nibble, David Osborn packed up the three girls and traveled to Nashville.

Despite the initial reactions of RCA’s Galante and Goodman, the sisters ended up signing with that label within months. By then, Galante had assumed the presidency of the company’s rock and pop division, a move that took him and Goodman to New York. “It seems funny now, but I never knew them and didn’t know anything about it,” Goodman says. “I never crossed their paths.”

Although they recorded several songs, the Osborn Sisters, as they were known, were dropped after two years without releasing a single or album.

“Looking back on it now, we’re glad it didn’t come out,” Kassidy says. “It happened really quick, and the recordings we did really didn’t represent what we wanted to be like.”

Now, they say, they’re exactly what they want to be. What strikes them as funny, as well as somewhat frustrating, is that the timing of their success has drawn carping from critics who deem them Dixie Chick clones.

“People wanted not to like it, and they wanted to think that we were put together to capitalize on their success, and they wanted to think it was not the real thing,” Kristyn says. “But we have this history we can show them. I think that gives us a lot of legitimacy.”

Besides, as the trio point out, its rhythm-based, harmony-driven, pop-heavy sound is distinctly different from that of the Dixie Chicks. Unlike that band, Shedaisy doesn’t emphasize fiddles, banjos, mandolins and steel guitars.

Instead, the group has more in common with such pop-directed country singers as Martina McBride and Faith Hill. But the trio’s intricately woven harmonies and vibrant youthfulness separate it from others, as does Kristyn’s cheeky, playful songwriting.

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Indeed, there’s a reason Shedaisy will appear on an ABC-TV Christmas special with pop acts ‘N Sync and 98 Degrees. Ultimately, Shedaisy presents a Middle American, somewhat sanitized and personality-filled version of the teen-driven vocal groups currently dominating the pop charts.

The head of Disney’s vast music arm suggests the Christmas special is only the start of the entertainment company’s ability to cross-promote an act such as Shedaisy. Besides frequent appearances on the Disney Channel, the trio also has been chosen to provide the closing song for the soundtrack of an upcoming Christmas video featuring all of the Disney cartoon characters.

“They have a particular charm and honesty about them that’s irresistible,” says Bob Cavallo, chairman of the Buena Vista Music Group and president of Hollywood Records. “They’re a little pop-leaning, and because of that it opens up a lot of synergistic opportunities for them. Everybody in all the branches of our company is captivated by them and wants to work in their stuff.”