There’s a moment right at the very beginning of any Twitty & Lynn show that affords country music fans the chance to look back in time. Just after the band has played the signature intro to Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man, Tre Twitty and Tayla Lynn shoot each other a glance that summons the electrifying chemistry of their grandparents: Tre is the grandson of Conway Twitty, Tayla is the granddaughter of Loretta Lynn.

Audiences can’t believe their eyes. From that moment, for the next 90 minutes, they’re in the presence of living country music history. Tre says. “It validates the experience of the concert for them. We’re telling our grandparents’ story through our story.” But Twitty & Lynn — and their internationally popular show A Salute to Conway & Loretta — aren’t impersonators. Rather, they are onstage celebrating country music, the lost art of duet singing, and the two beloved icons they refer to as Poppy and Memaw. “I think of us as the ambassadors of the Twitty and Lynn names — we’re just the new version of what they’ve already established,” Tre says. “But we also want to be caretakers of the past. At our shows, we get generations of fans because country music is passed down.”

Loretta herself was impressed. The Country Music Hall of Fame member helped her granddaughter and Tre with their show and had the same time-traveling experience that today’s audiences do while watching them perform. “Memaw just loved it. It brought up so many memories of Conway for her and took her back to a place in her life when they were building their careers. She’d always say that Tre has Conway’s heart,” says Tayla, who lives at Lynn’s Tennessee ranch and used to tour with her grandmother “We were very close,” she says.

Together as Twitty & Lynn for five years and poised to launch a huge summertime tour, the duo has cultivated an audience and caught the attention of Nashville along the way. In 2022, they made their debut on the world-famous Grand Ole Opry, singing Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man on the very same circle of wood where Conway and Loretta once stood.

The duo credits their show’s popularity to the timeless songs of Conway and Loretta — duets like After the Fire Is Gone and You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly are all in the set, along with Conway and Loretta solo hits like Hello, Darlin’ and Coal Miner’s Daughter. But they’re also giving audiences a chance to relive a moment in time that ended far too soon: Conway and Loretta stopped touring together full-time in 1981, and Conway died in 1993. “Conway has been gone 30 years,” Tre says. “Had Poppy lived, I think there would have been a great second act for him and Loretta. There’s a lot of people that wanted to see that, and we’re able to let them hear those songs and stories again.”

The pair also released a version of Conway and Loretta’s Feelins’ — recorded the day after Loretta died last year. The raw emotion in the song is palpable. “It wasn’t planned out,” Tre says. “We were going into the studio to record our original tracks and Memaw had died the day before. So we said, ‘Let’s do one of her songs with Conway.’ There was this emotion in the room that we just couldn’t ignore.”

In the end, though, their goal is to entertain while, at the same time, honoring their grandparents. “Conway and Loretta used to do everything with so much passion: the way they dressed, the way they recorded, the way they performed,” Tayla says. “We want to bring that to fans who were lucky enough to see our grandparents before and to those who are just learning about them.” “Our show gives people an idea of what Loretta and Conway were like through their grandchildren’s eyes,” adds Tre. “It’s a special gift to keep that flame burning.”