This past Saturday the sister duo folk group The Nields graced our stage and what a treat. It was the first time that they have been to Jim Thorpe and played at the Opera House.
If you are not familiar with the Nields, they are an extremely talented sister duo from
They are both very smart, very creative women with lots of ideas, energy and passion for music. We were able to speak about their close knit relationship as sisters (and what a bond they have!), and about music, their passion for it, and all their ideas they have for bringing that to, not only their current fan base, but young children. Both Nerissa and Katryna are moms (and Katryna is even a bonafide soccer mom) and wives who manage to juggle a career on the road with their music and their home lives.
Q: Does being sisters make being on the road easier or more difficult sometimes?
K: Way easier
N: Easier
N: And we know because we have been on the road with just each other and with seven other people including our husbands. It was easier to get along with her than anyone else
K: If Nerrisa and I were on the Amazing Race we would so win.
Q: Well why don’t you guys apply I would be so rooting for you?
K & N : We should
K: But we have small children and I couldn’t leave my children for however long that show takes. Forget that for now, but one day. I do watch that show and maybe it will still be on when we’re like 60.
N:
K: The thing is there are two aspects of being sisters that makes it more fun. One is, we know how to fight and we know how to resolve our conflicts. We’ve been doing this our entire lives. We were brought up by the same people so we have this sort of same mechanisms for handling situations.
N: We were actually just talking today about money and some issues because obviously we’re business partners too, and there was some discrepancy in the amount of labor one of us was putting in or something, and anyway, we were working it out and we both were like “You know we have the exact same attitude about money . We’re so lucky.” Which is, both of us is are a little disorganized and we know it and so we’re both like we have got to be really careful to write everything down. But, when push comes to shove you know, we’ll be like you owe me $35 but forget about it . We both feel like I want to take care of you. You’re my sister, you’re my partner. My livelihood depends on your happiness. So, we really do have that pretty deeply ingrained.
K: Then there is that other aspect that makes it beyond the things that makes it easier. Which is, we spend hours together in a car. I mean mostly we get paid to drive around and learn the interstate highway system (they both chuckle).
N: And where the Starbucks are.
K: We spend so much of that time sort of psycho-analyzing ourselves and talking to each other about our deepest thoughts and you know the daily crap that comes up and how we handle it, and there is no one in the world that is better at seeing where I’m at fault and gently showing me where I’m at fault and seeing where I’m in the right and gently showing me where I’m in the right. There’s no one better because she knows me really well and that is just incredibly fun thing for us to get to do on a daily basis. Some would think that is really tedious and boring but we think it’s really fun.
Q; And do you find that that helps you in your creative process too, all the stuff you talk about when you psycho analyze yourself?
N: Oh My god. We’re constantly coming up with great ideas and figuring out how to use them in our lives and in our business in our families
K: And, the ideas are almost always; I mean for me coming up with an idea happens a lot but following up on an idea seems like an impossibility to me at times. I’m just totally paralyzed. And having a partner that says “Yeah, that idea is going to take just way too much work for you to do” or, “that’s a good idea and we can actually accomplish that, let’s figure out how to do it”. It’s good to have somebody to bounce that kind of stuff off of that you really trust.
Q: The other question I was going to ask is how that has been since you broke off into just the two of you. How has that been for you creatively and at home? Has it been better that way and more at ease and comfortable?
K: The actual travel is way easier even in just shear numbers. Going from being seven people and a big band and a trailer and like not having any freedom and feeling like you had to negotiate every single thing and you couldn’t’ ask for what you needed. When it’s just the two of us I can say “ I’m really sorry I know this is going to make us ten minutes late but I really need to get a cup of coffee” or, “Can we leave a half hour early so we can stop and get a good lunch instead of eating a crappy fast food place”. Or whatever it is.. or even what music are we going to listen to on the radio in the car.
N: Yeah.. and we’re so much in sync with each other. That was actually huge . We can’t over emphasize what a big reason that was for the change. Which was not exactly a unilateral one. It was a long, long process of deciding how to go forward.
K. . and every single person was making a decision for themselves and this is what it ended up being.
Q: Oh, so it was a good thing that everybody kind of came to the same conclusion.
K &N : Oh yeah.
K : A lot. And then there is the fact that in order to support 7 people (on the road) you have to play a lot and it’s exhausting and it means there is nothing else in your life. Now me and Nerissa play 4 or 5 times a month and we teach a toddler music class; six classes a week. Nerissa is a life coach, and we’re writing a book right now about bringing music into your family as a young parent or a parent of young children.
N: Katryna does tons of volunteer work in the school system around music and educating kids. And we have social lives.
K: We’re a part of our communities. We have community other than just the community that is the giant road and the music world. And that’s sort of a priceless thing to have.
Q: I understand that because I’m constantly thinking of ways to get kids interested and coming to the Opera House. I want to get more kids involved in the Opera House and trying to figure out how to get them here and engage them.
N: You can have open mic night! The kids could perform and that will get them in.
K: And it gets their friends in.
N: And it makes them realize that getting to perform is not a rare thing that only a few people get to do . Everybody can perform and your town has this amazing resource in this place. The kids should understand its heritage.
Q; You know as an adult I have to tell you I never realized until now , having worked with the Opera House, how shallow my music tastes have been and how I missed out on so many different styles and musicians that I’m now enjoying . The Opera House has exposed me to so much and I’m grateful for that.
At this point my comment sparked an idea in Nerissa’s head for a chapter in her book and about writing on the idea of deep or shallow and at having a choice in exposing your kids to a wider variety of music. I then shared the fact that I had never really been exposed to folk music and I felt that I had missed out.
K: A lot of people said that to us like 15 years ago when we were coming out .. a lot of people in their mid 20’s said “I never heard Folk music before until the Indigo Girls and it opened up a whole new world for me. “
N: It is true folk music has a history of being this underground movement and every 10 or 15 years someone rises and breaks and then everyone gets discovered a little bit and people understand about folk music a little bit and then it goes away again and right now we’re in a down phase.
K: I also think there is a little bit of a pendulum swinging where people want to hear complex music and then where people want to hear simpler music . In the 90’s there was a real surge of acoustic music with MTV unplugged. The truth is the Folk music world exists apart from everything and every once in awhile someone crosses over into it.
N: and then the coffee houses have a rise in numbers of people that come.
Q: The closest I ever came was maybe the indigo Girls and Jewel which touched upon the folk stuff. She became main stream.
K: That whole Lilith fair thing had that acoustic thing going with Suzanne Vega, Natalie Merchant, Tracy Chapman.
Q: By the way, I would totally get that book that you guys are writing. My son loves music, I was a singer and I want to expose him to it and expose him to different genres I never was exposed to. So that is an awesome book I would go out and buy it.
K: We’ll try to finish it in time for it to be relevant for your child. (they both laugh)
N: No, by the time it comes out your blog will have a huge readership and we’ll send you a copy to review.
Q: Yes, that would be awesome. Absolutely!
Out of all the material you guys have written and performed which one is your favorite and why?
N: The newest one is always my favorite. And it always has been right down the line it’s never failed. Well we just came out with this record but what I really like is this record we did before. Nope.. My favorite record is Sister Holler but the material we are working on for our next record I like even more excited about and that’s the great secret wonderful silver lining about being artist that have never had big hit is that we never had anything to live up to, you know we’re very proud of our back catalog we’re very proud of the work we’ve done for the past 18 years now, but we’re still writing really fresh stuff. If we’re going through a phase where we have a record out and we’re not really writing anything else I get bored. I feel like do I really want to do this. As soon as I start writing new material and singing it, I’m totally excited about our career again. That’s just always been the way it’s been.
So we can talk about the most recent record but your just going to get We love it it’s great.
K. There are certain songs that I love singing for a couple of years and then I feel like I like that but I don’t need to sing it every show. Then there are certain songs that I feel like I need to have this happen every single show.
Q: And what song or songs would that be?
K: ‘Easy people’. Nerissa wrote a song called ‘Easy People’ and we do it every single show. And every single time we sing it, it makes me feel happy and I’m in the song and I’m not on autopilot ,you know. I think that as much as I agree with Nerissa that whatever we have going now is what I’m most excited about or that I love the most, it’s definitely true that there are certain songs that are like, “Oh yeah this makes me feel awake” every time I sing it.
Q: What is the strangest ,weirdest or interesting stop along the way? You have to have some story from being on the road that was a wacky or wow moment.
K: We have a lot of wacky moments. There was a period in the 90’s when I a polyp on my vocal chord and I would limit us to 4 shows a week so that I would have three days to sort of recover. But, every once in awhile, that wouldn’t’ work out. And, we were on this leg of a tour and our van had broken down like three times in about 2 weeks so we had to pay for it be fixed plus I think we lost a show or two because of that, because we were stranded and we couldn’t get there. We were in TX and we were going to
N: And it was Buddy Holly’s hometown
K And, we pulled into the place and didn’t know what to do. Is it wrong for us to show up and do the show even though the lead singer can’t sing or is it wrong for us to cancel the show because we’ve had to cancel a bunch of shows recently? We were so stressed out and we were just terrified what was going to happen and we couldn’t afford to give up the show financially. We also felt like this is awful to our fans that we were going to be doing this sort of weird …I mean a show with no harmonies and The Nields is just a weird show. So, we get there our road manager hops out of the van, goes inside I am just dragging my feet. I don’t’ even want to get out of the van because I know this is going to be just an awful night that’s about to happen. She comes out and she says “You are not going to believe this but, this morning they lost their liquor license. They can’t have the show. They are going to pay you your full fee and feed you their delicious food and you don’t have to do the show.”
Both of them laugh.
N: It felt like Xmas and a snow day rolled into one.
Q: I bed you’d never been so happy to not sing?
K: I know, I know..I cried and cried.
Q: Now that is a cool story
K : My kids always want to hear stories about life on the road and that’s when I always tell them. They really like to hear about the one when the van broke down, just like they like to hear about the ones where we hurt ourselves.
I continued to speak with them a little more about that incident and I asked Nerissa if she ever finished that book that they were writing about being on the road. Both of them told me that it was a novel with some autobiographical content, but that Nerissa would joke that she was going to Twitter the entire thing. Instead, she may just put it up in pieces at the blog and release MP3’s of the songs that the fictional band was playing through out the story.
Now that is cool!
At the conclusion of the interview I joined the audience. I was impressed. They have such an easy going stage presence, and their musical harmonies were amazing. My favorite part of the evening was when Nerissa and Katryna pulled away from the microphone and unplugged from the equipment and just did a full out acoustic version of 'Easy People'. They noted that it was something that they liked to do at all their shows but they were particularly excited to do it at the Opera House because of its beauty and awesome acoustics. I could immediately tell why it was one Katryna's favorites to perform. I remember thinking how we could all use some more easy people in our lives.
You can follow Nerissa & Katryna's at their Blog , on their Facebook Fan Page or at Twitter .
In addition to being singer/songwriters Nerissa and Katryna have also written several books, one of which is entitled 'How to Be an Adult' available at Amazon.com or at their website. Nerissa describes it as a snarky gen x look at all the things they didn't teach you in college like how to cook a chicken, change a flat tire & more.
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