Where are we playing? Here's our Tour Schedule!
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Hi friends,
We are on a kind of vacation right now, though Nerissa is writing a lot of songs. But we're so busy in late March-April we'll have to wear name tags when we come home from our extensive tours. See schedule, below. I hope you are listening to music. There's almost no reason not to listen to music these days, except sometimes you need to listen to something else, like your lover's voice, the story of your kid's day at school, the wind in the leafless trees, or silence. But after you've finished doing that, listen to some music. Your soul with thank you.
In March, we're playing our annual
Jones Library Kidfest on March 24 at 10:30am in Amherst. Then we jump in the car and drive to Stow MA to play the
New Revival Coffeehouse--new to us, and sure to be the location where we debut some of our new songs. A week later, we're at the River's Meltdown--another KidFest. April 8 we're at The Boys& Girls Club of Brattleboro on a Sunday afternoon. Groovin' on a Sunday afternoon...come groove with us! April 14 we drive to McLean VA, our old hometown, and play at our old church Immanuel Presbyterian. And April 28 is our double header at Passim in Cambridge--a 4pm family show, and a 7pm grown up show. Let's sing happy birthday to Katryna! It's two days before her birthday.
See you soon!
Love,
Nerissa & Katryna
"
The Nields's family shows are a blend of Pete Seeger-esque group song leading and Dan Zanes-like reconstruction of old classics, plus their own inimitable style of high energy, whimsy, and filigreed harmony singing."-Mia Cabana
Photo Gallery, Just Because.
Self
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| Selfie at Iron Horse 2.3.18 |
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| The other Nields Siblings |
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| Caroling to the Animals Dec. 2017 |
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2018 Tour Schedule
April 28 Passim, Concert at 7pm; Family show at 4pm
May 20 Infinity Hall, Hartford, CT "Songs of Hope and Despair"
June 9 Kripalu, closed show
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Nerissa & Katryna Endorse
Katryna's Endorsements
1. Anais Mitchell "Why We Build the Wall" This endorsement is two fold. First of all, this song is magnificent. It kicked me in the stomach and has made me think harder than any song I've heard in a long time. She wrote it a decade or more ago and yet, here we are. It's easy for me to be against anyone spending millions of dollars on a wall between Mexico and the US, but what about all the other walls? I am sure I erect them. This song makes me shine the light on my fear and desire and selfishness. Amazing song. And part of Anais's equally amazing musical theater piece- Hadestown.
Second of all, I know this song because I gave my 16 year old tickets to Anais Mitchell's show for Christmas. We climbed the stairs to our seats in the beautiful Academy of Music in Northampton and listened to wonderful music together for a few hours. Nothing like it. I highly recommend trying to find some musical common ground with your teenager.
2. Enough As She Is by Rachel Simmons I have been listening to this book as I (literally) drive to drop off or pick up my (figuratively) driven teenager. I find Rachel's wisdom to be incredibly helpful. She not only names and explains phenomena that I witness in teenage girls all around me, but she also has come up with tangible tools to help parents, teachers and teens to navigate adolescence with self compassion. I cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone with a teenage daughter.
And local Valley folks, she will be at Northampton High School on April 4. See you there!
3. If you like the Nields and you haven't listened to The Roches, I am VERY surprised. I don't know who we'd be if we hadn't seen those sisters belting out an a cappella version of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus Saturday
Night Live in 1979. I can't find their actual SNL performance but here is another performance of the song.
This being Women's History Month, we are celebrating women who have inspired us. The Roches are up at the top of my list. Their dedication to being themselves is as important to me as their musicality and sisterhood. I feel very lucky to have seen them perform in venues as different as the Iron Horse in Northampton and Wolf Trap in Northern Virginia. Suzzy and her daughter Lucy even sang on our album XVII. Nerissa and I have all of their records and we have learned and taught several of their songs. Their harmonies are never what you expect, their outfits never what the world would dictate, their performance never like the mainstream. No band will ever replicate what The Roches created. How lucky we are to live at the same time as these brilliant sisters.
Nerissa's Endorsements
1. Erin White's memoir Given Up for You, a story about falling in love with both the Catholic church, and a woman. It's beautifully wrought, a close and honest look at the nature of desire, of hetero privilege, motherhood and the need to make meaning. Here is a photo of her in a pew of a certain church of which I am super fond:
2. For Women's History Month, our local kick-ass station and even kickier-ass DJ Monte Bemonte asks local (women) musicians to talk about (women) artists who influenced them, and then he plays a song by that artist. We chose: The Roches, Heart and Yoko Ono. I'll let Katryna endorse the Roches, but I brought Heart and Yoko Ono into our childhood home. Dreamboat Annie was life-changing.
Two sisters who loved the Beatles and Led Zepplin? And one is a brunette singer, the other a blond guitarist? Come ON!
Yoko Ono taught me about conceptual art, fierce love, being true to oneself even in the face of mass unpopularity, racism, sexism and hatred. She was also pretty funny.
3. And here's what Monte showed us that same day:
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| The heartbreakingly brilliant Aimee Mann |
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