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Dear reader,
April brings warmer weather, and it's bringing us to some of our favorite haunts: Passim in Cambridge (two shows on April 11) and Jammin Java in Vienna VA on April 25, where we will be joined by our production team, Kit Karlson and Chip Johnson for a joyous reunion! Come on out! Welcome spring! And, Vermont friends--we'll be in Brattleboro the first Friday in May.
April 11- Family show at Passim! 4pm
April 11-Album release show at Passim 7:30pm
April 25-Album release show at Jammin Java with Kit and Chip
7pm
May 1-Brattleboro, VT
And radio! We will be interviewed on WUMB (Boston) MONDAY APRIL 6 (TOMORROW!!!) at noon. Live stream here:
www.wumb.org
On Sunday April 26, we'll be interviewed on WFUV between 8-11am. For live streaming, go
here. If you are in the NYC area, you can find the station at 90.7.
Speaking of radio, XVII is in the top 20 for Folk albums this week! Yippee!!!!!!
This first week of April is a big one for two of the world's religions, and I find my thoughts drawn to themes of freedom and love. My Jewish friends are celebrating Passover, as I write this, sharing seder meals with family and friends. I am always deeply moved by this holiday, recognizing the ways we get freed from our own versions of slavery, our own
Mitzrayim, be it to unjust judicial systems, oppressive regimes, or to our iphones, consumption of fossil fuels; or to a substance or person. For me, I often need freedom from bondage to my own ideas that things need to be the way I think they should be. Some of these ideas are what most would call Good: People should not hurt each other. People should not be hungry. People should not be mean and rude. People should not be oppressed, diseased, dying, violated. And yet, they are. I can feel pretty hopeless in the face of this.
Passover tells me that there is some force out there that seems to make a Way out of No Way, and I am always profoundly moved by the combination of bitter and sweet mixed up in this holiday. The blood of the lamb; the promise of liberation. Just as with the dead branches in my garden, something needs to die for something else to live.
For Christians, it's Holy Week. We just made up a homemade Maundy Thursday service at my quirky little church. We gathered in the evening, washed each other's feet (which is pretty intense, actually--it turns out it's much easier being the foot washer than the foot washee!) and had a communion of parsley and salt water. I've been thinking about the "mandatum novum" ever since: love one another. I think that's the whole message of every single religion on earth, as well as the message every parent I know wants to give to their child. It's so simple, and so not easy. But much easier to do when we are experiencing the kind of freedom Passover offers us--
if I can let go of my ideas about how people should be and just take as my direction that they are lovable--and that it's my job to figure out how to love them. Much easier to do when we are with people who are easy to love! I hope you get some time this week with your most beloved easy people, and I hope we get to see you. You are our easy people.
Nerissa and Katryna Nields
Here we are with our new band, "Fountain of Youth" at Rockwood in NY! The Fountain consists of John Colonna, our dear cousin on piano, and Amelia Nields Chalfant on bass!
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Fan Challenge: 17 Weeks of XVII
The story contest continues! We're on Week 10 right now. Here's Week 8's Question and winning Answer:
What is your favorite Nields lyric-the one you would use as an email signature or post on your mirror as a reminder?
"The mind beats like the tides in a lake that thinks it's the sea
But only storms create conditions for epiphany
October gardens rusty, ragged, overgrown
The child won't be consoled and you
Don't want to be alone."
My life is lived at the mercy of the seasons, measured by where we are, and where we're heading. As the gardens turn to sticks and the last of the tomatoes rot on the vine, my entire body vibrates with the feeling that it is all too much. Every plea for my time, no matter how small, seems like the one that will wind me until I break.
But with that tension building between my shoulder blades, comes the inevitable release. And I know that release is what will propel me into spring. It will leave me with a gratitude that feeds creativity, and makes Pinterest jealous.
These lyrics from "Back at the Fruit Tree" speak to this part of my life so directly, so powerfully; they seem to be saying that they understand, that they will serve as a testament to the power of the journey around the sun, but also as a reminder that we will come back around, and be all the better for it.
-Rhiannon
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We Endorse
Katryna
1. This Dad and kid are communicating using the language of dance. It will seriously make your day.
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| 2 year baby dancing with a dad |
2. The amazing Bruce Springsteen singing a song that always makes me think of spring. I bought Greetings from Asbury Park on cassette in the spring of 1986. I listened to it at full blast with the windows down on my plymouth horizon.
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| Springsteen - Growing Up [Acoustic] |
3. Allowing people to be mad at me. I suck at this. But I keep thinking about that great Ogden Nash quotation: "
To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you're wrong, admit it; Whenever you're right, shut up.
" This applies to every relationship. Sometimes people just need to be mad and I need to let them. So long as they are not rude or cruel, I need to allow them to have madness as well as sadness. Love, forgiveness, humility and stamina- the cornerstones of all great relationships. "Oh let me love, love, love with all my heart and with all my strength and with all my mind, let me love your children as my own. That's how I want to spend my time." My sister Nerissa Nields said that.
Nerissa
1.  The Penderwicks books by Jeanne Birdsall. This beautiful series of YA books are my daughter's favorite. It's a kind of updated Little Women (I actually like them MUCH BETTER than LW, and that's saying a lot, as I was Jo March as a child.) The series begins with four sisters navigating life with no mother and a Latin-teaching father, a strange boy-next-door (an improvement on Laurie....) and a big drooley dog named Hound. There's a lot of music in these books, too, which doesn't hurt. The fourth and last in the series just came out: The Penderwicks in Spring. So far, it's my favorite.
2. The Incredible Life-Changing Magical Art of Tidying Up, or whatever it's called. I haven't actually read this. I have bought it on Kindle (so as not to add clutter to my unbelievably cluttered bookshelves), and I have read OF it. We have a dismal basement with cans of paint from the 1940s, an attic full of dusty holiday junk, and a barn full of (from what I can tell) broken pieces of wood. And, worst of all, thirty-nine footlockers full of old Nields press clippings from the 90s, programs, paper paraphernalia that immobilize me when it's time to decide what to do with them. How can I throw this stuff out? Step one: buy this book. Step two: read it. Step three: act on it. So far, I'm still on step one. I will keep you posted.
3. Parenthood. I know, I endorsed this last month. But I am SO HOOKED! I just finished the first season. I can't believe how much I love the characters, how much I think about them as I go about my day. My TV update: our 2003 behemoth died and is currently sitting on our porch waiting to go to the dump. I am getting a new TV. But I don't know what to get. Any suggestions? We have no wall space for a flat screen to hang!
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Videos from the Iron Horse
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| "Joe Hill" The Nields Live at Iron Horse Music Hall |
We almost named XVII "Last Night I Saw Joe Hill." This song started out as an acoustic ballad, but producer Kit Karlson thought it could use a little funky Jayhawks treatment. We did it at the Iron Horse with Kalioppe Jones. Almost all the other songs are now up on our YouTube Channel. By the way, there is a fabulous documentary about the Iron Horse produced by WGBY called Music Alone Shall Live. We are in it! Nerissa is interviewed, and there's footage of our 2014 show here. |
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Album is now out! YAHOO!!!! If you want to buy the CD, please consider buying it directly from us right here. If you just want the download, go to CD Baby, iTunes or Amazon.
Songbooks and eSongbooks are available here (for paperback) and here (for ebook)!
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XVII Release Parties in Cambridge, MA and Vienna VA
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Click here for complete tour schedule.
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Photo by Sarah Prall
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New Web site is here!
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| photo by Sarah Prall |
| ""The Nields make clever folk pop full of sweet harmonizing." -The New Yorker
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| photo by Sarah Prall |
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| The Nields offer small moments of joy and sorrow that linger in one's memory as a kind of quiet paean to the mystery of who we are and what it is we are about. Consumable.com |
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| photo by Jake Jacobson |
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| "As the work of the Everly Brothers or the McGarrigle Sisters has amply demonstrated, there are few sounds as sublime as close harmonies rendered by siblings. In the case of western Massachusetts folk rockers the Nields, the siblings are sisters Nerissa and Katryna Nields, and their inimitable vocal blend is a disarming mix of clean folk harmonies and clenched Generation-X angst." -The Chicago Tribune
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They're cheery, these two, but not Pollyanna. They know that life is hard, and making art while tending to our other obligations, especially as women, is a painful struggle. The Artery
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| photo by Kris McCue |
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| There's a profound state of aesthetic arrest that some singers can put an audience into, and singers like that are worth their weight in gold. Not many bands manage to have two of them. Pop Matters |
| "A review of a Nields concert described their music as "equal parts Beatles, Cranberries and Joni Mitchell." iTunes |
| "Guitarist Nerissa has written the clear-eyed, literary lyrics and sister Katryna has provided a gloriously eccentric vocal delivery ......Lots of backward glances and relationship foibles punctuate this quiet collection, which is ideal for harmony addicts and dreamers alike" -- Billboard Magazine
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| "If there's one constant here, it's The Nields sisters' beautifully sweet vocal harmonies that sound eerily like the Roches singing Lush in a really big room. It's infectious stuff."-Austin Chronicle
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| "...a gentle explosion of high-strung harmonies and spare arrangements of songs that snap like cinnamon sticks. They ride their dynamics from literally whispered passages over tick-tocking sidestick or no drums at all, up to electric squalls that push Katryna and sister Nerissa Nields' vocals without overwhelming them."-Musician Magazine
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| "The Nields rank among the upper echelon of today's original acts, with emphasis on the word 'original'...Five individuals whose pooled talent has resulted in one of the best new sounds to emerge in America in recent memory." -Island Ear, New York |
| "The marvelously expressive Katryna and Nerissa Nields provide vocals sounding at various times very much like the Bangles, the Roches and ...Alanis Morrissette...a delightful discovery."-Chicago Tribune
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XVII
