December, 2003
NEW CD JANUARY 13TH, 2004 This Town is Wrong on Zoe/Rounder Records
This Town is Wrong finds the sisters continuing their unique mix of folk,
country, pop, and rock, and the result is their most compelling album to
date. This Town is Wrong is also the title of Nerissa Nields' upcoming
young-adult book which served as the inspiration for the album. The book is
due out later in 2004.
Check out some sound bites here!
Greetings and Holiday musings from Nerissa & Katryna
“Hung be the heavens with black! Yield, day to night”
Or “Nields Day, tonight!”
Seasonal greetings, Nields fans! Happy solstice to you all, and to all
a good (long) night. It's December, and it's electric with Christmas. The
air has a charge to it, dry as a bone even with the snow falling fast and
sideways. This time of year, we are usually playing gigs like mad, trying
to sell CDs and songbooks. But this year, it seems more important to leave
space for parties and carols and to spend the short, dark afternoons
engrossed in seasonal activities: finding a Christmas tree. Shopping for
presents for Patty, our Jewish manager who is possibly Christmas's biggest
fan. Or just wrapping presents and sending cards. Katryna and I are
looking forward to hanging our homes with evergreen, making something out of
the scraps we've been collecting in our treasure trunks all year. This has
been a good year, a long year, a short year, a hard year, a wonderful year.
Amelia learned to tap dance, and she can spell her name, read the word
"dog" and draw faces. Katryna got ever better at the melodica, and I got
my dream guitar.
The way I got the dream guitar was this. First I had to know what my
dream guitar was. I didn't for a while. It helped to break a string at
Symphony Space and have to borrow Lucy Kaplanskyıs Martin. Something was
different as I played that guitar, and I knew one thing: the dream guitar
must be used and loved by someone else.
Then, a character in my novel, The Big Idea, Rhodie Becket, played a
three quarters sized guitar. I thought, "How wonderful! I wish I had one.
I am small, and guitars are generally too big."
And finally, a guitar hanging on the wall of Downtown Sounds beckoned
me. I pulled it down and held it in my arms, but the price wasn't right.
Dream guitars seemed to cost too much.
One day, I moved. I sold my house in Hatfield and bought a place in
Northampton. All my possessions were in boxes, and it was a time of great
purging. I called a friend to commiserate, for he too had just moved.
"I have so much junk," I complained. "I don't know what to do with it
all."
"Me too," he said. "Like for instance this old piece of junk Martin
guitar with a broken neck. You want it?"
So the next day, he brought it to me, and I inspected it. It was
completely unplayable, with a warped neck that was almost disconnected to
the body. There were holes in it, and not in a good way. But it was a
three quarter's size. A parlor guitar. Built in 1933, warm sunburst
brown. I played a note high up on the B string where the neck wasn't too
warped. It sang back at me, and I felt like new mothers say they feel when
their baby makes eye contact for the first time.
I took the little Martin to Ivan Schmukler at 8 Easthampton St. He peered at
it over his bifocals and almost fell off his stool.
"I will trade you any guitar in my shop for that Martin," he declared solemnly.
Hmmm," I said. "Not anymore. Fix it, please."
So he did. And now I have a guitar so lovely I am actually practicing
for the first time in ten years. My goal is to play bluegrass guitar like
the guys in Northern Lights (who rock! We just saw them at the Iron Horse.
They have a fine new singer, Ben Demerath, my favorite yodeler.)
Katryna had an epiphany this fall. While driving through post peak
Massachusetts on her daily route, she noticed a hillside, all brown and
gold, autumn's faded palette. And she realized with surprise that she
actually preferred what we call "post peak" to the traditional "actual
peak." See, "actual peak" involves a whole spectrum of anxiety: is it peak
yet? is it now? Wait, I think I still see some green over there, so it
can't be peak, but look, that maple is balding fast, and maybe I missed it
after all!"
Once we're in post peak, the fall proceeds in a stately, gradual
manner, and by the time the last leaf has fallen, we are serenely resigned
to the state of affairs. It's a nice time. We miss out on the leaf gazing,
mountain climbing frenzy and trade that in for crackling fires and the
anticipation of snow days.
We were once highly competitive. We quit nice jobs and said goodbye to
dear friends to hop in a white 16 passenger van to chase the rock and roll
dream. We played all over the continent, trying to conquer it one small
club at a time. By 1999, the boys in the band were tired, and wanted to go
home. The girls in the band wanted to make folk music in church basements
where we could start the shows at 8pm and go to bed before midnight. In a
way, we were post peak. We'd passed the unforgiving age of 30 and wanted to
have families. Life took a number of twists and turns and now, four years
later, Katryna has Amelia and I am a young adult novelist living in a house
in Northampton. Dave Chalfant is living his dream as a record producer;
Dave Hower is newly married and playing in several wonderful bands, and
David Nields is teaching and directing at the Williston Northampton School.
In the summer, he is living his dream of running a professional theatre
company. It's a far cry from baring our navels on MTV, but the dreams below
the dreams are sustaining us all. It's a matter of being awake enough to
see them. And anyway, we don't always know what our dreams are.
Sometimes we have to wait until we're passed peak to figure them out.
The solstice draws nigh, and soon the days will grow longer. The
bulbs we planted will poke forth. We have a new CD coming out, and the
word on the street is that it combines the best of our full
throttle-go-for-the-gold-and -damn-the-transmission energy and passion with
the sweeter, more subtle sounds of Love & China. The point is, it's good
and Katryna and I love it. Dave Chalfant and Dave Hower will be joining us
for shows in the winter and spring, and we CANNOT WAIT! MTV can languish;
what we dream of now are more packed houses like the ones we had at Jammin
Java's and The Point. We are thriving, and striving for a different things
today than the ones from 12 years ago (!!) when we started out, but what we
want now seems even more important (though perhaps less shiny and
glistening) than what we wanted back then. And now we have something in
addition to a dream: we have our twelve years of life. What an amazing,
strange, long, short, sweet, bitter, delightful, trip it's been.
Happy Solstice. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus.
Happy New Year!
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