In 1998 Nerissa and Katryna were approached by the producers of the Lillith Fair and asked if they would consider performing as a duo. “I was afraid at first,” Nerissa admitted. “But suddenly while I was up on stage with Katryna, I realized our voices were taking up so much of the space that I’d always assumed the whole band was filling. And I knew we’d be okay on our own.” It didn’t take long for the duo to take off. They opened for the super group Cry, Cry, Cry, toured Alaska, and played the Newport Folk Festival. All of a sudden the sisters were a force to be reckoned with.
The formula? Katryna: “Our shows are spontaneous. Really, it’s just Nerissa and me continuing the dialogue we’ve been having all day in the van. We have a lot of observations that we just have to share with each other, even if they occur to us onstage. We try to crack each other up, and somehow it seems to work that the audience is amused too.”
Katryna and Nerissa recorded their first album in the fall of 2001, “Love and China.” Guitar and drum backup (and fiddle, accordion, and pedal steel) give the album a rich western flavor. Songwriter Nerissa says, “China refers to plates, wedding gifts, breakable, delicate things. But I like the allusion to the country as well, China is cold, and an ecologically and spiritually ravaged place. That’s a crucial part of the picture I’m trying to paint. The women in my songs are tired of lives lived on the surface. They’re tired of being slaves to appearances: physical as well as emotional appearances. They are recognizing that the relationships they are in may be dying or, at the least, stifling, and they are in the process of weighing the love against the truth."
Nields fans are ecstatic about “Love and China.” More countrified than other Nields records, it helped the sisters get back in touch with a childhood filled with Willie Nelson, Hank Williams, and Patsy Cline. But Nerissa and Katryna’s “country” is not your typical country. . . Nerissa writes country the way Bob Dylan writes country and Katryna sings it like she sings everything, with a kind of childlike wonder coupled with every ounce of her grown-up soul.
Need we remind you that the Me&Thee is the perfect listening room for this duo? Order tickets now!