A Conversation with Nicky Mehta  (continued)

PM: What about spiritual matters? Are there any spiritual orientations evident in the trio?

NM: We're all very spiritual people. Cara comes from a Christian background, but she's not a really overt Christian, you know what I mean? She's very laid back--she has faith, but she's not the preachy kind at all. And Ruth and I--I don't consider myself to come from any particular denomination, and I'm fascinated by all religions. Some people get irritated by people saying, "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual." I don't have any certain concepts about the way the world might work, and I don't think that anybody knows exactly how it works.

PM: And I think a lot of us from this generation and a half are spiritual without being religious.

NM: Yeah. I was telling my partner last night that I'd spent a lot of time talking with Martyn, because Martyn is a Christian, Martyn Joseph. And we were talking about the concept of being able to be spiritual without necessarily deifying anybody.

PM: Yeah.

NM: And being able to be a compassionate and thoughtful and caring person who is active in their community and working for social change, and if that can happen without necessarily having to belong to any particular denomination. It was just very fascinating. Because if there's one thing that I admire about people of religious faith, it's their activism. But you can still be that way without necessarily having faith of that variety.

PM: Yeah, religious and spiritual activism has many forms, as you infer, for sure.

NM: But I think the three of us are lucky in the sense that we have very similar values. We value integrity in ourselves and in others, and in the people we work with. We value that more than we value financial success. We all want to be able to make a living, but we don't want to do it at the expense of our ideals and ethics. And everybody is very committed to that. For instance, we're just ordering T-shirts right now. And we want to make sure we're not ordering sweat shop T-shirts.

PM: Really?

NM: Oh, absolutely. And there's an amazing American company called American Apparel, a lot of people use them. And it's all made in the U.S. But that's the kind of thing we want to make sure we're doing right. We've done a lot of benefits, but with our schedule it can be very hard to do that. So we want to make sure that we're doing something on a full-time basis that really says something about what we believe in. And we all believe it's important to give back, and to be active. I used to be very active in my community at home in various ways, working with youth groups, like with at-risk youth and stuff like that. And Cara and Ruth have all done their own thing as well in that regard. But because we don't have a community when we're on the road, we can't volunteer, because you're never around. And so you can create a community by aligning yourself with something larger. Does that makes sense?

PM: Absolutely.

NM: We want to remain active, but now we have to do it in a different way than we used to. We're looking to align ourselves with the right organizations to focus our efforts in that domain.

PM: Well, Nicky, you've been very kind with your time for such a busy artist. And I really appreciate you standing in for Cara.

NM: Oh, my pleasure. It's been a really nice conversation, and I appreciate your interest. And we definitely appreciated your review. That was a really nice review.

PM: Thanks. And I know I have Cara's email at least, so I'll stay in touch. And I will definitely come meet you on the road sometime--I look forward to catching a show as soon as possible.

NM: Oh, yeah, that'd be great. And I really hope we make it down to Nashville really soon. Thanks a lot, Frank.

PM: See you soon.