A Conversation with Nicky Mehta  (continued)

PM: Let's spend a moment on how the actual collaboration of the women came about. One is led to believe that it was pitched by Ruth, at a folk festival a few years back.

NM: Yes. It was the Winnipeg Folk Festival in 2001. She was there with Scruj MacDuhk, her other band.

PM: Right. And they were pretty big in Canada, right?

NM: Yeah, they were. At the time--when they broke up--they were really getting very well known. They were doing really, really well. That often happens with bands: when things start going really well, they break up.

PM: Yeah, absolutely.

[laughter]

NM: She knew that the band was going to break up, and so I guess she'd been thinking about what she wanted to do next. And she'd grown up with sisters and had sung a lot with her sisters, and I think she really wanted to connect with women and do some music. Cara and I were at this festival as solo artists, and I had sung on Cara's album, so Cara and I knew each other. And we knew of Ruth, we'd met her a couple of times, just in a passing way, didn't really know her well. And so she just approached us both and she said, "I really think it would be cool if we sang together."

At the time, I had just released my album, and I was so busy with that that I wasn't really thinking much about getting together with people. I was going to be on the road. I was actually thinking about this the other day, because I was trying to remember exactly when it was brought up again. It was July when she first mentioned it, and we didn't actually start rehearsing for the first show until December. I think it was just mentioned in the fall at some point to our mutual friend John Sharples at Sled Dog Music, which is a little guitar store in Winnipeg. It's an acoustic guitar store (check it out at sleddogmusic.com).

It's actually in a new location now, but at the time it was in this beautiful little quaint guitar shop in my neighborhood, which is sort of a granola belt area, a really beautiful little area. So John had heard us talking about that, and he said, "You know what, you guys should do this, and I'll put the show on." So he was sort of the catalyst for us actually going through with it. And we started rehearsing all these songs.

And he sold the first night out immediately. It's not a big store, it only holds about forty people. But then he sold out a second night. We decided to add a second night. And then he said with more phone calls he could have sold out a week of shows.

PM: Wow.

NM: So that's when we thought, "Okay, this is interesting." And then it was just the response from the audience in the first few shows that made us think, "Okay, wow, this is really interesting." I remember, actually, because my mum--I mean, my mum is a big supporter of my music and she's come to see a lot of my shows. And that was the first standing ovation she'd ever seen, with this group. It was so funny. And I was thinking that was a little weird at the time--

PM: [laughs]

NM: --because my head wasn't really in this band. Like I remember John saying, "This band is going to go places." Because we named ourselves that weekend--John named us, actually.

PM: It's a great name.

NM: Yeah. And I recall him saying, "This is going to go somewhere." And I remember thinking, "Whoa, I'm not going to be really pursuing this." It just really wasn't on my agenda at all.

PM: Wow.

NM: But you never know. That's how these things work out. It's strange.

PM: Did you and Cara know Scruj MacDuhk or Ruth's music well when she pitched the idea first casually to you?

NM: No. We knew of Scruj's work, but that wasn't her solo work. Scruj was a lot of traditional and old time music, so it wasn't Ruth's--I think Ruth had one song with them that was hers. So I wasn't really super familiar with what she did. I knew Cara's music because I'd sung on it. And I think Cara knew mine because we did a couple of shows together, just sort of songwriter nights at places in Winnipeg. The funny thing is now we look at it and we think, "Man, we didn't know each other, we didn't know each other's music"--we knew nothing about each other, really, and yet we embarked on this crazy--

PM: That's insane.

NM: [laughs] Yeah, it was kind of insane. For the first while you're sort of swept along with the momentum of it, and I think we were for about the first year. And then you start realizing, "Okay, well, this is obviously full-time now. And now I have to figure out, like, what do I think about this." And for the longest time we just didn't even get a chance to sit back and do that.

PM: Now, how about the personalities? Did they go together pretty easily from the start?

NM: Yes. The thing is, we're very different people, the three of us. I think it's gone tremendously well given how different we are. There are going to be growing pains with anything. I mean, you're on the road with somebody constantly, and you have to sort of work out how you get along with that person at times. It's going to happen to anybody spending that much time together.

PM: Absolutely.

NM: But it's been very interesting. It hasn't always been easy, but it's always been fruitful. I mean, when you have two people around you all the time, you start to learn a lot more about yourself. Most people in their everyday lives, except with maybe their partners, they're not really forced to face a lot of their own behaviors.

PM: No way. That's why many people aren't very good at it.

NM: Yeah. And so you have to be willing to look at yourself, and you have to be willing to let the ego go, and to compromise, and to put someone else's happiness and success at the same level as your own. And that's really what this group has made us do. And sometimes it's been easier than others, but we're really committed to it. I'm really grateful for what I've learned with this group, both personally and professionally, and musically--everything.

PM: Who among the women is the more Type A--

NM: [laughs]

PM: --kind of leader? Who would that be in the pack?

NM: It's funny, we're all Type A in our own ways. There's really no leader. And a lot of people will ask us that. We'll get to gigs and they'll say, "Okay. Who's the leader?"

PM: [laughs]

NM: We're a very, very democratic band. Some people won't want to do that because it takes a lot of negotiation to get three people who are very different, who have their very different ideas of what music is, to agree on one thing. It's a challenge. And then you add in management and everything else, and it's a big process. I'm very Type A in a lot of ways. I do our finances, for instance.

PM: That's what I'm getting at, who does what?

NM: I do the finances, and I look after the website, because my brother built it.

PM: Ah, I wondered if it was your husband or brother--I saw that he shared your name.

NM: Yeah. My brother built both our websites. And so I work with him on that, and I sort of keep it up to date. Ruth advances shows, so she deals a lot with promoters, making sure all our accommodations are ready.

PM: So you've no road manager, she does it.

NM: Yeah, well, we all do it actually on the road, but she advances things.

PM: Pretty cool.

NM: She does a bit more of the road managing stuff than all of us. And then Cara books flights, and she and Ruth both try to deal with the publicity, organizing how--like, we have a publicist at our management, but it's just for keeping things in check with that. And Cara also deals with merchandise at folk festivals. She'll go and set that all up. And I make sure we get paid, and that all the contract stuff is right.

PM: Wow, that is a streamlined trio operation.

NM: Yeah, well, we try to keep the work very balanced. We're all working really hard. What I was doing before I called you was going through all of the checks that we just got paid, and all our receipts, and organizing them all to send to our management, and stuff like that.

Cara is very Type A when it comes to sound. She's very focused with making sure the sound issues are dealt with. Ruth is very Type A when it comes to organizing everything with our management, with getting back to them, making sure that it's not three of us answering emails haphazardly. She organizes us to agree on something and then she deals with the communication.

So generally I don't think anybody ever feels like they're the only one working hard, everybody is working hard in this band.  continue

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