A Conversation with Nicky Mehta  (continued)

PM: One of the things I like about the songs on the record is that each of the women, in her respective songs, reveals enough of who she is that you actually get a sense of the people you're listening to, not just the group you're listening to. And I thought that the songs were remarkably chosen in that regard.

NM: Well, that's really nice to hear, too. I haven't heard it expressed quite like that. That's really cool.

PM: I also thought that the cover of "Old Man" was pretty unbelievable.

NM: Oh, thanks. We had two days to throw that together when we actually did it.

PM: Was it in anybody's solo repertoire?

NM: No.

PM: It sounds like it was in the guitar player's repertoire, but that's just how good she is.

NM: Yeah, that is just how good Cara is. We had to put together two Joni Mitchell songs for the Winnipeg Folk Festival, and she played guitar on both of them.

PM: What did you cover of Joni's?

NM: We did "Both Sides Now" and "Raised on Robbery." And "Raised on Robbery" turned out really cool--we were really thrilled about doing it because it's very different from anything we have in our repertoires. We like being forced to learn other people's stuff, because we're so busy that we probably wouldn't do it on our own. But lately, there have been so many things thrown our way. We did a Christmas special where we had to learn a bunch of stuff.

PM: Oh, yeah. Cara sent me an email about that.

NM: It was nuts. But now we have a few Christmas tunes that we know, arranged for the trio, which is handy to have. And then we did this Joni Mitchell workshop, and now we have a couple of Joni tunes. And we did the Leonard Cohen Tribute in Vancouver, so now we have a song of his, too.

PM: Oh, what did you learn of his?

NM: "Sisters of Mercy."

PM: Ooh...

NM: Yeah. So it's neat, because everybody is a proficient enough musician, we can throw these things together because we had to. I mean, we learned "Sisters of Mercy" the day before we played it. [laughs]

PM: Right.

NM: That's the way our schedule is. And that's what happened with "Old Man," we only had two days to learn it. So the arrangement that you hear on the album is exactly what we did in those two days. I think it worked out because we didn't have a lot of time to toy with it and mess it up.

PM: And you know how tricky three-part harmony is, because it's so easy to sound like Crosby, Stills & Nash, and you really don't want to do that. [laughs] So it really takes clever arranging of three voices, which I think you guys epitomize, to get a sound that's other than that.

NM: Well, that's where it's a natural thing for the three of us. We don't want to give the impression that we don't work on stuff, because we do. We work hard on everything. But that's the kind of thing that's not hard work. It's not like we're having to sit down and somebody can't get something for two hours. We know our ranges, and they fit very well together. We're lucky that way. Ruth is a soprano, I'm a mezzo, and Cara is an alto, so we generally know where we're going to be in a song.

What changes is who is singing the melody. If I sing melody, then it's easy, because melody is usually in the middle, and Ruth goes on top and Cara is on the bottom. But if Cara is singing melody, then I have to go below her and Ruth has to stay on top. And if Ruth is singing melody, then sometimes I'm on top of Ruth and Cara is underneath. But I think all of us have been singing harmony long enough--Ruth grew up singing harmony with her family, Cara grew up with folk singers (her parents are folk singers), I grew up singing harmony from a very young age. So we are so used to it that it's quite easy for us to throw things together. Now, ask me to work out a math problem, and that's a different story entirely.

[laughter]

PM: About "Old Man," it struck me funny that the very insightful Roddy Campbell [the editor of Penguin Eggs, a very good Canadian music magazine] said in his review that he didn't think that your version created enough distance from the original. Do you remember reading that?

NM: Yeah, I do.

PM: How did that strike you guys?

NM: Everyone has their opinion. There have been a few who have not liked our "Old Man" cover. Actually, a good friend of ours in the industry thought it didn't fit on the album.

PM: That's got to be a huge song in concert.

NM: Well, that's the song that's being played on mainstream country radio, so we're hitting a lot of people with that song.

PM: You mean in Canada.

NM: In Canada.

PM: Yeah, because you can't get that on mainstream country radio in the U.S. But that's very enlightened of Canadian radio.

NM: Well, that's CanCon, right? That's Canadian Content that's doing that.

PM: What is CanCon?

NM: In Canada, Canadian radio stations have to play a certain percentage of Canadian artists.

PM: Oh.

NM: Yeah, so it's legislated. [You can read a bit more about this here.] That may have been part of the reason it got on the radio. But what kept it on the radio, and what got it added to other stations, was the audience response to it. So it's not like you can say, "Oh, well, they just got on there because they're Canadian." That may have been the case for maybe two out of the fifteen stations we got on. But we were added into rotation. Because, yeah, you know how hard it is for anyone to get on mainstream radio unless they're with a major label.

PM: Of course.

NM: But in this case, they got a great response from audiences. I think it started off at number 38 out of 40 on this Vancouver radio station that started playing it first. And it climbed up to six, I think.

PM: Oh, wow.

NM: Yeah. And when you hear how sort of slick a lot of new country is--

PM: Oh, come on.

NM: --our song sounded positively lo-fi in comparison, which is hilarious, because I don't consider 40 Days lo-fi in any way, shape, or form.

PM: Yeah, it's just not slick.

NM: Exactly. It's just not slick. And I think a lot of people really responded to that. And that's exciting, because we didn't have to do anything. We didn't have to change anything for it to get on the radio.

PM: You didn't have to do a radio version.

NM: No. And it was a triumph for that reason. And actually, when we were out in Vancouver at the Vancouver Folk Festival, we went by JRFM in Vancouver, the station that first played it. We went by and did an interview with them to thank them for supporting us. And it got added on fourteen more stations after that across Canada.

PM: Good for them, and good for you. That's great.

NM: Yeah, they were just so wonderful. So "Old Man," people love this version, and we put it on the album because we enjoy singing it, and because we knew that there were a lot of people who were requesting that it be there. I ran into Roddy at the Vancouver Folk Festival, and we were chatting about another review, and he was just saying how much he liked the album. And I'd forgotten that he'd said that. continue

print (pdf)     listen to clips      puremusic home