Dearest people,
It’s been FAR too long since we played The Drake in Amherst. Well, maybe we just feel that way because we had such an amazing show the last time we were there in 2022. The club is beautiful and intimate, the sound is stellar, and it’s easy to get to—right on Pleasant Street in downtown Amherst. Please come and sing with us on March 2!
February is rife with songs from the Nields calendar, especially when “Ash Wednesday” comes early. To wit: “Brigid,” “Last Kisses,” and arguably “Working on a Building,” though we might not get to that video until March. We’ve been making wee videos for TikTok and Instagram and Facebook, see below. And it’s been WAY too long since we sent you our promised endorsements, so please read on to find out what we’ve been loving of late.
Oh…YOU. We love you. See you at the Drake!
Love, Nerissa & Katryna
WE LIKE THIS STUFF:
Katryna likes: snuggling on the couch under blankets with my sweet doggy. But that’s not really an endorsement, is it.
I just finished listening to North Woods by Daniel Mason. I still do not understand how a book about a piece of land in the western hills of Massachusetts whose story spans centuries could be a page turner, but it was! There were moments when my jaw hit the floor. Beautifully written and the audiobook was read by some of my favorite voices.
[Note: above playlist made by Nerissa’s kid.]
I am a little late to this party, but I cannot listen to Noah Kahan enough. Love all the duets he released last week. So many good ones. Hozier on Northern Attitude is amazeballs. But I also love Brandy Carlisle and Kasey Musgraves, duh. And Homesick with Sam Fender. Wow. It is actually fun to love some new music by an artist who is new to me! I thought maybe I was too old to feel this way about a new voice.
Nerissa likes:
King Arthur’s Gluten-Free Brownie mix. Note: I haven’t actually eaten this. But my brownie-loving eaters tell me that they prefer these to almost any other brownie, except for Tom’s Crack Brownies, which are just another thing altogether.
There’s a wonderful book I might have mentioned before called The Open-Focus Brain. In it, there are a number of exercises in which the guided voice (Arthur Moray’s, the best audible narrator EVER!) suggests things like, “Can you image the distance between your eyes?” and other questions intended to put the practitioner into an “alpha” brainwave state. By imagining the space within our bodies––the emptiness within every cell, within every atom––we begin to experience ourselves as simply clouds of atoms that have permeable membranes between what is “me” and what is the couch I’m sitting on, the houseplants I’m staring at as I pause in writing this to you. And of course the membrane between me and you is permeable, as is the membrane between me and All That Is.
I was going to endorse North Woods, but Katryna already did. So I’ll just say that I adored this book. North Woods was what I think The Overstory was attempting to be—an epic from the point of view of the natural world and the collective of all beings. (Not that I didn’t like The Overstory. But in North Woods, I never felt like I was consuming a lecture, if you know what I mean.)
Tour Schedule!
March 2 The Drake, Amherst MA
March 16 Old Town School of Folk Chicago, IL!
March 18 The Ark Ann Arbor, MI!
March 24 The Bread Box, Willimantic, CT
April 13 First Encounter Coffeehouse, Eastham MA 7pm show
May 3 Me & Thee Coffeehouse, Marblehead MA
Please support the new Iron Horse! They’ve become a nonprofit, and as such need a big boost from all of us to make their (AMAZING) new vision come true! (Please donate to the link below, scroll down and choose “The Nields Team: Easy People.”)
Random Polls I Felt Like Making
We are on TikTok—take that, Gen Z!
Instagram in case you missed it, here are our videos from last week!