"As the work of the Everly Brothers or the McGarrigle Sisters has amply demonstrated, there are few sounds as sublime as close harmonies rendered by siblings. In the case of western Massachusetts folk rockers the Nields, the siblings are sisters Nerissa and Katryna Nields, and their inimitable vocal blend is a disarming mix of clean folk harmonies and clenched Generation-X angst." -The Chicago Tribune -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From one of the best loved indie bands of the ‘90s comes Nerissa & Katryna Nields; a duo who marry alt country to classic folk rock and make the listener feel both transported and, well, listened to, all at the same time. The duo often receive letters saying, "Your song tells my story. How did you know?" On their new Zoë/Rounder CD, Love and China (their first duo outing and tenth counting their work with The Nields, the band they founded in 1991), the sisters push their art to the next level with a collection of songs that are personal, dynamic, and sublimely beautiful. Nerissa & Katryna, sisters who have been singing together since they were children, are seasoned performers who simply love to sing, alone and together. When they sing together, their voices blend to form a kind of third voice, made of all the love and strength and years that exist between them. There is something at once thrilling and comforting about the way their voices dip together, merge, and then emerge, independent; two streams pouring into one another over a rocky fall, and dividing again to go their separate ways at the bottom. This joining of the voices gives the lyrics an almost incantatory power, and is the musical equivalent of spun gold. After college in Connecticut in the early '90s (Nerissa went to Yale, Katryna to Trinity), Nerissa & Katryna launched their music career in the New England coffeehouse folk circuit. By 1995 they had put together a five-piece folk-rock band and started touring nationally as The Nields. Between 1994 and 2000, the Nields released six full length CDs, supporting their albums with tour dates that took them all over North America, playing well over 200 dates a year. Triple A and college radio embraced the band, making songs like "Best Black Dress," "Gotta Get Over Greta" and "Easy People" familiar to legions of music fans. The band sold close to 100,000 records and became the darlings of the Folk Festival circuit. In the summer of 1998, Nerissa & Katryna were asked to play Lilith Fair without the boys in their band. "I was afraid at first," admits Nerissa Nields, the older of the two sisters. "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 ok on our own." Within a year, the duo was opening for Cry Cry Cry, doing a tour of Alaska, playing the Newport Folk Festival and becoming a bona fide act of its own. "We are able to get really intimate with the audience now as a duo," says 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 first to crack each other up, and somehow it seems to work that the audience is amused too." After taking six months off to have a baby (Amelia Nields Chalfant), Katryna joined Nerissa in the studio in the fall of 2001 to record their first record as a duo. Love and China was produced and engineered by Dave Chalfant (bass player for The Nields, husband of Katryna, father of Amelia, brother-in-law of Nerissa). Dave has made a name for himself in the music world, producing Erin McKeown’s widely heralded Distillation and Ben Demerath’s Jack of Fools. Joining the sisters in the studio were Kevin Barry (Paula Cole, Mary Chapin Carpenter) on guitar and Lorne Entress (Erin McKeown, Ronnie Earl, Mark Erelli, Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer) on drums. Fiddle, accordion, and pedal steel also make an appearance, giving Love and China a rich western landscape with only the occasional high rise. "’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," says Nerissa, who wrote the songs on Love and China. "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 will find Love and China more countrified than its predecessors, as the sisters get in touch with the music that takes them all the way back to their Virginia roots, and a childhood filled with Willie Nelson, Hank Williams, and Patsy Cline. But Nerissa writes country the way Dylan writes country, with an edge that turns it into its own genre, and Katryna sings country like she sings everything, with a kind of childlike wonder coupled with every ounce of her grown-up soul. Oh, one more thing: When driving home from a gig, sometimes Amelia, AKA The World’s Best Baby, cries. When she does, the only placating she will accept is listening to Love and China (AGAIN) on the van’s CD player. As soon as she hears the first strands, she is calm and peaceful and eager to be in the present moment. All crying stops. She is swept up in the world that Nerissa & Katryna have created with their warm golden voices. We figure the same will be true for you.

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