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DALLAS TWP. — Online reviews of The Wailin’ Jennys rave about exquisite harmonies, voices blending so well you’d think the three women were sisters (they’re not), and song topics that touch the heart.
“I just want to live inside of their music,” one fan wrote.
Mezzo Nicky Mehta — she’s the middle-range singer between soprano Ruth Moody and alto Heather Masse —admitted the trio does try to create a special world where “there’s a lot of light and a lot of love and a lot of joining together.”
“We all seem to write a lot about nature and how nature has a way of making sense of things,” Mehta said during a phone interview from her home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, shortly before the group was to set out for a tour that includes a Feb. 19 concert at Misericordia University. “Heather writes really interesting stuff. She wrote a song called ‘Cherry Blossom Love;’ it’s fanciful and humorous and jazzy, not so serious. It’s a nice break, because Ruth and I tend to write more serious.”
The Wailin’ Jennys concert at Misericordia will feature songs from the group’s fourth album, “Fifteen,” which was released in October and includes covers of Dolly Parton’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning,” Paul Simon’s “Loves Me Like A Rock” and Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers.”
But the night wouldn’t be complete without fan favorites from the group’s extensive repertoire of songs they’ve written themselves, borrowing from influences that range from folk to jazz to Celtic to pop to gospel.
Mehta has been described as the kind of artist who “knows how to walk with sorrow,” and she explores the full cycle of life in her music, including the transition of death.
“It’s got very child-like images in it, asking questions about life,” she said, describing a song she wrote and calls “Arlington.”
“”Where do you go, little bird, when it snows?’ ‘Where does the sun go at night?’ The idea behind it is adult questions about where we go when we die, what our purpose is. Everybody seems to take different things out of it,” Mehta said, explaining the song came to her “so quickly, I felt like I was a channel for it.”
Mehta had the experience, when she was only 13 years old, of losing an aunt, uncle and two cousins in the 1985 bombing of an Air India jet that was carrying Canadian passengers. “That had a big influence on me,” she said. “It seemed so senseless and violent.”
“I often joke about the fact that I write ‘death songs,’” she said, adding that death is part of life and she has tried to learn “how to fit with it, how to embrace it and not fear it. There are cycles in life, and I sing a lot about looking at nature to be reassured by the cycles. That is a comforting thing.”
“Arlington” is actually an upbeat kind of song, she said, adding she named it after the street where she was living when she wrote it.
Speaking of names, the Jennys received their moniker 15 years ago when the fellow who arranged what was supposed to be a one-night gig at a small guitar store said they should “call themselves something.”
The women didn’t approve one of his early suggestions, “The Folk Vixens,” but they liked the way “Wailin’ Jennys” rolled off the tongue.
Mehta admitted she’s not too familiar with the work of musician Waylon Jennings, whose name sounds so similar. “The one song I know well, I like,” she said, citing one called “Amanda.”
The Wailin’ Jennys have visited Pennsylvania before and even recorded one of their earlier albums at the Mauch Chunk Opera House in the Carbon County town of Jim Thorpe, about 60 miles south of Misericordia.
“We explored the place, and they gave us the keys to the city,” Mehta said.
During their concerts, the Jennys have been drawing attention to the National Alliance on Mental Illness and selling merchandise in support of that cause.
“We’re super excited to be working with them again,” Mehta said.