Weekender Encore: The Wailin’ Jennys at Uptown March 6 — Chat with Ruth Moody

By David Kerns

Feb 21, 2025

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NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — It has been almost eight years since the Wailin’ Jennys last performed in Napa. The popular folk trio, repeatedly honored at the Juno Awards (the Canadian Grammys), will appear in concert at Napa’s Uptown Theatre on Thursday, March 6.

The Wailin’ Jennys performing at the Uptown Theatre Napa in 2017 - Mitchell Glotzer Photo

The group was founded in 2002 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, by Ruth Moody and Nicky Mehta. New Yorker Heather Masse joined in 2007. The three singer-songwriter instrumentalists continue as the performing /recording band. Over the years they have released five albums and toured all over the world.

Moody is a breathy soprano who plays clawhammer-style banjo, guitar, piano and accordion. Mehta is a mezzo guitarist/percussionist, and Masse is an alto vocalist and bass player. They are known particularly for their melodic harmony singing and acoustic instrumental versatility. At the Uptown they will be accompanied by Moody’s brother, Richard, on fiddle, viola and mandolin and by guitarist Ethan Sherman.

On the phone from her home in British Columbia last month, Moody spoke about her bandmates as well as her own parallel solo career.

"I think becoming a parent makes you more vulnerable because suddenly there's this person that you're responsible for, and it all feels very precious. It affected my relationship with how I want to live my life and how I wanted to treasure each moment." — Ruth Moody

“Nicky is an amazing songwriter and has such important and profound things to say in her lyrics,” Moody said. “She can sing in soft and delicate and sensitive ways, and then she can also belt it out like an '80s rocker. She's exploring that in some of the songs she's been writing. She's mixing serious subject matter with really upbeat and anthemic musical sounds.”

“Nicky’s commitment to human rights and activism is very inspiring. She has spearheaded some of our partnerships with organizations such as Lives in the Balance (a child advocacy nonprofit) and NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She has this drive to do good things for the world. We all do, but it takes someone to say. ‘I'm going to put the extra work in to make this happen,’ and she really has that energy.”

According to Moody, Masse is a remarkably versatile singer.

“Heather can sing anything and has this amazing range,” she said. “Her voice can be really pure at times and at others kind of bluesy. She studied jazz at the New England Conservatory and is just super-skilled in what she can do.”

“She has a real playfulness in how she performs and how she writes songs that was really refreshing when she joined the band. It kind of helped the Jennys lighten up a little because Nicky and I are pretty serious in how we write and how we approach things, about our work ethic. When Heather joined the band, we were both really enamored by her playfulness, her free-spiritedness and lighthearted approach. She can also be very serious and very deep, but she loves to have fun, and I think she brought that out in both Nicky and myself.”

As to an upcoming Jennys album — the last was released in 2017 — Moody said, “We've got a bunch of new songs that we've been working on and starting to play at our shows. That's usually the first step, so that's well underway.”

Moody’s solo career began in parallel with the Jennys in 2002 and took off in earnest in 2010 with the release of her solo album, “The Garden.” This was followed by “These Wilder Things” in 2013, and after a long hiatus for life and maternity, the release in 2024 of “Wanderer.” She spoke in some detail about her evolution as a writer and a performer, particularly over the past decade.

“I don't know that anything about ‘Wanderer’ was intentional, honestly, until I actually booked the studio dates,” she said. “Because it was 10 years since my prior album, it spans a long time in my life. I went through a lot in that time, I became a mother in that time. I wrote a lot when I was pregnant, and those songs ended up being very personal. I've always written personal songs, particularly on ‘These Wilder Things,’ but maybe with ‘Wanderer’ I ended up with deeper, more urgent things to write about.”

“Being able to step back a little bit from it now — ‘Wanderer’ has been out for nine months or so — I can definitely see that the whole album is really about the journey that I was on. These were such important years. Now it's starting to change a little bit. My 8-year-old son is becoming his own man. I’m still important in his life, but his circle is widening and it is really changing things for me as well. I’m asking what parts of my former life do I want to reconnect with, and where do I want to put the energy that I'm getting back?”

“There's also the grief that comes with the changes,” she said. “You have this role in this little being's life, and then it changes. And my role is changing, and every day is an adventure with him and I love every day, but there are times when I really miss those younger years where you just get to hold your little guy.”

“Not only did motherhood affect my writing, the songs that I wrote after he was born, but also my approach to singing and performing. It's different, I feel, especially with the singing. This isn't super-conscious, but I think having a child made me feel more vulnerable. I think becoming a parent makes you more vulnerable because suddenly there's this person that you're responsible for, and it all feels very precious. It affected my relationship with how I want to live my life and how I wanted to treasure each moment. I think that, and maybe COVID, as well, made me feel that there's almost nothing that comes between my emotion and my voice these days. I think I'm expressing myself in a very honest way.”

“When I listen to records that I love, that's part of what I love about them,” Moody said. “I love that honesty. I love that rawness. When I made this record, I wanted to be in a room with other humans and sing these songs and be as present as I possibly could be, and find that honest expression as much as I could. In the past I think I was more of a perfectionist and wanted things to come out a certain way. I didn't stop until I got them exactly how I wanted them. With this one, I just wanted the raw emotion of the performance to come through.”

David Kerns is a Napa-based music journalist and novelist.

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