Ruth Moody, of The Wailin’ Jennys, said her group has had some great opportunities in its career from the beginning because of their hard-to-define sound.
“This band has had a lot of natural, positive energy and we run with it,” Moody said in a recent phone interview before the Stagecoach Country Music Festival. “It’s been amazing. It is the category we’re in; we’re not country, we’re not strictly folk, we’re not pop but we’re all of the above and I think that is what works for us.”
The Canadian group is scheduled to perform at 5:40 p.m. Friday at the Mustang stage at the Indio festival.
“We hadn’t heard of it before,” Moody said of the festival. “We don’t play a lot of strictly country music festivals. “We played at a festival at Montana at red ants pants last year. That was pretty country for us. This is full on country. We’re super excited. It’s different for us. We have a country influence in our music but we’re not full-on country. We’re more folk roots. We think it’s going to be super exciting.”
Moody said the reason for the group’s popularity is there isn’t many people who don’t like three-part harmony.
“There’s something universally appealing about that sound, that energy,” she said. “That’s kind of what transcends genre in a sense. That’s what sort of threads everything together in the band. In spite of the different genres we cover there is this thread of harmony running through it. It makes it easy for people to say I like this. And I like singing harmonies … (but) It’s harder to break through to the mainstream. But that’s not what we wanted anyway or what we came into this career for.”
The group has won a couple of Juno Awards, which are presented to music artists from Canada, in 2005 (for “40 Days”) and 2012 (for Bright Morning Stars” in the group Roots and Traditional Album of the Year. Moody said she enjoys both being in the studio recording and performing live for different reasons.
“They are such different beasts,” Moody said. “I personally I love being in the studio. And I think a few years ago would have said I like that better than performing. Recently I really embraced performing. I got more used to it. Maybe as you get older, you really appreciate that chance to connect with people through performance nad music. We’re all really relishing that. Nicky (Mehta) and Heather (Masse) are mothers now so they don’t take that for granted. When they come out on the road they really enjoy the performing aspect of it. The connecting with our fans and audience is a something we all cherish a lot. Probably I would say that over studio just a tiny hair.”
And Moody says her group’s name, which came from a Winnipeg promoter after country legend Waylon Jennings, has served the band well.
“There have been a couple of moments where people were confused when they showed up at our show,” Moody said. “They thought we were something else. But it’s been a gift and I have no regrets.”
