Hello, everyone. I am very excited for the conversation you are about to listen to, so I won't

waste too much time on preamble before we just get into it. So you know how sometimes you have a

friend who's incredibly good at what they do? And you kind of just know them socially, so you just go out to dinner and

hang out and stuff. But then every so often, you'll see them doing their thing, and you're reminded

how totally wild it is that a person can even be that good at anything?

Well, that's how I feel about my friend Ruth Moody.

Ruth is a brilliant singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist,

and in addition to her solo work, which is terrific,

she is one-third of the Wayland Jennings, a group she plays with along with Heather Massey and Nikki Mehta.

Massey actually joined the band in 2009, taking over for Kara Luft, who was singing on this recording.

This is the sound of voices, and their name was a goof.

It was just a play on Waylon Jennings.

They spent the next several years getting pretty big, with a profile raised in particular by

radio appearances on a Prairie Home Companion, that these days they're playing sold-out shows at

massive concert halls, and I bet that a not insignificant percentage of you have already heard their music.

This past spring, the Jennys were en route to just such a show at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in my hometown of Portland, when on the way to their sound check they swung by the

Caldera to chat with me for an hour about music, songwriting, songwriters they love, and how they think about

the creative process. It was such a great chat. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.

Let's get into it.

The Whale and Jenny's Welcome to Samp Jenny's. Welcome to Strong Songs. Thank you. I am very, very excited that you're all here. It's kind of crazy. I've been listening to Music Forever. Of course, I have known Ruth for a long time, but it is very, very cool to have such a wonderful band in the studio with me.

So first of all, just before we get started, could you each say your name and what instruments you play? I know you all sing, but what instruments you play, just so that everyone can have a sense

of what everyone sounds like and who's speaking when.

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