Three distinct talents merge to create bluegrass-folk band

Like Cerberus, the three-headed dog of Greek mythology fame, the three women in I’m With Her have a difficult time telling where one member’s role starts and another’s ends.

“The balance of musicianship was something that was pretty apparent from the beginning,” said Sarah Jarosz, who sings and plays mandolin in the trio. “That was something that perked us up, the ease with which it didn’t feel like one person had a hand in it more than anyone else.”

And before you ask, no, the group — Jarosz, Sara Watkins on fiddle and Aoife O’Donovan on guitar — is not named after Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign slogan.

By the time Clinton rolled out “I’m With Her,” the band's title had been set in stone for more than a year after they coined the phrase during a three-week European tour in 2015.

“It was a unifying thing for the three of us because we Who: I'm With Her Where: Southern Theatre, 21 E. Main St. Contact: 1-800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com Showtime: 7:30 p.m. Monday Tickets: $35 to $40

wanted it to be a band and not a broken-down version of our solo projects,” Jarosz, 27, said. “It was a little too solidified at the point it became her slogan to change it, so we just decided to stick with it.”

I’m With Her will perform Monday at the Southern Theatre, more than four years after the women first played together during a thrown-together performance at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Telluride, Colorado.

Their separate backgrounds would seem to be a natural fit — all three often end up on the same bluegrass/folk circuits, and O’Donovan and Jarosz both studied at the New England Conservatory in Boston — but the chemistry upon playing together felt like magic.

After the Telluride gig, the women began playing covers to hone the I’m With Her style before attempting original music.

“I think it was important to arrange other people's music before writing our own," Jarosz said. "We went into the writing process with more of a sense of how we work musically together.”

They turned campy Vampire Weekend pop song “Hannah Hunt” into a soaring choirlike piece, and Adele’s “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)” added tight three-part harmony to the simmering song.

By 2015, they felt confident enough in friendship and direction to schedule two writing sessions.

During the first, the trio hunkered down to finish four songs in an Airbnb rental in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park.

Watkins lives in the city, but Jarosz said finding neutral ground was important to sharing the creative load.

“The space where you're writing the song can affect the song,” Jarosz said. “It was important to feel like the space we were writing these songs was ours equally.”

Later in 2015, they settled in at a farmhouse in Warren, Vermont, to work out the other eight tracks, including a lullabylike arrangement of Gillian Welch’s “Hundred Miles.”

They spent a week cooking, exercising, drinking beer, writing and watching Netflix shows together.

By the time they left, the threesome felt a renewed commitment to the camaraderie inspiring their name.

Still, due to solo touring schedules, they shelved the album — recorded in England in January 2016 — for two years.

“See You Around” was finally released in February, and the seamless transitions both within and between songs make it easy to forget there are three voices, not one, at work.

Plucky and breathy “Ain’t That Fine” gives way to delicate ballad “Wild One.”

“Waitsfield,” the sole