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Mean Mary

Venue: Grateful Fred's Cafe Session, Cafe D' Ar
Town: Formby
Date: 13/5/14
Website: http://meanmary.com/

Tonight, Grateful Fred brought us the latest in his superb series of cafe sessions at the Cafe D'Art in Formby Village. Tonight's guest was the incredible Mean Mary [Mary James] from Nashville. Those of us who bought tickets early were the lucky ones, as Fred could have filled the Cafe twice over, such was the demand.

Mary is literally a prodigious talent, having started to play at age four, write songs at five and record her first album at six. One of the songs she wrote at five was "Mean Mary From Alabam" and thereafter she was known as "Mean Mary"[this information was given to me by Mary's mother, author and sometime snake hunter, Jean James who is on tour with Mary].

"Mean Mary" is something of a misnomer as Mary is not at all mean, she is one of the nicest and friendliest people you could possibly wish to meet.

Mary, who plays eleven instruments, is best known for her phenomenal banjo playing but tonight she also played fiddle and guitar, on which she is equally adept. She also continued a recent Grateful Fred trend by playing a suitcase drum.

The audience contained a number of banjo players who were clearly in awe of her amazing skills on the instrument, some vowing to throw their own instruments away after seeing Mary play.

Starting her show on banjo, Mary blew the audience away with such bluegrass classics as "Cripple Creek", "Rocky Top" and, best of all, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown". "Faster than Scruggs" whispered one of the banjo fraternity in disbelief!

Mary, however, does not confine herself to bluegrass banjo, she takes on many different styles, including folk, gospel and even Southern soul. She has an incredibly powerful voice which can range from folk to funk.

Any fiddle players in the room would also have been astounded by her proficiency on that instrument as well. We were treated to a selection of fiddle pieces including a Virginian reel medley [which featured "Cotton Eyed Joe" and "Chicken Reel"], Jay Ungar's hauntingly beautiful lament "Ashokan Farewell"[which featured in Ken Burns' "Civil War" documentary] and the fiery fiddle tune "Arkansas Traveller".

Mary also took us down to Louisiana for a song about Marie Laveau [who was a practitioner of voodoo and the witch queen of New Orleans] and her similarly spooky yet sultry story song "Rose Tattoo".

On more familiar territory, Mary delivered three choice cover songs in her inimitable style -James Taylor's "Fire and Rain" [which she learned to play before she had heard], Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl"[which she converted to "Brown Eyed Boy"] and, for a finale, John Denver's "Leaving On A Jet Plane". And so ended a wonderfully entertaining evening from an amazingly talented artist. [Did I mention that, like her mother, she is also an award-winning author ?].

Peter Cowley