CONTRIBUTED TO THE OBSERVER
AUBURN — International touring musician Mean Mary will appear at Sundilla on Feb. 28. This special performance on her “Woman Creature” tour will include songs from all her albums and loads of new original songs.
Popular for her raw, unmistakable vocal sound lightning-fast fingers on the banjo, guitar, fiddle, percussion and 11 other instruments, Mean Mary could read music before she could read words and since childhood her life has been one long road show of events, venues, TV, radio and film. Her songs travel the genres of roots, bluegrass, blues, and folk rock—story songs, fast songs, sad songs, songs to make your feet tap.
She is an award-winning song writer and book author. Her original banjo song, Iron Horse (the story of Native American maiden and her horse racing against a train), recently received the IMA’s Vox Populi award for best Americana song.
“Mean” Mary James, youngest of six children, was born in Geneva, Alabama, though her family lived a nomadic lifestyle, moving throughout the U.S.
When Mary’s oldest brother, Jim, who had just joined the Navy, sent the family a guitar and a compilation tape of songs he liked, the family listened to the music of Hank Williams Jr. and Dolly Parton on their battery-operated radio. It wasn’t long before Mary was singing the songs and vocalizing all the instrumentation. Seeing her talent, her parents bought guitar books started teaching all the children how to play. Mary and her brother Frank were the two who would turn music into a career.
Mary learned to read music before she could read words and was an official singer/songwriter before she had started her first day of kindergarten. With the help of her mom, she wrote her theme song, “Mean Mary from Alabam’.” The press immediately baptized her with this handle, and she has been Mean Mary ever since.
She recorded her first album at age six and her road shows began to multiply, At the end of the second grade, she went into home study and started appearing daily on the Country Boy Eddie Show, a regional TV program out of Birmingham. During this time, she also appeared regularly at the Nashville Palace, on the Nashville Network, the Elvis Presley Museum and on Printer’s Alley.
When only nine years old, she aced a state-required test at a 12th-grade equivalency level. Her guitarist brother, Frank James, joined her on stage also excelled in his home studies, graduating from high school at age 15.
By the time she was 14, Mary and Frank had grown weary of the commercial country music scene and started a tour of historic folk and Civil War era music. It wasn’t long before they were one of the most sought after historical folk groups in the country, being booked every weekend and having to turn down hundreds of shows a year.
During her teen years, their parents moved to Hollywood, where Mary and Frank were involved in almost every TV show and movie produced, whether as background actors, stand-ins, photo doubles, stunt doubles or day players. It was exciting, interesting work, but it wasn’t furthering their music career, so the James family migrated back Tennessee.
Mary’s music career was really taking off when the most devastating event of her life occurred. One rainy evening, she was the front-seat passenger in a small car when the driver lost control. Mary’s head broke the windshield, and her neck cracked the hard plastic dashboard. The twisted state of her neck left her right vocal cord paralyzed.
Although the rest of her body recovered from the trauma, her vocal chords remained damaged. The left side tried to compensate for the loss of the right side, making it possible for her to sing a little, but only for about 10 minutes at a time. Ever the fighter, she booked shows and sang when she could, and when she couldn’t, she would play her instruments.
During this time, she also wrote and co-wrote books. Her novel, Wherefore Art Thou, Jane? won first place in the Reader’s Favorite International Awards. She began starring in her own Nashville TV show, The Never-Ending Street, a documentary/reality type of show depicting the trials and joys of a touring musician, and her international fan base took a giant leap in growth, which was all good news, but the greatest thing that happened during this time was the recovery of her vocal cord. She had worked it back to life!
Today Mean Mary produces music, produces videos (her YouTube videos have received close to 30 million visits), tours extensively in the U.S. and overseas, is writing a novel trilogy about the music world and is a Goodtime Ambassador for Deering Banjos. Mary has recorded 18 albums, her newest being Portrait of a Woman. There is not room here to tell the whole life story of Mean Mary, but if you would like to hear more of it, listen to her music — it is all there at her website, www.meanmary.com.
All of her albums, books and other merchandise will be available at the Sundilla show.
Showtime for the Feb. 28 performance at the AUUF (450 E. Thach Ave. in Auburn) is 7:30 p.m. Advance tickets are $20 and can be found at Spicer’s Music, Ross House Coffee and online at sundillamusic.com. Admission at the door is $25 ($15 for students). Free coffee, tea, water and food will be available, and the audience is invited to bring their own refreshments.
