Songs

Mary sang many, many songs by other songwriters – her song list reflected the most popular Rock, Blues and popular tunes of the times. She learned from and appreciated these famous singer/songwriters very much and sought to emulate them.

She was also a prolific singer/songwriter in her own right. She composed countless songs for guitar and voice, on a wide variety of topics. Her songs were often biographical, about her life, or the lives of friends around her. The stories might be stark reality or totally fun and irreverent. Her CD Gory Glory was produced by Robyn Lee, a local musical icon who once performed on tour with Olivia Newton John. The “Gory Glory” album can be found on You Tube.

* Her song “Psyco Bitch” (co-written with friends Jolie Nelson and Kara Erickson) is like an anthem, and is her most well known favorites – she often performed it as the last song of the night. She always wanted a video recorded at her longstanding gig at the Minnesota Music Cafe, with customers singing along, but this never happened.

* Her song “Human Kindness” is a beautiful and tender testament to her need to send and receive kindness and her belief that it was the only way to be in this world.

* The song “Payne and Agony” is often requested and ends with the familiar mention of Hope. In this case Hope is a street in St. Paul.

* “Been Around the Block” was written on an airplane, leaving MN to go back to LA. She said it was getting harder and harder to say goodbye to home, and returned to the Twin Cities permanently in 1998.

* The song “Fly” was an expression of Mary’s dreams – she would often experience flying dreams. She awoke happy to have been sailing over the countryside, free as a bird, gently soaring toward whatever...

A friend said she purchased a cassette tape of Mary’s songs the second time she attended one of Mary’s gigs. She got to know Mary by listening to her music. The story of a person’s life captured in Mary’s song might go unnoticed by the lay person, but Mary saw the hunger, pain, struggle, triumph in life, in that person’s story and elevated it to song. If you listen to “Caroline”, or “Rudy”, you know these people intimately.

Songwriting was like therapy for Mary, and she always had a notebook to scribble in here and there. She was a diligent note taker. But she was often the only one who could interprete her notes. She loved the task of transposing a song from one key to another, note by note, chord by chord. She often found alternate chord phrasings that were interesting and pleasing to the ear, more so because they were unexpected. When playing sax or flute in live performance her instruments became an extension of herself, her inner spirit, her connectedness with other musicians, and ultimately with the cosmos.