Last week’s artist Daniel Champagne was making his Maine debut at One Longfellow Square and this week I’m introducing you to another performer making their first ever show here in our fair state, but this gig is happening in Madison at the Somerset Abbey at 98 Main St. on Oct. 7. The artist this time around is singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Mary James, who goes by the name Mean Mary, and when I saw that moniker I just had to find out more, so I hit YouTube for performance videos and then contacted her through her website. We set up a day and time for our chat and the results are documented below.

Q: Having watched a handful of videos, I must admit to being very fond of your voice, there’s a warmth and a richness that’s inherent in the alto range, and sadly there aren’t that many alto singers out there nowadays.
James: Thank you.

Q: How long have you been doing this?
James: Well, I started when I was like 4 and a half so, you know, it’s been a few years (chuckle).

Q: How many albums do you have out?
James: Um, we just did the count recently, my first album was when I was 7 and it was on a cassette tape and there are a few that were on cassette tapes that are no longer available to the public; but my Christmas album is coming out this year and that’ll be album number 19.

Q: Wow!
James: (Laughter) Yeah, I was kind of shocked myself about how many there were.

Q: Oh, and on a completely different topic, have you ever played in Maine before?
James:: I haven’t, this will be my first time in Maine, actually, as a state (chuckle). I did a show quite a few years back in Vermont, I was up in Vermont once, and then before that in New York, but I don’t really make it to the New England area much so it’s all new to me: that part of the country.

Q: Now when you go out to perform, are you a solo act or do you have some backing musicians?
James: I tour most of the time, like 99.9% of the time, solo, and this show will be solo, but I do play with my brother, Frank, whose right above me in age, he’ll occasionally join me on the road for shows. But doing a show solo can’t be beat as far as the intimacy goes.

Q: Seeing you’ve never been to Maine before, what can folks expect from your performance?
James: Well, I guess something they’ve never seen before (laughter) because it’ll be brand new for them, too. But I play guitar, banjo and fiddle, those are my main three instruments I tour with on the road; so obviously, it’ll be a mixture of that. I write a lot of story songs so it’s a lot of intimate, lyrical-type driven things along with my usual kind of up-beat, tap-your-foot, fiddle and banjo stuff. I pretty much fly by the seat of my pants and what the audience is leaning towards that night.

Q: Like what?
James: If everybody wants to dance then we dance, if everybody wants to sit around and cry at sad songs then I’ll play sad songs (chuckle). But, yeah, I just like to have fun, and I do my own foot percussion, so you know with solo artists it’s like all about the rhythm.

Q: Now I’m having a hard time trying to frame the next question: Mean Mary? What’s with that?!
James: (Laughter) I do get that question on occasion, it’s my first original song which I wrote when I was about 5 years old. I was born in Alabama so I came up with my first original song called, “Mean Mary from Alabam,” and it became my theme song, as I always tell folks: “I retired the song when I turned 6.”

Q: Is songwriting something that comes easy to you?
James: For the most part, yeah, but every song is individual to itself and how it goes, sometimes they fight with you and then others just flow. But I co-write with my mom {Jane James, an author in her own rite}, she writes a lot of the lyrics and I’ll write the tune, sometimes everything grooves just perfectly and then sometimes it’s a struggle. I think every song has its own personality so you’ve just got to go with it.

Q: Is it easy to choose what to play on any given night or is it difficult with so many albums to draw upon?
James: I definitely have some crowd-pleasing songs that I like to do at my shows, but then I’m that kind of person that likes to do whatever’s newest, sometimes it’s a song that I just wrote. There’s always that desire, “Do I do the thing that I know everyone’s going to enjoy or do I do the thing that I’m going to enjoy because it’s brand new?” (Laughter) So that’s part of the main struggle I think a musician goes through: Do you do what you know is going to be the successful song or do you do something that is uncertain.

Q: Well, seeing this is an area and a venue debut for you, is there anything that you’d like me to pass on to the folks reading this article?
James: Oh, gosh, just, you know, how wonderful and special I am, I guess (laughter)! But I do have an online presence: my YouTube videos always attracts folks, the majority of the people who come out to see me found me on YouTube, so that’s luckily given me the nice international presence where I can tour all the way to Germany or whatever, and people will say, “Oh, I saw you on YouTube!” So that’s the main thing, to get my name out there, other than that, I’d say, “Just come to the show.” I like getting a little taste of an area so I’m really looking forward to trying out Maine!

Lucky Clark, a 2018 “Keeping the Blues Alive” Award winner, has spent more than 50 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.

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