Biography

A singer and songwriter with a gift for connecting with sounds of the past, Mean Mary (real name, Mary James) has gained a loyal following for music that draws on vintage country, bluegrass, and traditional folk with just a touch of modern-day flash. A performer since she was six years old, Mean Mary grew up on the work of country artists like Dolly Parton and Hank Williams, Jr., but as she matured, she developed a taste for American folk songs of the Civil War era, and by the time she began recording prolifically with 2006's Thank You Very Much, she was combining songs of the past with fresh material that reshaped the sounds of history with her strong, emotive, blues-influenced vocals as well as her capable instrumental skills on banjo, fiddle, and guitar. While acoustic traditionalism remained the hallmark of Mean Mary's music, on albums like 2012's Walk a Little Ways with Me and 2016's Sweet found her incorporating more contemporary themes and sounds to her performances without compromising her creative vision. Mary James was born in Geneva, Alabama on March 22, 1980, though her family lived in Florida. Her parents were rugged individualists, and when she was young, the family relocated to Northern Minnesota not far from the Canadian border, where they lived in a makeshift tent while her father built a log cabin by hand. James became interested in music when her brother, who had joined the military, sent her folks a guitar and some tapes of country artists he liked. James especially enjoyed the Dolly Parton and Hank Williams, Jr. numbers on the tape, and after learning to sing the songs, her mother taught her to play from instructional books, and she was able to read music before she entered kindergarten. By the time she was six years old, James' family had returned to Florida and the youngster was writing and performing her own songs; she became a regular on a local Alabama television series The Country Boy Eddie Show, and one of her songs, "Mean Mary from Alabam," was popular enough that it inspired her stage name, Mean Mary. She and her family opted for home schooling as she was playing regular concerts and practicing her music up to seven hours a day; she passed high school GED when she was nine. She was in her early teens when her brother Frank James joined the act, and their repertoire began leaning to traditional folk songs and songs of the Civil War as they found a lucrative specialty performing at civil war reenactments and other events celebrating American history. After a spell in California, where Mary and Frank tried their luck in the film industry, she relocated to Tennessee, and had returned to performing when an auto accident nearly ended her life and career. In February 2003, Mary was in the front passenger seat of a car traveling on slippery pavement during a rainstorm when the vehicle spun out of control and she was thrown against the dashboard and through the windshield. The speedy intervention of emergency medical providers saved Mary despite her injured neck, but doctors soon determined that one of her vocal cords had been paralyzed. After extensive physical therapy, Mary returned to live performing, relying on her instrumental skills since she could only sing for short periods. (Mary can play 11 instruments, including banjo, guitar, and violin.) She performed extensive vocal exercises after her doctors discovered the injured cord was showing signs of recovery, and in 2006, she was well enough to cut an album with the group Jamestown, Thank You Very Much. A solo single, "Ding Dong Day," arrived in 2008, and Mary's first full-length album on her own, Walk a Little Ways with Me, was issued in 2012. During her time off from the road, she started writing prose, collaborating with her mother Mary James on the novel Sparrow Alone on the Housetop, published in 2011. Between 2013 and 2018, Mary would publish five more books in tandem with her mother, four novels and a spiritual memoir. Mean Mary's audience grew when she began posting videos of her performances on line, which also helped spread word about her outside the United States. Along with a busy performance schedule and much time devoted to writing, Mary was prolific as a recording artist; she brought out the solo albums Year of the Sparrow (2013) and Sweet (2016) before cutting an album with her brother Frank, 2017's Down Home. 2018's Blazing was a set of songs meant to accompany her novel Hell Is Naked, published the same year, and in 2019 Mary was back with the LP Cold. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi