The Mammals hit the highway with a nationally distributed album in tow. The group visits Princeton Dec. 6 and Fort Washington, Pa., Dec. 8.
By: Matt Smith
At Ruth Ungar and Michael Merenda’s house in Woodstock, N.Y., morning sometimes arrives after the clock strikes noon especially when the previous evening’s jam session has stretched into the wee hours.
Ms. Ungar and Mr. Merenda, two-thirds of up-and-coming folk trio The Mammals, sat in on bandmate Tao Rodriguez-Seeger’s public radio show, The Tao of Tao, in Albany the night before our phone interview. They returned home for a little after-hours improvising with friend Pierce Woodward, a bass player who occasionally tours with the group.
"The show was a lot of fun," says Ms. Ungar, chatting while Mr. Merenda is off in the kitchen making tea, "but it took a while to unwind."
"It WAS a late night," concurs Mr. Merenda when he returns with some much-needed caffeine.
Like The Band’s "Big Pink" in the ’60s, The Mammals’ home, musical and otherwise, is Ms. Ungar and Mr. Merenda’s "Humble Abode" in Woodstock. The group’s excellent new CD, Evolver, was recorded in the living room and released on their independent label, Humble Abode Music.
The album’s first track, "Way Down the Old Plank Road," hints at what one of those late-night hootenannies might sound like, with a driving banjo and Mr. Rodriguez-Seeger half-heartedly promising himself "I won’t get drunk no more/ way down the old plank road."
The Mammals will offer their youthful take on traditional music at the Princeton Theological Seminary Dec. 6, in a concert sponsored by Seminarians for Social Change and produced by the Princeton Folk Music Society. They’ll also perform a show sponsored by the Philadelphia Folksong Society in Fort Washington Dec. 8.
Since forming in early 2001, The Mammals have quickly made a name for themselves on the folk circuit, both for their vibrant, accomplished sound and musical pedigree: Ms. Ungar, 26, is the daughter of fiddler-composer Jay Ungar and folksinger Lyn Hardy; the 30-year-old Mr. Rodriguez-Seeger is the grandson of the legendary Pete Seeger and has performed alongside his grandfather since age 14. He lives about an hour away from his bandmates on his grandparents’ farm along the Hudson River in Beacon, N.Y.
Mr. Merenda, also 26, is the only Mammal without a famous folk surname. The New Hampshire native, a multi-instrumentalist who cut his teeth in rock and ska bands in high school and at Bowdoin College in Maine, brings a pop sensibility to the group and a relatively newfound appreciation for folk music.
"(Tao and Ruth) were so steeped in the folk tradition that they were totally burnt out and jaded," says Mr. Merenda, whose gentle pop-folk original, "69 Pleasant Street," is a highlight of Evolver. "They loved it deeply, but they were ready for something fresh and new. You can imagine watching your parents, their friends sleeping over… it’s a whole different universe. For me, I can’t get enough of it. So the table sort of turned in a wonderful way. We all sort of meet in the middle."
Growing up, there was folk music everywhere the young Ms. Ungar turned. She spent summers at her father’s Ashokan Fiddle & Dance Workshop in the Catskill Mountains and playing backstage at festivals with the children of other folkies.
"It was a wonderful experience that I got to have from the age of 2," Ms. Ungar says, "and then during the school year I was this other person that went to school and tried to have a grasp on top-40 music. I didn’t understand why anyone would want to listen to it. We didn’t have pop radio or TV in my house, so I was out of the social loop in school."
Ms. Ungar learned to play ukulele and fiddle as a child, but her first and perhaps strongest instrument is her voice. She’s a convincing chanteuse on the jazz standard "Stairway to the Stars," but shines when adding harmony vocals to Richard Thompson’s "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" and the Merenda-Ungar original "Profit."
"I’ve never tried to count, but I imagine I know a couple hundred tunes," Ms. Ungar says. "I developed an ear that, after hearing the first couple notes, I could join in on harmony… My mom was in a group called the Rude Girls in the ’80s, which was four women, all singing, all the time. I would be at my mom’s on the weekend in the other room doing my homework and trying to hum the other harmony part."
Music took a backseat to acting when Ms. Ungar went to study at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. After school she moved to New York City to try to make it as an actress until she met Mr. Merenda.
"I was living with some actors who I had met studying in London one semester, Americans who went to Ruthy’s college, and they had this Christmas party," recalls Mr. Merenda. "One of them said, ‘I can’t believe you haven’t met Ruthy.’ That night she came back and I played her some of my songs. After hearing them once, she was joining in with these beautiful harmonies.’"
Soon Ms. Ungar was playing fiddle and ukulele again, and sitting in on gigs with the couple’s mutual friend and Mr. Merenda’s upstairs neighbor, songwriter Carter Little.
"I thought, ‘Wow. I know how to do this stuff,’" she says. "’It could be fun. And compared to acting, it’s a better lifestyle.’"
Frustrated with the high cost of living in New York City, Ms. Ungar and Mr. Merenda relocated to Northampton, Mass., and took day jobs. Mr. Merenda continued his folk education at Fretted Instrument Workshop in Amherst, where Ms. Ungar’s mother worked as a luthier.
"It was a nice gateway for me to the physicality of folk music," he says, "the nuts and bolts of old banjos from the turn of the century. When we weren’t busy I taught myself to play the banjo."
Not long after moving to western Massachusetts, Ms. Ungar and Mr. Merenda were introduced to Mr. Rodriguez-Seeger, then working as a computer programmer.
"We met him at a party he threw," Mr. Merenda says. "Ruthy knew him through the (folk music) grapevine, but they had never had a real conversation before."
The rest is history. "As Tao says, ‘At the bottom of every good bottle of rum there’s a good band,’" Mr. Merenda jokes.
Although Evolver was released in June, it hit stores nationally two weeks ago no small feat for a modest string band.
"We can sort of call the shots," Mr. Merenda says. "Most of our audience is in the Northeast, but the country is large. We toured out West last February from San Diego all the way to Portland, and through the beautiful Northern California wine country."
The group will head out on another Western trek in February. The trip will surely bring more of the inter-band challenges that come with a life lived on the highways and byways of the United States.
"We have a brand-new used conversion van," Mr. Merenda says. "All I could think about being an aspiring musician was one day having my own van, and it materialized for me. (Life on the road) is all the things that you would expect. I won’t go into details, but I tend to even enjoy that part of it, too."
Perhaps, Mr. Merenda says, The Mammals can best be summed up in the bumper sticker slogan that "just popped into my head one day": "Trad is Rad."
The Mammals perform at the Princeton Theological Seminary, Mackay Campus Center, Mercer Street and Library Place, Princeton, Dec. 6, 8:15 p.m. Admission costs $15, $10 Princeton Folk Music Society members, $3 under age 12; special rates for students. For information, call (609) 799-0944; The Mammals also appear at the Germantown Academy Arts Center, 340 Morris Road, Fort Washington, Dec. 8, 7:30 p.m. LisaBeth Weber opens. Tickets cost $14, $12 adv.; free to Philadelphia Folksong Society members and children under age 12. For information, call (215) 247-1300. On the Web: www.pfs.org. The Mammals on the Web: www.themammals.net