The Mammals are a folk-Americana group based in the Hudson Valley of New York. On Friday, they’ll play a Ten Pound Fiddle concert in East Lansing.
The music of The Mammals includes a mix of rock music staples like drums, bass and keyboards with traditional folk music instrumentation of guitar, banjo and fiddle from band co-founders and married couple Mike Merenda and Ruth Ungar.
Ungar jokes about a slogan for the band: “too rock for the folk show, and too folk for the rock show."
Merenda says the single "Rolling Stone Refugee" is a reflection of their lives when they were forced off the road by the COVID-19 lockdown era. It was a time for him to fall in love with getting back to nature.
"The song is kind of a rumination on what it’s like to be stuck at home, hence the title 'Rolling Stone Refugee,'" he explained.
"I’m used to being a rolling stone, but I don’t even know where to turn now. What do I do with my time? I kind of learned how to play the earth, as opposed to playing guitar. Like, literally, what happens if I dig a hole and put something in it and water it?"
"Rolling Stone Refugee" can be found on one of the two albums they’re putting out next week, "Touch Grass Volume 1" and "Touch Grass Volume 2."
Ungar explained why they’re being released separately.
"It really seemed like they all spoke to the time, and they all fit together, and yet they started to separate into maybe a daytime album and a nighttime album," she said. "So, it just evolved organically, with the music, into two, almost like fraternal twins, and they had to come out on the same day.”
The cover art for the two albums is similar, though with different color schemes reflecting that daytime-nighttime feel.
Ungar takes the lead vocals on "The Doldrums," a song she says is about feeling stuck, feeling terrible. Still, it makes her feel good to sing it.
“There is a bit of a cliché about only remembering the bad, and somehow a million good things can happen to you in a day, the one bad thing is what you remember,” she explained.
“So, the lyric is ‘Why do the good times go so fast, and why do the doldrums linger and last’, and it’s just wondering about that way our brains were made to hang on to the negative, and just trying to let that go.”
The Mammals put out their first album in 2001 with then-band member Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, grandson of folk music legend Pete Seeger.
Merenda credits spending time with Pete Seeger for inspiring the notion of using a performance to voice opinions on the social issues of the day.
“He gave me kind of the mental fortitude to have that courage to say unpopular things from stage, maybe not even that many,” he said.
“He often said only one is often enough, one protest song. You don’t need to litter your set with being on the soapbox, but if you can, say, speak your mind at least once during a set, I think you’re doing your job.”
That ethos gave rise to a new Mammals song called "Unpopular Ideas."
You can expect a mix of the Mammals early music, songs from their time performing as the duo Mike + Ruthy and numbers from the new albums "Touch Grass Volume 1" and "Touch Grass Volume 2" when they perform at a Ten Pound Fiddle concert Friday at 7:30 p.m.
The show will be at the University Lutheran Church in East Lansing.
Ten Pound Fiddle is a financial supporter of WKAR.
OTHER UPCOMING ARTS EVENTS
The MSU Symphony Band and Wind Symphony will feature works by guest composer Michael Daugherty Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Wharton Center.
Riverwalk Theatre in Lansing celebrates Halloween with a show they’re calling "Cursed Cabaret: Under the Ghost Light." They describe it as “ a night of eerie fun, wicked music, and ghostly stories” Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.
