“It matters on iTunes or CD Baby, I guess,” guitarist, banjoist, and singer Mike Merenda says with a shrug. “Not to us, though. But I don’t like to call us folk because a lot of people still think of Peter, Paul & Mary when they hear the word folk—and that’s not us.” Much agreed: The rich sound Merenda and his wife, the fiddler, guitarist, and singer Ruthy Ungar, make as Mike and Ruthy is thankfully devoid of the cloying, A Mighty Wind-like cutesyness that tainted so much of the postwar folk boom. (The Serendipity Singers, anyone?) The couple have released three albums of their timeless, acoustic-based music—the duet-oriented The Honeymoon Agenda and Waltz of the Chickadee (2008 and 2009, respectively) and the new, full-band Million to One—on their own Humble Abode label.
“Well, you do have to pick a category when you sell your music on those websites, though, and when you pitch it to press and radio people,” says Ungar, her brow furrowed with thought as she folds laundry at the kitchen table of the pair’s West Hurley home. “But with the new album, ‘folk rock’ does seem to make sense because of the sound,” she continues, keeping her voice down as the couple’s two-year-old son Will naps in the next room. “It has drums, electric bass and guitar, keyboards, and some samples, along with [the duo’s own] acoustic instruments and harmonies.”
Those harmonies. Heartbreaking. Gorgeous. As pure and eternal as the wind that carries them. In fact, with the way the couple’s voices climb and curl together one can’t picture them ever not having sung together. “I’ve always loved singing harmony, even if it’s just with some song on the radio,” says Ungar. “Mike’s voice is very breathy and mine is really strong, so it was a challenge at first. But I think that’s part of what makes us sound different than other duos.”
Fittingly, Merenda and Ungar’s musical union is itself a bridging of the rock and folk scenes. Merenda grew up in New Hampshire, where he played in alternative and ska bands while at college. Ungar is deeply steeped in traditional music, being the daughter of Saugerties master fiddler Jay Ungar and folksinger Lyn Hardy. (The couple regularly appears with the Jay Ungar and Molly Mason Family Band.) But although as a child she played music with her parents for fun, Ungar’s goal in her teens and twenties was a career in theater. By 1998, however, when she met Merenda in New York and the two formed insurgent string trio Rhinegold with mandolinist Carter Little, she’d come home, so to speak. It was clear from the start there was something special between her and Merenda—though it’s hard to say which came first, the music or the romance.
“To me Mike and Ruthy fell in love first and their music just naturally follows that,” says Little. “They just have this organic harmony about them that’s part of everything in their lives; their family, their music, the way they relate to other musicians. And with the audience. There’s a very pure ease of expression, very special and soulful.”
Named for the threesome’s favorite cheap beer, Rhinegold lasted long enough to record a homemade CD and scratch out a notch in the East Village “anti-folk” scene. The couple’s next chapter began in 2001, when Merenda met another folk-reared musician at a Massachusetts music shop: Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, the grandson of Pete Seeger himself. The young banjo and guitar player invited Merenda and Ungar to a party and jam session, where it immediately became apparent to all that they needed to start a band. Thus was born the revered alt-Americana group the Mammals, which later also included Mike’s brother, Chris Merenda, on drums. The outfit pushed the limits of the musicians’ own backgrounds by injecting new energy into old-timey music and giving a down-home treatment to Nirvana and Morphine songs (“We were also listening to the Pixies and Sonic Youth a lot,” says Ungar). The Mammals released four fine albums and became a festival favorite in the US, Australia, and Europe. But eventually the members determined they each needed some room for personal evolution.
“After seven years of touring and all the stresses that come along with being a self-managed band, we decided to give it a break to focus on our families as well as the music we were all interested in making independently,” Merenda says. “I think we’re actually much closer friends now that we’re not touring than we were when we were deep in the thick of it. Touring is a ferocious beast of a way to live your life.” He adds that the Mammals are currently assembling a live DVD as they remain open to an eventual reunion.
When Ungar and Merenda got married in 2006 they chose to celebrate by making their first record as a duo instead of taking a trip, a move that resulted in the appropriately named The Honeymoon Agenda. With covers of the Velvet Underground and Tom Waits and some occasional distorted electric guitar among its mainly intimate acoustic tracks, the disc continues the style-spanning efforts of the couple’s work with the Mammals and won praise from the indie press. A tribute to their newborn son, the lullabye-esque Waltz of the Chickadee is more of a return to their low-key folk roots, although, according to Merenda, the pair had by that time already written and recorded a third, more rock-leaning album that they were burning to release. Their only problem was finding the necessary funds: Having a child of course meant the new parents had to take time off from performing, their main source of income.
The solution? Kickstarter.com, an arts-funding platform that allows supporters to underwrite specific projects by musicians, writers, filmmakers, artists, and other creative individuals. The two musicians produced a short video pitch—with an admittedly impossible-to-resist, two-year-old Will in the lead role—which they posted on the site, along with a donations goal of $5,000. They were blown away when the target was not only met, but exceeded, within one week, resulting in the appropriately named Million to One. “It’s challenging enough to try to make it as independent artists,” Ungar says. “But during a recession? That seemed like the greatest test. So the support completely filled our hearts. And we really hope the people who contributed [receiving signed advance copies of the CD for their assistance and, with premium-level donations, private house concerts by the duo] know we see them as collaborators.”
With a supertight band that also features drummer Craig Santiago, bassist Jose Ayerve, and the guest fiddle of Jay Ungar, Million to One is overstuffed with timelessly catchy and beautifully melodic pearls: the chugging “Rise,” the pedal steel-weeping “End of Time,” the delicately listing “Goodbye.” And the record’s pair of raunchy barroom stomps, “Covered” and “Be the Boss,” proudly smack of mid-’60s Dylan. “The songwriting, singing, and production are all first rate,” says erstwhile Dylan sideman and Americana trailblazer David Bromberg. “The term ‘folk rock’ isn’t one that I’ve heard lately, although you can’t listen to this CD and not realize that folk rock is exactly what it is—and very good folk rock.”
But, much-appreciated endorsements from their elders aside, Mike and Ruthy feel a stronger affinity for the current “freak folk” underground, which is home to acts that reference the psychedelic folk of the late 1960s. “We’re most smitten with Vetiver [a group formed in San Francisco and now based in Hudson],” says Merenda. “We like a lot of different music, but mostly what we like is when musicians sound genuinely like themselves. It’s fun to play a banjo and sing old songs about chickens and whisky, but at the end of the day that’s not my personal experience. The freak folk and anti-folk scenes are more in line with a rock ’n’ roll ethos, in my opinion. The irony, of course, is that rock ’n’ roll came straight out of folk and blues, so we’re really just chasing our tail here, right?”
Right. And in the case of Mike and Ruthy, it’s an exhilarating chase indeed.
Mike and Ruthy will headline the O Positive Festival with Tracy Bonham on October 9 at Keegan Ales in Kingston. Million to One is out now on Humble Abode Music. www.mikeandruthy.com.
This article appears in October 2010.
