Mary Scholes has been releasing music since 2008, but has been a lover and participated in music since she was just a little kid, playing both piano and flute and now guitar. The Philadelphia native just recently released her third album, Begin Again. The album has 10 songs all written by Mary. The American artist has been described as a folk explorer with spacey roofs and wings.
I'm Ellie Sadler and I'm here with Mary Scholes. Mary can be heard on a radio and on music streaming platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify. Hello, Mary. Hi, Ellie, how you doing?
I'm good, how are you? I'm great, thank you for having me. Yeah, of course. So as I was researching, I noticed that you, on your bio and your website, said that you admired Joni Mitchell's lyricism.
And I too admire her lyricism. So I was wondering if there is any certain lyric that you remember, just absolutely adoring of her, is there any song that you've just stick to? Oh, I mean, it's even hard to select one, you know? So many beautiful pieces of music and so many.
I think it's so interesting that she talks about herself as a painter with words, you know, she's a painter with paint, but I think that that's exactly what she's doing lyrically. My favorite Joni song is Furry Things the Blues, which is a little bit kind of quirky and strange, and I think that it's really interesting that this character is this sort of gnarled old gentleman figure and not from like, you know, love interests, I mean, not that there's anything wrong with having love interests as your main focus, but I just think there's something very interesting about it and the characters that surround themselves around this man. And I just think that that song is just very interesting. But there's so many, there's so many songs that like, that just hit me in different spaces at different times, like help me, which is so beloved by many, you know, and we love our love and love, like we love our freedom, I think is a really insightful line about you being.
So would you say that like listening to artists like Joni and James Taylor helped you discover your love of music or was there something else? Oh, yeah. I mean, I just from a young, very young, I mean, I don't remember life without music. My family was very musically oriented and not that they all played instruments and sang, but also that they were lovers of it.
And so there was just always music on in the house or in the car and the radio was my very best friend, you know, I just, in good times in bed, I just loved to lock myself in my bedroom and turn the radio on. And I felt very inclined to want to know all of the words to all of the songs. Yes. And so it is definitely musicians like James Taylor when my family was a big James Taylor family.
And Carol King and the Beatles. But then I was also really into pop music at the time. And I loved, like mostly anything I could get my hands on and my ears on it really, I really did love. And so I didn't start listening to Joni Mitchell until I was in college actually.
And somebody compared me to her after hearing me sing. And I was like, oh, I should know. I should know more about this person. And of course now I'm like, wow, I'm not know.
Yeah. So, you know, I'm just as influenced by the wall flowers and Nirvana and the Backstreet Boys and Paula Abdul and Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey as I am by, you know, of course the folk singers really kind of really kind of went out in the arena of where my music is influenced. But you can hear like it's all very similar writing to pop like that's about reaching the heart of the human condition. So you listen to a variety of music, but you went into like folk, your Americana style.
Was there any other style that you wanted to try out? Oh, yeah. I mean, earlier in my career, I did more like when I was doing my records and EP's, I did more of like a full pop sound, sort of more of a burellis sound and that kind of arena. And that was very popular at the time.
And I loved it. So I sort of went into that area. And I just kind of kept making my way back to this sort of folky Americana sound. And at some point, I was like, maybe you should move to Nashville.
So I'm from Philly originally and I live in LA. And I was like, well, I'm not country. I don't want to be, I don't want to kind of force myself into that area. And it's funny to me that what happened is that I came to LA and I really just sort of gnarled and honed in on my version of what the umbrella of Americana that includes country and includes folk and bluegrass and sort of like sort of mesh that all together.
I was recently remembering years ago, I said, what I really wanted was a bluegrass band back in the instrumentally and mental bias. But that I wanted to do it with my style of music. So it wasn't like I was trying to do bluegrass music, but I love that instrumentation, like Allison Kralis and Union Station. And now I realized recently that's what we did on this record.
Very definitely. We've got all kinds of guitars and things that we've got pedal steel and wisenborn and doe bro. And it's nice to feel those things kind of coming to fruition. And being able to create my own sound is very important to me.
And I'm glad to be doing it. Yeah. Is there an instrument you usually divert to when you start writing songs? Yeah, usually I mean guitar or piano, either one of them.
I'd say for a long time, I started playing guitar in high school. But I started playing piano earlier. But for a long time, I was really leaning on guitar to write. And I would say during the pandemic, I did more writing on the piano.
I'm not sure why. I think I was able to sort of access the melancholy nature of playing the piano. Seeing and playing the piano. And I just really was able to connect with that.
But it truly depends. I go through phases of what instrument I'm playing the most. I try to write a guitar more because I have much easier access to it when traveling. It's easy to bring a guitar.
It's not easy to bring a keyboard or piano. This record has so many songs that are very much piano. And I'm like, OK, well, we've got to work something out for touring. So I've got to play those songs.
Yeah, which one was harder to learn? Piano or guitar? I would say guitar because I had something about looking at the piano. It's very, it's so linear.
Look here are the keys and they all go in this direction. On guitar, you know, you got these six strings and these frets. And what do they do? And where's this note?
And so I would say probably that piano was easier. Yeah. But I also like really relished in playing guitar. You know, at first I only picked it up so that I wouldn't have to have a piano.
And I wouldn't have to rely on someone else. And so I wasn't really thinking about it from like, oh, I love this instrument. But the more I got to playing it, the better I got it, the more involved I got with it, the more I was like, oh, I do this instrument. Yeah.
They just sing in very different ways. Oh, for sure. They're so interesting that way. So your album, California, was recorded live in a single room.
What made you want to record that live versus recording it traditionally? Well, I mean, I guess technically that is traditionally, right? Yeah, sure. So if the old way of doing it, I wanted to do it live because I feel very much like my live show is the thing that is that I'm most connected to, that people connect to the most.
And I had released a record in 2014 called The Girl You Fought You Knew, which was more in that like singer-songwriter pop arena. And I had been doing more in the folk in American world. So this felt like a good way to sort of stand on my own two feet in this, like, this is a really analog sounding record. Musically speaking, and also let's really do it that way.
So it was exciting to do it that way. And it was also terrifying because you get in there and you're like, well, you get what you get and I mess up. I mess up the take for everyone. Or if I have a perfect take, but you know, the bass player or the drummer or somebody has some major snafu, well, we can't use that take, you have to start over.
You know, and you only have as much tape as you have. It's just a whole thing. So that was a very interesting process. And I'm glad I did it.
And then when we walked into making the beginning again, I said I do not want to do that to myself. So we sort of got to do a split then on this new record because we recorded everything to tape. So we were all in one room. You know, I had a I had a sound booth around me.
We weren't in one room. Let me see. I had a sound of the round me upright bass was in like a sound booth drums and a sound booth, but then other, you know, other instruments in the room. And we did everything initially to tape, bounced it over to digital, but everything was separated out well enough that I was able to then go back and rerecord my guitar and vocals on a different day.
And we were able to overdub other instruments. I think we kept all of my piano from the live takes, but it was a nice mix to be able to get that analog sound and have that experience of like everyone when you're listening to it, it really is that live band effect with also all these other layers and things that we were able to do because we did have a digital element. Yeah, speaking of your album beginning again from the song Streetlights, one of like one of my favorite lyrics that I've heard when I was listening to your music was mine like the wind swaying in search of me. Can you tell me a little bit about the lyric in the song?
Oh, yeah, I'd love to. I'm so happy that you asked about that. No one has asked me about that yet. So you're the first question on that one.
So that's in the bridge. I begin again, mine like the wind swaying in search of me. It's interesting because when I wrote that song, I started out writing that song. I was on tour and I was sitting on the back porch of one of my very best friends home in Atlanta, Georgia.
And they were just surrounded by trees and the breeze and the sound of everything. And that's what I started just playing the guitar part for it. And I didn't start writing the lyrics and the music until I was home for the melody, excuse me. And that's not to be a long time to finish.
And when I got to the bridge, I was having a struggle with it and I thought about those trees and I was thinking about that's how my mind kind of functions, you know, that it's swirling around and it's just like I'm trying to figure out what it is that I want or what I need. And it's this feeling of like it's not necessarily a, it can be a little overwhelming sometimes, but sometimes the wind is just calming. Yeah. The wind can be so many different things.
It can be this giant current and it can also be a calming moment. And so I like the idea of thinking of my mind, like the wind as it searched around for what it is I was really like hoping for or long before in those moments of life when you're starting over and searching. So that's sort of where that came from, searching, swaying in search of me and looking for myself. Yeah, that's awesome.
Do you have a song or an album or an EP or something that like you just feel so proud of and like you were just so happy when you finished making it? Well, I really do feel that way about this record about being again and streetlights, honestly, is the song on the record that is closest to my heart. It's the most internal and personal song. A lot of the songs I'm sort of addressing outwardly in talking, you know, either encouraging folks in their healing process or I'm talking through my anger at someone and things of that nature, right?
But the song, streetlights is really, really much, really much, very much speaking to myself. And I'm really proud of that song and how that came out. I really look back and I'm really proud of all the work that we've done. You know, you do that thing where you're like, oh, that's so much younger and I couldn't do a little bit of that.
It's not, it's nice when I can get a little perspective and say like, actually that was great. I'm really happy with what we did on the Lonesome EP also that came out last October. I love how that turned out. But yeah, this record I feel very proud of and I think it's a whole journey beginning to end and I really hope people are able to take the time and really listen through.
Yeah. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much for letting me interview you.
Thank you so much for your time and for your great questions. I appreciate it. If people, you know, listen to the music and try to find me on social media, definitely say hi. Let me know that you heard me on this station.
Like always, it's great to know where people are kind of across the music and me. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Have a good day. You too.