LiFe aND dEAtH
Life and Death is Frog in the Reeds’ (Western Pennyslvania-based indie pop/funk artist Mary Brewer) second release after a lull of a decade. This collection of guitar-driven instrumentals remained in the idea stage for several years, but after Brewer set her mind to record one song per month for a year, things started to move along rapidly.
Jubilant and lively, “Life and Death” is a backdrop for your next good mood. Chock full of 1970s grooves and indie vibes, you might hear traces of the influence of The Meters and Medeski Martin & Wood. Simple, vibrant surf guitar riffs, rock organ, and infectious bass lines hold down the bulk of the album, peppered with traditional instruments like the Russian balalaika and Japanese koto.
“I wanted to make some music that helps to elevate people’s moods. Joy, peace, release, relief, exuberance, simplicity, movement, silliness, exhilaration, freedom, fun… This is the stuff I want to give to people”, said Brewer. “We have a great need to look up and see above the clouds, the things that bring sadness and heaviness in our lives. Happiness and light-heartedness never came naturally to me. I’ve found it in my Maker, and I’ve learned I’ve had to fight to cultivate it. Every day, we choose life or we choose death. Music can a be a tool to help us live, to grow and stretch and stumble towards life”.
“It was a blast,” said Daniel Smith, the album’s producer. “It makes me happy”. Smith is the forefront of the band Danielson Famile, based in southern New Jersey. He also produced Frog in the Reed’s first album, “Walking Tour of Spiders in the Woods”, released in 2013 and promoted by Great Comfort Records.
Brewer also released a 5 song EP entitled “Some Songs for Singing” in 2021 under the alias Awake My Lyre. The proceeds generated by the collection of original worship songs were/are donated to Voice of the Martyrs, which helps those persecuted and driven from their homes because of their faith.
pREviOuS ReLeaSEs
Released by Great Comfort Records, Walking Tour of Spiders in the Woods, the debut album of Frog In the Reeds (songwriter/guitarist/vocalist Mary Brewer), is a prayer uttered in quiet seclusion amongst gentle guitars and softly moaning strings. It is a vehement shout, a flowering shoot of declaration.
Brewer is the product of an upbringing in the wooded hills of Pennsylvania, and a soundtrack of frog calls in a nearby pond, thunder, lowing cows, and the hum of a racetrack on weekend nights. She was influenced by a steady diet of pierogies, seventies classic rock, church hymns, Dukes of Hazzard and Johnny Mathis. Such are the diverse shaping forces felt in her music. Indeed, no single musical classification could tie up this extraordinary collection, but her voice, utterly unique and compelling, binds the bundle effortlessly.
Brewer describes Walking Tour as “…the most difficult and exhilarating painting I’ve ever painted”. Quite. It is a journey of intimacy and sweep, of relaxed authority and unbridled curiosity. Joined by the masterful production skills of Daniel Smith and a merry crew of musician friends on upright bass, flute, drums, tuba, voice, and percussion, Walking Tour of Spiders in the Woods is a joyous march, a poem, a piece of a dream or an exposed inner thought…some sing-alongs, some listening songs, each revealing or communicating with the One who makes all things new.
TaLK To mE
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