By Max Sullivan

Plenty of bands claim to have an eclectic sound. So many times the music falls short of the claim.
However, upon seeing Mother Mary and the Disciples for the first time, it is hard to deny the wide range of sound they can reach. There is a clear foundation: blues, and tastefully scattered around this core are jazz, funk, soul, ska, and alternative. It does not sound like a forced mish mash of genres. Instead, the influences flow seamlessly. They are genuinely eclectic.

Mary Mason, the lead singer, rhythm guitarist, and best known as Mother Mary, likes to call their musical hybrid “gypsy rock,” seeing how they roll through their favorite genres and pick up what they will, like gypsy culture.

“There’s a lot of different influence in the music,” said Mason. “There’s hard rock, there’s jazz, there’s folk… but then we have a core sound that goes in that’s rock, blues-based.”

Right now, the band is playing the right music at the right time. So many artists, like Adele and the Black Keys, have reached wide audience with blues and soul. It seems like blues has become hip in the last few years.

“The blues sound is coming back,” said Tim Sweeney, Mother Mary’s bassist. “More people are listening to Susan Tedeschi and other people that we totally look up to.”

Mason has been crafting this blues-based gypsy sound since her high school days while living in Laguna Beach, California. She grew up with a love of blues and jazz, from Billie Holiday to the Allman Brothers. When she left home for Berklee College of Music in 2007, she carried with her books of songs she had written through her teens as well as new ideas still budding in her head. There, she met Sweeney, also a Berklee student. At the time, Sweeney was living as a drummer, horn player and a guitarist. The four of them were dying to start playing out, but they felt that they lacked a competent songwriter. When Mason walked in with her songs, Sweeney saw the opportunity to work with someone who could come up with original music.

Likewise, it was the first time Mason had ever played with a band.

“I had never played with a band before. I was just acoustic guitar on my own, and it was me trying to figure out how to play with a band. It was just awesome luck that I was surrounded by an apartment full of an already set up band.”

Since their start, Mother Mary and the Disciples have gone through a revolving door of guitarists and drummers. Nearly five years later, with seemingly all the right disciples finally in place, the band are preparing to finish their first full length album. They have released a demo, but this new disc will be far more concentrated, focusing on a sound that Sweeney said is the band’s true specialty.
“This one is much more focused in this sound that we do very well,” said Sweeney. “This particular type of jazz influenced blues rock, it’s become much more cohesive.”
The album, likely to be self-titled, will be recorded in April at the Record Company in Boston. It will be self-produced.

Mother Mary are also planning to take a cross country tour, heading out as far as California before turning the corning and heading back through the Midwest. This will be the band’s second tour of this nature.

Mother Mary and the Disciples are currently playing songs from this release, giving fans a taste of what’s to come. You can see them at the PA lounge Thursday night, Feb. 9, at 8:30 p.m.