Getting Candid with mercury [INTERVIEW]
We’re getting candid in our interview with mercury.
Mercury is an alternative rock band and project led by Nashville-based Maddie Kerr. Now 22, Kerr grew up playing music since she was a kid, and honed in her sound while playing with various friends through her teen years.
We talk to Maddie about having an emotional breakthrough in writing her latest EP “Together We Are One, You And I” with producer Alex Farrar, and how she created a short film to go along with the EP. We also talk to Maddie about the importance of performing live and connecting with young female fans.
Listen to the full interview with mercury on Name 3 Songs podcast and find a transcribed excerpt below.
Name 3 Songs: You’ve been releasing a handful of singles since 2022 and you had a three song EP that came out this summer. You have more music coming out currently. But listening through your body of work so far, there’s a very cohesive story in terms of the sonic landscape that you’ve painted. And this is something that feels very mature and sometimes takes a long time for artists to really find their sound. So what was this journey like for you honing in on the sound that we hear now from Mercury?
I’ve been recording music since I was in high school now. The first thing I ever made was with a group of friends. We went down to the beach and brought this big eight track tape machine and just recorded the first songs that kind of were ever written, which are on Bandcamp right now, which is so fun.
It kind of went from makeshift recording in basements with kind of anything that we could get our hands on and anybody who wanted to be a part of it and then kind of narrowing in on a sound. I think also that came with writing songs that I was feeling really reflective the most inner most feelings that I was having. I had more and more of an idea of the sound that I was going for, it’s like such a linear, I feel like a pretty clear line.
I got the opportunity to work with Alex Farrar on the EP songs that came out and then all the next music that’s coming out. We recorded at Drop of Sun in Asheville and he has made so many of my favorite songs and records and just is so awesome, like just a genius. And so pretty much anything before that, any sound that I was going for was just so heavily inspired by him and the things that he was making. So now it just finally, the match happened and I that feels so good. It’s like a breath of fresh air.
That’s really awesome, especially getting to work with somebody who inspired you, which a lot of people don’t get that opportunity. And I think it’s interesting how you said that, like when you started, it was kind of like, okay, anybody who wanted to be involved, you’re like, yeah, come aboard. So how did you get to the point where you were a little bit more meticulous on who you were choosing to like come collaborate with you for like the newer music?
Yeah, I feel like it was, I also learned how to play guitar better and come up with more parts and Alex plays everything too. So he’s also just kind of, he’s like a Swiss army knife. We go in and we just play everything together. But yeah, it’s just living in Nashville, everybody that you work with, everybody’s touring all the time and has their own projects and things just get really busy. So it’s just kind of whoever is able to be there in the moment. Up until I was going to Asheville and then it was just me and Alex doing everything. But I think it was less about choosing who I wanted to be in the room and more about like the circumstance of, there are two people in the room, but we could get everything done, which is also really fun.
I think it’s an interesting process, like how you’re saying it evolved over the years, because I’m sure at the beginning, there was kind of like collaboration with your friends or whoever you’re playing with, where people were kind of bringing in their own styles and that kind of helped shape and inform like, I like this or, I don’t like this as much. And so it’s like even in the early days, there might have been that collaboration process that helped you identify those things that you really like.
Definitely, that definitely was the case. Everybody who has ever worked on anything, I think they are so amazing and awesome. And I’ve learned so much from all of them and just learned, like you said, about what I love to hear and what that I love to hear my music. And I have recently started playing a lot of these songs in bluegrassy arrangements with my friends, Justin and Bailey, which is so crazy to hear. It’s like, what? How does that even work or translate? And it’s always such an exciting thing because every time I do it, like, I wrote these songs, these crazy big, heavy songs on a nylon string guitar. So it really gets kind of brought back down to the songwriting.
But yes, I guess for a while it was just me by myself, creating, working, and now it has kind of gone back to like I found people that it’s just fun to jam with and there’s not there’s not pressure on it again and that has been such a fun rediscovery.
I‘m like, you should record, you should record one of the bluegrass songs and throw it up on YouTube just because that sounds wild. I would love to hear the difference like in the arrangement.
Yes, it would be such a dream. I’m so excited. Like I am going back to Asheville in December to record again. And I think there’s a chance Justin and Bailey are going to come with me and we’re going to have them implement their styles into the music somehow. But I’m so excited.
Wait, so how did you and Alex get connected? Like obviously since you were a fan but how did you guys get connected, how did that collaboration come to be
I’m with the label Big Loud Rock, which is like a sector off of Big Loud Country label in Nashville, which is so fun. But, my A &R, I wasn’t signed yet,, and we were barely even really confirming anything yet. One of my A &Rs, AJ had reached out to Alex. I didn’t know that he had done this. He just remembered from a conversation that we had had way prior, where I was talking about dream collaborations and all these records that I really, really love. And he did the research and figured out Alex had made all of them and reached out. So they made that connection, and they let me know that he (AJ) set everything up and it was so cool. That was a big sign for me, I was just like, Wow, that meant a lot… I was like, okay, that is a huge, like they really care and want me to be able to make stuff that I love and passion about. yeah, that’s special. Thank you.
That’s awesome. Well, we are loving the new music, so it’s definitely a wonderful fit. But along with the sound that you’ve established, you have a lot of really stunning imagery and videos and photography and artwork that is accompanied your music. And you did a short film with a director, Harrison Shook, to accompany the EP Together We Are One, You and I. Okay, a short film. This is like an incredible thing for any artist to accomplish, did you have it in your mind that you wanted to make this as you were working through these songs or how did this come about?
So basically, when I write music, I usually have images pop up in my head a lot. Like I love music videos. That’s one of my favorite parts of music. I remember as a kid watching music videos all the time, just not being able, I was antsy about making one for myself. I always loved that. But so when I’m writing a lot of the time, I’m already getting images and themes in my head or maybe stories I would want to tell. And Harrison, who I’ve done pretty much everything with, video wise ever, he is so creative as well. And so he can hear stuff and come up with ideas and we just bounce off of each other and it just snowballs and spirals into this giant thing. And so the short film came about because for Born in Early May, I originally had, we were just gonna do a video for that one song. And I remember going to Harrison and being like, I want to levitate people, want their chest to glow, I want like this, this, this and this and he was like, let’s do this too and we just shot for the stars. I remember we pitched it and we were like, this is massive and then we were like, how can we stretch the story among, like across the three songs, and stretch all of these characters and because it was this grand thing and the songs all were telling parts of the same story. And so it was like an idea someone from my team had, and they were like, why don’t we stretch it across the three and see how that works and make it more of a short film. And so then we were like, my gosh, that would be crazy. And so that’s kind of how that happened. And we just kind of got to expand on every idea that we had. It was a challenge in a lot of ways, and it was also really fun.
Listen to the full interview with mercury on Name 3 Songs podcast available on your favorite podcast platforms.
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