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Prankster: Hellion to hillbilly

Mary Prankster will play at Jammin' Java May 1.

EMILY GILMORE

Date published: 4/22/2004

By EMILY GILMORE

THE FREE LANCE-STAR

eVEN AFTER four albums, Mary Prank- ster still does- n't know how to describe what she does.

"When I first started out, people kept asking me, 'What kind of music do you play?' and I was at as much of a loss then as I am now," the Baltimore native said in a phone interview on her way to Greensboro, N.C.

She once called her music "cow-punk," until she realized the description is actually a sub-genre of punk, and actual cow-punk followers began to protest.

"Attaching the suffix 'punk' to anything is a lightning rod for controversy from the punker-than-thou," Prankster said. "It was a nice, zippy tag for a while."

Get a chance to classify Mary Prankster yourself at Jammin' Java in Vienna, where she will play May 1. She will also play shows at Michael's Bistro in Charlottesville on May 2 and at Nanci Raygun in Richmond May 5.

Prankster is touring to promote "Lemonade Live," a live recording of an uncharacteristic acoustic "swang" set she performed during a show at the 9:30 Club in Washington last May while promoting her third album, "Tell Your Friends."

"By this point the long-term fans kind of know to expect the unexpected," Prankster said.

In a departure from Prankster's bitter, expletive-filled punk rock, the album offers up a countrified serving of songs from her three previous albums--"Friends," "Roulette Girl" and "Blue Skies Over Dundalk"--as well as three new songs.

Prankster encountered several significant obstacles on the way to making this album.

After her original bandmates ditched her before the "Tell Your Friends" tour, Prankster had to rustle up a band.

A series of serendipitous events put her in contact with bassist Andy Mabe and percussionist Terry Klawth, for whom Prankster has nothing but praise.

"The musicians I toured with for the 'Tell Your Friends' album had a tremendous amount of musical prowess," Prankster said. "They've done everything from punk to country to jazz, and they were just incredibly versatile."

Though she has been Interested in recording a live album for a while, Prankster had two false starts in North Carolina before deciding to try again at the 9:30 Club.

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Date published: 4/22/2004