Marah

Marah, a Philadelphia quartet blending varied influences into roots-driven rock, comprises singer/songwriter/guitarist/banjoist David Bielanko, guitarist/vocalist/harmonica player Serge Bielanko, bassist Danny Metz, and drummer Ronnie Vance. Dave Bielanko, Metz, and Vance launched the project in 1993, after which Serge—deeply struck by the music—enlisted in 1995. Producer/engineer Paul Smith became an unofficial fifth participant upon discovering their Replacements-meets-Springsteen approach while handling sound at several concerts. Together they tracked material in 1997 that reached Blue Mountain’s Cary Hudson, who issued it in early 1998 as Let’s Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later on Tonight on his Black Dog label.

Both the record and the band’s set at that year’s South by Southwest earned praise from leading voices including Rolling Stone’s David Fricke and Steve Earle. Earle subsequently invited Marah to record for his E-Squared imprint, resulting in the 2000 co-release Kids in Philly on E-Squared and Artemis Records. Their third album, Float Away with the Friday Night Gods, followed two years later and featured backing vocals from Bruce Springsteen on one track. By 2004’s 20,000 Streets Under the Sky the group had shifted to Yep Roc and added Superchunk’s Jon Wurster on drums.

For the next release the Bielanko brothers chose a fast, informal process intended to harness the raw force of their live shows. Kirk Henderson supplied bass and assorted keyboards, Mike Brenner contributed an array of stringed instruments, and Wurster along with Dave Peterson handled drums, yielding the expansive, spontaneous If You Didn’t Laugh You’d Cry. The album appeared on multiple critics’ year-end lists and drew prominent admirers such as Nick Hornby and Stephen King. At the same time the band issued the holiday collection A Christmas Kind of Town. The supporting tour locked in a lineup with Serge and David leading, supported by Adam Garbinski on guitar, Peterson on drums, and Henderson on bass and keyboards.

Sooner or Later in Spain arrived in 2006 as a CD/DVD set containing a full concert filmed in Mataro, Spain, during 2005 plus seven live tracks recorded at various shows and radio sessions. Angels of Destruction! surfaced in 2008 as an ambitious, wide-ranging rock album marked by bold production and arrangements, while also introducing new keyboardist Christine Smith. After the lineup responsible for that record dissolved unexpectedly, Life Is a Problem was recorded in 2010 chiefly by the Bielanko brothers inside a Pennsylvania farmhouse and released on their own Valley Farm Songs label. Serge Bielanko later exited to concentrate on family life, though he rejoined for a 2011 Spanish tour later captured in the film Tramp Art.

Mountain Minstrelsy of Pennsylvania, released in 2014, ranked among the band’s most distinctive efforts: David Bielanko and Christine Smith devised new melodies for folk songs drawn from the 1931 book of the same name, then tracked the results in mono on an eight-track tape machine inside a church with a small circle of guests that included eight-year-old fiddler Gus Tritsch. Through Valley Farm Songs the group also began issuing remastered vinyl editions of earlier catalog titles, among them Kids in Philly, If You Didn’t Laugh You’d Cry, Angels of Destruction!, and Life Is a Problem.