Artist Showcase – Alex Maryol
About the Artist I caught up with him at my studio as he had just returned from the renowned South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas. “I didn’t go to play,” he explained as he walked in, “I went to check out some of the acts and go to the panels. There are all these great workshops about the industry, contacts to make and what-not.” He plunked his satchel on the floor, phone on the table, and himself onto a short stool. He pulled out a notebook and quickly looked over some “song doodles” that “came to [him] on the way over” to my house. “I would love to play SXSW sometime,” he continued as he closed his notebook, “but you’ve got to apply for that and I didn’t feel I had all the right representative material; that’s why I’m headed back into the studio.” His impressive self-produced debut release They Call Me Lefty, was recorded winter 1998 and into 1999 at Santa Fe’s Stepbridge Studios.
I asked Alex exactly how he got to “now” and he began to offer up a few stories. He detailed how his dad used to play a lot of Chuck Berry in the car and that his mom bought him a classical guitar at seven, but I suspected the roots went deeper. I asked him if I could perhaps do a little of my own research into his past. I asked him if I could call his parents. Alex’s folks, Jim and Ann Maryol, own and operate Tia Sophia’s, a popular restaurant among locals and tourists in the heart of Santa Fe. It’s been a fixture since 1975, and ever since Alex’s career took off, something of a shrine as well; the walls are decorated with photos of, and press about Alex.
Obviously, Alex didn’t stick with piano so I pressed for an explanation. Ann related that she and Jim did indeed buy him a buy him a guitar when he was seven but that his first guitar teacher, Robert Gonzales, reported that Alex didn’t practice much. Nonetheless, Alex played “for the family at Christmas and he never stopped after that.”
In 1997 Alex met Thomas “Blues” Uhde, known locally as Tommy Blues, a harmonica player whose acrobatic melodies are featured on They Call Me Lefty, “and began to jam and gig with him.” Alex has collaborated with diverse players since, but the current line-up includes drummer Mike Chavez and Jose Romero on bass; Tommy, ever an inspiration to Alex, plays with the trio when he’s available. The Alex Maryol Trio performed at The Paramount in Santa Fe March 2nd and won me over with their solid, commanding sound. “The trio is really a live band and so I’d like to go back to the studio in record live instead of tracking parts separately so we can get the vibe of the performance on tape,” he told me as if he’d just decided. “I’d also like to lay down some more solo acoustic numbers on this one too,” he added and promised the new release, likely an EP, by July this year. According to Alex, there’s no right or wrong way to write a song. He said he comes up with tunes, or rather; the tunes come to him before he writes the lyrics. “Ideas come all the time…they’re just like sketches or doodles at first but then I go back and develop them…some of them die, some of them live.” When asked if this is what he wanted to do the rest of his life, Alex confided, “I think this is what I was meant to do. I feel every person has a calling, a place in life no matter who they are…. I believe music is what I’m here to do.” Alex Maryol is twenty years old.
–Max Friedenberg, New Mexico CultureNet Contributor
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Alex Maryol is gifted musician and prolific songwriter from Santa Fe who manages his own career and is currently working on a second album. He’s played the “Thirsty Ear Festival” and shared stages with blues heavy hitters Corey Harris, Joe Ely and Otis Taylor. He plays his own sizzling electric and smoldering acoustic blues tunes an average of twenty nights a month at Northern New Mexico’s busiest night spots. The release of Alex’s debut recording, They Call Me Lefty, has received critical attention and has insured a strong following at both the solo and band performances.
Smiling, he admitted he “essentially stole” his friend and seasoned blues player Jono Manson’s band to back him up on the album because he didn’t have regular players. “[They Call Me Lefty] is good for a debut and I like it, but it doesn’t really represent what I’m doing now.”
I called the Maryols at home, Ann answered, and I introduced myself. “Alex was probably three or four months old when he would try to pick himself up in his crib to listen to music,” she volunteered. “When he was three-and-a-half I sent him to Miss Gillian’s Yamaha Music School for piano...he was very shy. Um, he’s over that now.”
Alex flirted with Rock and Roll in his early teens and remains a serious fan, but fell in love with the blues early on as he realized that, “Rock and Roll at the core—in its heart—is the blues. Look at Led Zeppelin or the Stones.”