Merce Lemon masters organic songwriting, nods to country music both new and old

Pittsburgh’s own Merce Lemon has toured transatlantic in the UK, Belgium, The Netherlands and all across the continental US, playing over 60 shows in the 2025 calendar year. After the stretch of road supporting Jessica Pratt, Waxahatchee, Kurt Vile, and The Decemberists and their own headlining stints, the city nidificates their nest as the crows depart. The Sanctuary at Mr. Smalls will be hosting Merce Lemon with special guest hemlock on Nov. 15th, Saturday at 7:00 pm.

Mike Speranzo and Liz Berlin purchased the “former 18th century Methodist church” across the street from Mr. Smalls Theatre 9 years ago, intended to be their own private studio and space for friends to record, with hopes to have it be a venue someday. The Mr. Smalls Recording Studio occupied a rented Northside building and eventually went for sale, selling summer of '24. Speranzo and Berlin had to merge their conception with the everyday production of the Smalls Recording Studio.

Producer and Mr. Smalls Lead Engineer Nate Campisi who recorded Lemon's "Will You Do Me A Kindness" single said the studio with its new home in The Sanctuary started running immediately, noting the latest Blinder LP "Heatseeker" was tracked during a heavy construction phase, permits needing fulfilled, building a bar, installing lights and PA, and aesthetic tinges. The venue acts a middle ground feature between the Smalls Theatre and The Funhouse. The Sanctuary caps at 350, behaving as loose, relaxed, stage lighting spilling into the stained glass, people mingling around the various levels of the venue, leaning on railings. It is an intimate space.

Merce Lemon’s songs are oriented by a mood compass calibrated with the intention of discovery. Witnessing the ever-changing minutia of the band’s live sets since 2022, it becomes evident that this modern lineup is a well-seasoned and malleable collective. They are entirely ready to serve the songs in the current emotion they perform in. Their farm-to-table sound is a waxing gibbous disrobing its shadow, last puddle standing in a drought, the truce of pluck for planted, the leaf’s understanding that it will fall from the tree. The group ripples folk at its core but swells wall-of-sound in its atmosphere.

Shoegaze does not have sole claim to mounds of distorted, reverb-y guitars; the Merce Lemon band has made it unique to their air. Guitarist Reid Magette’s aura is like if you handed Marisa Anderson a Boss Metal Zone. If you stripped away the elegant veneer of instrumentation around "Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild," underneath you would still be left with a topless room of poetically rich country music.

Merce Lemon shared George Jones’ “Cup of Loneliness” in an IG story recently and I mentioned how his vocals in the original Starday recording slay me. She responded, “He is the GOAT.” I think that might be the difference from Lemon and contemporaries of the indie-country movement led by fellow Appalachian musicians: Lemon honors the honky tonk tradition of songwriting, finding new ways to lace influences through it.

Wednesday and MJ Lenderman kind of cosplay, posture as country bands while they try on other genre outfits, using country more as a hostel for certain songs, sections rather than being a steady home the compositions are built on for Lemon. All these bands have their own way of innovating the genre; Lenderman & The Wind can perform a 7-minute feedback drone jam to tail “Bark at the Moon” live after the tearing violin melancholy of “Riptorn,” Wednesday can tuck “Wasp,” a screamo teaser after the perfectly polished twang of “Elderberry Wine” and Lemon can write the ambient and contemplative folk of “Window” while also penning the explosive Neil Young dissonance of their unreleased “Sunflower,” a sister song to Florry’s “Truck Flipped Over ’19.” Alternative country has been a thing for decades with bands like Uncle Tupelo, Freakwater, and Lucero, and now a new generation is salvaging what bro-country left behind.

A May morning wakes, we share a blanket of fog on opposite ends of Frick Park, me in Greenfield, Lemon in Wilkinsburg. The rising sun folds the dewy fabric at its feet and stows it for another day. We chat in her cozy, tight kitchen, drinking iced coffee and cooking blueberry pancakes.

Pittsburgh Independent: Is Blueberry Heaven a location?

Merce Lemon: Blueberry Heaven is a real place, there's actually 2 of them that I know of. But there's one where you pay on a porch, in a box. It's like a you-pick-yourself in gallon milk jugs. It's $8 a milk jug or something. Pretty good fucking deal. And there's ducks there, sometimes you don't see a human, you just see the ducks. These ducks run the show. [Blueberry Heaven is] like an anti-capitalist song in a low key way. It is a place that is such an escape from the modern world and of greed that I truly feel so at peace when I'm there, imagining a fucking world without capitalism.

PI: I imagine that setting is pretty serene and untarnished by capitalism.

ML: I mean you're still paying for these, but you're just paying to this old couple that planted those fucking blueberries 60 years ago and have been tending to them ever since. How can we support places like those and wanting to go back in time to a certain extent of when there [was] more trading.

PI: Where is [Blueberry Heaven] at again?

ML: I'm not saying.

PI: What are your favorite nature spots in [or near] Pennsylvania?

ML: New River Gorge. When the lake is at the right height, you can scale the rocks and kind of scramble them. And if you fall, you just fall into the water. There's a name for that kind of climbing. It's “deep water…” I don't fucking know what it's called. I go to the Allegheny National Forest a lot, near where the Clarion River is.

PI:  I went to college at Clarion University, I’m from St. Marys.

ML: Wait, St. Marys. The person I used to date, his really good friends lived there and we’d go there a lot. And also, Kane has that meat store (Bell's Meat & Poultry). Have you been to that meat store?

PI: There’s an ongoing joke in my family that you spend $10 a minute when you’re there.

ML: They have that “water sausage” but it’s actually Straub. I got it and I’m like “Ha-ha what is this?” Their water is Straub. But the Allegheny National Forest is such a magical place. There's this flower, the cardinal flower that grows along the river, that Mary Oliver actually has a poem called “At the Clarion River” where she mentions those flowers. And that river, me and my friend used to joke that this part you could stand in it where the river bended and you couldn't really see the road or any proof of human existence and we called it, “Civilization-Doesn't-Exist Bend.” Because it just felt like you truly got plopped into the middle of nowhere. It's funny because if you are there on a holiday weekend, it's actually a shit show. Everyone's out partying. But if you're there in the middle of the week, at some random time. It's really such an escape. There's a part of the ANF with some really, really old trees.

‍PI: Heart’s Content?

ML: The old growth part, there's this one tree or maybe it's two that grow on this huge rock. It looks like two hands holding these huge rocks. I think I have a film photo of it. But I think about that rock / tree combination a lot.

‍PI:  How do you feel like working outside and farming inform your creativity and well-being?

‍ML: It’s awesome. It’s really important.

Oh, there's a big bug that just flew in here. Oh, it's a bee. That's what happens when you leave the door open.

Music happening inside, having to respond to emails, and do computer shit, it's really necessary for me to have an outdoor part of my life. Right now, I like landscaping which is a really good balance. I don't know if I could have a desk job and be a musician.

‍PI: What's your balance for writing lyrics and songs?

‍ML: I feel like it changes or it's been changing. I don't know. It's just slowed down a lot, but I think it helps for me to have less free time. Somehow, all winter, I'm fucking unemployed as fuck, and I can barely write a song. And then as soon as the season starts up, I'm strumming my guitar at 7 in the morning because I have an idea, when I have to be at work in 30 minutes. And for some reason that pressure of minimal time that you have to make things is really good for me. I'm just like a chronic voice memo-er. I have 100s of voice memos, most of them just 30 seconds long. Just ideas. And then I will listen back to them and maybe hear one where I'm like "Oh, that's a good idea to follow’" or "I like that line that I sing" and just start kind of picking things / collaging. A lot of my songs are very collaged together, and some of them do just come out in 1.

‍PI: Have you ever listened to “Coney Island Idea Song” by Frankie Cosmos? It's literally just a voice memo, 15 seconds long.

ML: Amazing. I have a lot of short little catchy moments that often make it into songs or the beginnings of songs. But I would like to have, honestly, a better writing practice because a lot of the writing for my songs just happens while I'm playing. I don't do a lot of writing outside of it which I would like to do more of.

PI: Do you have literary writers that strongly influence your writing style for lyrics?

‍ML: I guess I have literary writers that just have inspired me. I don't know how much…I just started reading poetry more recently. Which it was a hard thing for me to get into. ‍

PI: You have to have somebody kind of open certain avenues, doors for you.

‍ML: Greg [Freeman] gave me a book by Louise Glück, "The Wild Iris." It’s nature based poetry. It's the first poetry book that I was like, "Oh my god. I feel like somebody wrote this for me."It was so immediately relatable. It’s such a good feeling. I’ve been rereading her poems a lot.

‍PI: Who do you feel like your main musical influences were for writing the new record?‍‍

ML: I feel like I say this one so often, but it is true that Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Palace Music, Will Oldham, that project has hugely influenced my writing and my sound. I've seen him play in Pittsburgh multiple times. He actually was supposed to come to some random venue I'd never heard of in Carrick [previous Tech25 location]. I think I emailed the venue to ask how I could open it. They never responded. And then the show got cancelled. The places he's played here have been kind of random sometimes. I feel like Reid brings a Neil Young vibe. I think you were reading an article and [mentioned] Barbara Manning. She's a thing in there. She's from the 90s, like, total punk rocker. She was in a band called World of Pooh. I feel like her sound is very influential to mine. She has some pretty straightforward, vocal-melody driven songs, and then they also get pretty weird and loud sometimes. And she just really toys with a lot of sounds and her lyricism is really awesome. I feel like when I was making the album, I was listening to so much fucking George Jones and country and stuff, which is my shit.

‍PI: What do you feel like each band learned from each other whenever you guys went on tour with feeble little horse at the end of December 2022?

‍ML: Feeble’s really good at banter. They have a really good stage presence that every time I watch them, they made me laugh. I was always really insecure; I have the most awkward stage banter slash no stage banter. I just really like watching how they play off of each other on stage and how they communicate with each other musically, was really inspiring. I don't know what they learned from us.

‍ML: Truthfully, that was the first tour with this new iteration of my band. Feeble was new to touring. And we were new to touring together with my band. So I feel like it was a learning experience for all of us, where it was like all of us getting our bearings. Which it was nice to be able to do together. It was really wholesome.
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PI: Who else from the greater Appalachia region do you feel like is kind of spearheading the new indie-country sound?

‍ML: Fust. They're based out of mostly Carrboro, NC. Almost all those people play in Sluice as well. They were probably my favorite set at [SXSW ‘24]. It's so saturated with music, so when something stands out, it really hits you and that really hit me. Greg [Freeman]’s music is really awesome.

‍PI: Watching him play at Zeno’s in State College was great. Really cool.
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ML: I obviously love his music and think a lot of other people do too. His stuff has been influential to me in the past half of a year. Florry obviously, they're such a fucking rock band. It’s so fun to watch.

‍PI: I feel like you're doing it from an angle too that feels refreshing. I feel like it's not quite like the other bands that are doing it.

‍ML: That’s meaningful to hear. I'm not like, “Oh, I've been listening to country longer than some of these indie fucks.” But I grew up listening to country, so I feel like I've been influenced by that music, whether it comes out overtly or not in my songwriting since as long as I was making music. But also, undoubtedly inspired by a lot of my friends making music right now that are bringing that twang to indie. But yeah, at one point I was like, “I'm gonna just write a whole country album.” Years ago I was thinking of doing that. But I can't really just do one thing. I feel like it always has to be a mash, which I think is the most genuine way I can make my music.

‍PI: I feel like it's blended together really nicely too. It's cohesive and none of the genre influences jut out too much or [are] too jagged. It's all really well blended.

ML: That's cool to hear. I feel like no matter how far each one strays from each other that my songwriting and my voice is like the glue that keeps them together, keeps them related to each other. I mostly just have a hard time with these new genre names. When someone asks me what kind of music I make I'm like, “I don't know. You tell me.” Usually, I just say, “melody and lyric driven music,” which can encompass so many things. Because I'm not one thing.

‍PI: You let the sound kind of dictate what that means. I think it's nice to keep it general, then let them figure out a new name if they want to figure it out.

ML: Yeah, you can call me things. I never know what to say when people ask me that question. I'm like, “I don't know. Listen to it.”

‍PI: Someone in the scene posted a story of the original I4A trio playing and noted [the band] could “write a masterclass on dynamics.” Having two members of that group also in your band, how has that impacted the way you write the songs?

‍ML: I don’t know if it’s changed how I write, but maybe how I arrange them with the band. I think that I bring more unfinished songs to the band than I used to before.

‍PI: Intentionally knowing that they’ll just fill the gaps.

‍ML: Yeah. Being able to be more vulnerable with this 30 seconds of a song [that] I can't figure out this transition. Working more collaboratively in that sense. I think some [musicians] write a song and they have a very thought out vision of what they want it to sound like at the end. I don't box myself in that way.

‍PI: How do you feel like the band dynamics play into the sets from show to show? Do you feel like there’s a lot of variation going on?

‍ML: Yeah. There's been moments where I didn't even know that somebody was gonna do something. Which is also kind of how my dad played the guitar. He never just played the same solo the same way every time. Which I think is awesome. When Justin started playing violin with us. The first time we played [“Will You Do Me a Kindness”] with them, there was a part that they did that I had no idea they were gonna do. And it was so good that I almost started crying in the middle while playing it. They were harmonizing Reid's lead part. There is a moment in one of the new songs “Sunflower” where I was like ‘Okay, everyone go off here.’ And I was like, ‘Okay you guys went off too much.’ Maybe let's find the middle ground between like a boring, drudgy slowdown and like chaos mode.

‍PI:  Do you think it's important for songwriters to take a step back, kind of similar to how it happened naturally for you in 2020, and kind of reorient and reevaluate what they could write about?

‍ML: I think everyone's process is so different, but for me, the pressure to always be making something is very real. There's just so much pressure to always be putting shit out and making things. And I think that break was most important because it took that pressure away so that I could approach [songwriting] in a more genuine way. Not where I was like, “Well, you know, you put an album out and then you should have another one ready,” like there's a formula. And I never want to make music because I feel like I have to or something.

‍PI: Do you want to elaborate on “a sunflower bursting through the pavement” and how that correlates to the sound of the new band and the new songs?

‍ML: [Plants finding] ways of growing in the most unlikely places. It seems to us, this will to live. It's really beautiful. And I think I just really liked that imagery and of bursting through a crack even though it feels, unlikely.

‍PI: I think it makes a lot of sense with how the album sounds. I feel like there are darker moments, but even within the same song, there's this ray of light that comes through.

‍ML: Just imagining black tar cement, and then a little green thing that wants to live and become a flower. It’s really inspiring.
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Merce Lemon plays at The Sanctuary at Mr. Smalls on Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025, with special guest hemlock.

Live video of Merce Lemon at Club Cafe filmed by: Eric Stevens & Sandy Loaf
Edited / VFX: Eric Stevens / Michi Tapes
Projection Sequence / Band Promo Video filmed / edited by: Sandy Loaf