Coverage for AsburyParkVibes.com
Johnny Brenda’s is in Philly’s Fishtown section. It was an area with a grimy, smokey, run-down bar on every corner. It was a section of town where my high school buddies and I would go to buy quarts of beer because the bartenders couldn’t care less if you were only 16 – a Sales is a Sale. For the past fifteen years, this small and dingy bar was the only reason to visit this section of town. To hear the great musicians that Johnny Brenda’s had to offer. Overtime, gentrification set in, transforming this rough and tough, blue-collar neighborhood into countless condo developments filled with a young, urban, fashion crowd.
But at the neighborhood’s epicenter, Johnny Brenda’s, this small, dingy bar still stands. With its tiny stage and poor lighting, it is the backdrop that Mary Timony roared onto, to assert that it is possible to grow up and move on but still keep the edgy core of who you are.
Mary Timony is legend and icon in the indie music world. For more than three decades, the prolific singer\songwriter & guitarist (ranked 95 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of top 500 guitarists of all time). Having been a member of Ex-Hex, Autoclave, Helium & Wild Flag, Timony was in town to promote her new album, Untame The Tiger. It is her 5th solo album and first in the last 15 years. It is an album that highlights tremendous personal loss & isolation. Both her parents died while writing Untame The Tiger, in addition to an end of a long term relationship.
Her audience, packed together like the proverbial “sardines” listened to her with intensity and cheering at the end of each song of her eleven-song set. Six coming from Untame The Tiger.
Keep a close eye on this woman. Her incredible guitar playing, and subject matter is something seldom found today.
