Radiant centerpiece of the group is Mary Lee Saldanha. She is headstrong and free-spirited and has a fresh perspective on original country music. She was born and raised in Brazil, but has lived in Berlin for years. Not places where you get American country music spoon-fed. And yet the colorful and exuberantly tattooed singer draws inspiration for her songs from the legacies of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, artists who provided the big bang for country music in the 1920s.

Mary Lee is accompanied by her husband Mauro Montezuma on drums, her son Patrick Saldanha on double bass and Irish-born star violinist Sorcha Thompson. Together they provide an infectious blend of authentic honky tonk, punk, Irish folk and bluegrass. Mary Lee is a born entertainer who wants only one thing: to entertain her audience. And whether that's five or five hundred people doesn't matter to her. Music is her passion and she wants to share that passion with whoever will hear it.

In Brazil about fifteen years ago, she made a name for herself with her then B-Side Brothers, a band with whom she not only toured her homeland but also toured European stages. That collaboration resulted in 2012 in Meet Mary Lee, a record that earned her the name Loretta Lynn of Brazil. The 2016 second album Fighting Demons is a personal document , in which the singer and songwriter candidly recounts her struggle with her inner demons. The album won recognition as the best country album of the year in Brazil.

Because the market for Mary Lee's quirky country music is bigger in Europe than in Brazil, the singer and her husband decided to move to Berlin, and since then, together with their son, they have been traveling the world like a true gypsy family, performing wherever they can.

Text by HARRY DE JONG