Please tell our readers who is Mary Jane. Introduce yourself to those who do not know you yet.
Hi, thank you for having me. I’m a producer, singer, songwriter and DJ living in Miami, Florida. Exploring and making the otherworldly side of music accessible by merging funky frequencies in a futuristic soundscape. Ranging from Indie Dance to Tech House and Nu Disco. I grew up in Canada where I started making music with my friends, but left once I turned 19 and ended up in Florida by the age of 20. I was born in Kentucky so I always knew I would end up back in the states and Florida just happened naturally. Instantly the Miami music scene took me under its wing and it all came together. I went to an online school for Ableton and have been making music for about 2 years now, I finally just released my first EP ‘That Feeling’ on April 28th.
How would you describe your influences and how have they changed over the years?
Right now, my biggest influences in sound are Italo Disco and 80’s, music that was ahead of its time and is coming back in an even more advanced futuristic sense. When it comes to producers my biggest influences are Sharam Jey, who has been one of my top favorite DJs since I started, now that I understand production, I have a much larger appreciation for everything he releases. Another producer who I’ve been heavily exploring is Gerd Janson, his sound is like nothing else and I incorporate it often in my sets. I’ve always been inspired by Indie music and all of its branches but I like to use House as the roots to tie it all together keeping it accessible and then I can extend into all genres from there if I want to.
You have a new release out called “That Feeling”. What was the inspiration behind it?
That Feeling is the first song I actually finished in early 2022, it was an accident that started off as a remix using a sample for a completely different song, I ended up taking out the sample and being in love with the song I had created, so I laid down some lyrics that I had been feeling and in one take it came together. It was the most natural experience I had since I started producing because I had no serious expectations of it when I started it, I just planned to give it away for free on Soundcloud as a remix. It turned out to be a perfect culmination of how I was feeling going into this new phase of my career, and passion. It is simple, and not necessarily the most advanced thing I have ever created since I’ve come very far in the last year but I am proud of it as my first release. It’s the truth.
What was it like working with Effin & Blindin?
I love working with Effin & Blindin. He is the only person I have released music with so far, I’ve collaborated with him three times entirely over Instagram DM. He has over 40 aliases and releases music on his own label every day under a different genre and name. He is a talented producer who doesn’t care about the rat race of DJ’ing and just wants to share music. I go to him for guidance sometimes and initially asked him to master the original track for me and he surprised me with the remix the same night, which I fell in love with and it inspired me to make the music video.
You also released a music video together with the EP featuring Miami. Can you tell us about the Miami night scene?
The night scene was actually a very frustrating moment, any of the driving scenes were extremely tough. The main reason being the guy who offered to let us use the car didn’t tell me I needed to learn how to drive stick shift until the day of. So, imagine stalling every 20 seconds trying to film a music video. I ended up spending 2 hours in a parking lot practicing before he would let me take the car onto the streets. I was worried we wouldn’t get any shots, and after we got pulled over in a failed attempt at a tunnel shot, we just had to hope our 8 hours off trying to get some good driving shots paid off. The director/videographer Synbad Snow did manage to hold it together and make it a masterpiece. Which we ended up completing for almost $0, using all of our resources in Miami, and 5 different old camcorders from the early 2000s. It’s perfect.
You are also a DJ. What is the process of preparing for a live show like for you? Tell us about one of your most memorable DJ sets.
My search for music is constant and I have a daily/weekly process of collecting and organizing all of it so that before a show I always have new music to play. Most of the time I just wing it but if it’s a big show I will prepare a playlist of tracks that I don’t want to forget to play. My most memorable show was definitely my 10-hour set at Burning Man on one of the most beautiful stages there, Entheos. I’ll be there again this summer.
What must a good DJ have in your opinion?
A good DJ in my opinion has their own developed sound, not necessarily meaning they don’t stray from one genre or experiment but they provide a uniform experience throughout whatever music they are playing and that’s up to them to develop their own mixing style. It also doesn’t hurt to have legitimate mixing abilities, which all takes time and extensive hours spent behind the decks.
What is next for Mary Jane? Do you have any other releases, gigs coming up that you can share with us?
Coming up on May 19th I have my second release called ‘Seeing Stars’ which is a single I made for the label ‘Music Is For Lovers’. It’s an industrial take on what I like to call celestial Indie Dance. I was going for Italo Disco when it turned into more of a starry Techno piece, so we will call it Indie Dance. I have a couple of very exciting shows and announcements coming, also 2 more singles and EP that I am finishing now.