Me for Queen
Me for Queen aka Mary Erskine is inspired by people and their stories. Growing up feral in rural Fife/Scotland in a big old house near the sea, she started writing songs when she was 13, around the same time that she started dressing herself. At this time music was her method of making her mark against four older siblings, and getting out of the washing up.
Years of classical training together with a Blues guitarist for a father make for an interesting mix of Soul and Folk. Me For Queen’s piano-based songs draw obvious comparisons to Regina Spektor and Carol King but manage to fuse hints of Kate Bush and Laura J Martin. Mary cites Judee Sill & This is the Kit as a few of her favourites and says Me For Queen is “a sort of sketchpad for whatever’s happening in my head. I just try to write songs that talk to people.”
Slow Train is the first single from her next EP which will be entitled “Who I am and What I am For” is about being present in the moment and taking things as they come.
Mary says, “I wanted to write a song that feels at-one with itself. Not sunshine happy but maybe content for a moment. It only has 4 chords. That’s an all time best for me! I just didn’t let myself over-think it. “
With a pure love of cycling and the outdoors, in 2015 she decided to honour the relationship with her bike by writing an album about cycling which the Guardian picked up on writing:
“She voices the frustration and the sensations of danger many of us face. White Bike is a gentle, folk-like ballad with Erskine’s beautiful, soaring vocals chronicling a cycling fatality from three perspectives – ‘when you rush on by that corner where a ghost is chained with flowers, you need to know that we still see you and the fate that could be ours.”
Mary Erskine is nothing if not imaginative. Where else do you hold the official launch show of a cycling concept album but a velodrome.? Leo Valley Velo Park at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to be exact, with the electricity needs for the show powered by cyclists. The lead single, White Bike enjoyed radio play on BBC Scotland and Amazing Radio.
The new EP “Who I am and What I am For” is poised for release in November on Seahorse Music.
Slow Train impacts on 14th September.
