Menage

Losing two singers in four years might leave some bands in disarray. For Sarah McDonald and Mary Ellen Bush of the spirited Asheville folk-pop band Ménage, the changes led them to discover their true form.

When auditions for a third member proved unfruitful, and with a February performance in Raleigh drawing near, McDonald (guitar) and Bush (upright bass) ditched the trio format. They enlisted drummer Evan Martin and guitarist Matt Kinne, Bush’s boyfriend and McDonald’s guitar teacher, to perform. The steady backbeat and the electric strumming matched so well with their lollipop-sweet harmonies, McDonald and Bush realized everything was in the right place.

“We said, ‘This is what we should be doing,’ ” Bush said backstage after a performance at April’s Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance near Silk Hope, N.C. “It was one of those things where you are not searching for the solution, but one kinda pops out at you. So yeah, it feels right.”

Things have been moving nicely for the band since Kinne and Martin joined. Ménage has picked up the touring pace, playing shows across New York, Virginia and North Carolina, including its well-attended two-day stint as a featured act at Shakori Hills. The band will also undertake a short jaunt up the East Coast this summer, performing the 7 p.m. Friday slot at the 2006 Shiner Bock Twin City RibFest in downtown Winston-Salem.

The band’s story began in 2002 around an open microphone at the Westville Pub in downtown Asheville. Pub employees Bush and McDonald would trade harmonies during open mic night with Rhett Thurman on bluegrass staples such as “Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby,” from the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?

When the customers they served clamored for more, the women responded by writing new songs and recording them under the name Menage a Trois. The band later chose the less sultry Ménage after rejecting such monikers as The Honeys and Saw-Such Sisters.

The band quickly entered the studio, and two self-released albums and an EP followed. The Honey’s on the Porch and Miss Conduct featured Thurman, who soon left to play music elsewhere, including with an Asheville-based Led Zeppelin cover band. Ménage retooled some of its older songs with Thurman’s replacement, Allison King, and released the collection, 7 Songs.

Earlier this year, King quit to pursue a massage therapy degree in Minnesota. The albums showcase the former trio at its best when writing songs that capture slices of life. On the soft-acoustic ballad “Tell Me,” Bush sings of cutting the crust off a tuna sandwich for a loved one. A harmonica and acoustic guitar provide the dispirited backdrop on “Sunday,” in which the band laments how “everybody has a car on the driveway, early in the morning–--not me.”

McDonald captured the frustration of living in New York City with the bittersweet “New York Situation.” “Take me away from the streets, the lights, the cars. Dreams don’t come true in cold crushing bars.” “We don’t make stuff up,” Bush said. “These are songs about what people do and do to each other.”

The new songs, which continue to explore that same theme but are sonically more expansive, should appear on the band’s third full-length LP out in late summer. Some of the new material is simply pure rock such as “Shrinking Gun,” which resembles an early B-52’s composition and, along with “Oh Boy,” features a first for the band: the guitar solo. “When you have somebody who plays the guitar really well like Matt does and knows how to use an amplifier and turn it into overdrive, there are so many options,” Bush said.
Bush and McDonald do retain their sardonic sense of humor developed on stage as revealed on “Sorry Flowers”--an ode to a boyfriend who expresses regret with bouquets. “You only bring me sorry flowers to apologize. You only bring me sorry flowers and I can’t wait for them to die.”

McDonald said: “Someone from the crowd yelled to Matt, ‘Hey, Man. Stop sending those flowers,’ and Matt said, ‘I didn’t.’” Those songs are show regulars and will be recorded with Bill Reynolds again overseeing the album production.

In working with Reynolds, the bassist for rock/country/zydeco band Donna the Buffalo, McDonald envisions a weeklong recording process encompassing pedal-steel and long-steel guitars, jam sessions and more.

“We still experiment in all different kinds of music which we have done,” she said. “We still have swing, blues, jazz and all of that stuff.” McDonald pauses. “We just have a bigger car to drive it all around in.”

On the Web: www.themenage.com and www.myspace.com/menage.