The approaching 40th anniversary of Woodstock seems like an appropriate time to breathe some new life into an old friend. Mary Jane popped into our heads in late 1966 or early 1967, originally named Merry Jane.  e.g. the Merry Jane Band. Yeah, we were a bunch of kids and thought we didn't really want to be too obvious (living with our parents and stuff). We practiced a lot and might have even played a gig. We started writing our own music about the politics and other crap that surrounded us (certainly not teeny-pop material) and decided to be a little less subtle, and a little more subtle at the same time.

Mary Jane Bann'd more directly said what we wanted to say (remember this was 1967 and two of our founding members lived in Boulder) so it stuck. We shifted through a few configurations, while retaining our core and played a lot of shows in and around Boulder. Many of them were free outdoor events that drew some fairly substantial crowds, and some years later when I started playing club gigs I was disappointed at the size of a club audience.

We all had a blast during this time in our lives, and for the most part managed to stay out of serious trouble. Many years later, in 1989, I had just finished previewing the final edit of a music video for my song Heart Infiltrator and was at a party to celebrate the opening of a new record company in Denver. Unintentionally, in the midst of a very esteemed audience (which included then governor, Roy Roemer) a woman who had just seen the video screamed across the room...

"Ron! I loved your new video."

That let to conversations, one of which with a newspaper writer who said "I used to hitchhike to see Mary Jane Bann'd shows. We're doing a special 1969-1989 retrospective, can we interview you for the piece?" The article ended up in a special edition of the Weekend Rocky Mountain News (now sadly defunct) and I still have some copies stashed in a closed some where.

In addition to the nostalgia motive, a fictional version of Mary Jane Bann'd is becoming part of my writing universe, we'll post details on that here as they become available.  Anyway, you might find some interesting things on the site and I'm happy to add more if you run across items or stories.

As I write this note on June 17, 2009, I've just received a call that Pete Fenner, originally MJB's founding bass player, is going to be in town next week. I haven't seen him for almost 40 years, so it should be interesting.

Ron aka Duck.