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Mar 29, 2023 By Mark Moody Photography by Veronica Mendez

Today, Philadelphia singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Greg Mendez is releasing his second single, “Maria,” from his upcoming self-titled album, Greg Mendez. The album is due out May 5 on Forged Artifacts and Devil Town Tapes. “Maria” was preceded by the release of the equally catchy single, “Goodbye/Trouble.” Mendez has been a prolific creator over the past two decades, with dozens of tracks available through Bandcamp and other platforms. But Mendez considers his upcoming album to be his third full-length release following 2017’s ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and 2020’s Cherry Hell.

Though Mendez shares that most of his songs are meant to be open-ended and subject to interpretation, the lilting and keyboard-driven “Maria” shares a memory of an arrest outside a crack house in Brooklyn. “I think sometimes artists can actually harm their work by putting too much emphasis on what it means to them. But ‘Maria’ ends up being about not just the story, but whether or not it is okay to tell the story in a social situation. Will the story come off as funny, sad, or scary?” Mendez says.

Suffice it to say that over its brief run time, “Maria” manages to be all the things Mendez describes and more. The image of Mendez and his friend busting out the bathroom window right into the hands of the cops evokes a myriad of feelings. But the stark descriptions in the song are clouded by a softly sung vocal lead, assisted by Mendez’s wife Veronica on understated harmonies. To add to the song’s authenticity, Mendez and video director Luke LeCount returned to the Brooklyn neighborhood where the narrative of the song actually went down.

Originally from Boston, Mendez kicked around the Northeast a bit but settled in Philadelphia over fifteen years ago. Of his introduction to music and the drive to create, Mendez shares, “The first thing I remember being drawn to was classic rock and country music on the radio. I couldn’t tell the difference between the two, the spirit was very similar to my ears at the time. I remember the first time I heard [Nirvana’s} “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” my half-uncle was playing it in his Jeep and I thought it was the coolest, heaviest thing I had ever heard.”

Aside from Mendez’s wife’s accompaniment on “Maria,” the bulk of the new album was home-recorded with Mendez supplying all the instrumentation. Scanning the credits for the album, Mendez even supplies the address of where the recording of Greg Mendez went down. 924 Arch Street, Philadelphia, to be precise. The specificity of place recalls Hüsker Dü’s Grant Hart’s solo song “2541,” cementing the work to the place of its creation. But setting that aside, Mendez prefers to leave things more open ended for his fans. “I like to leave the themes up to the listener. One of my favorite things about art is how open it is to interpretation. I do think [this album] is more fully realized than anything I’ve done to date. I spent more time on it, obsessed over it more,” Mendez concludes. (www.gregmendez.bandcamp.com)

Check out the song and video below, out everywhere now. Greg Mendez is out May 5th via Forged Artifacts and Devil Town Tapes.