Mary Strand & The Garage

On lawyer-turned-novelist-turned-songwriter Mary Strand’s 2023 debut album, Golden Girl, she explored several different musical rock eras and styles within an overall theme of love: new and old, for better and for worse, and above all: complicated.

Her music has been variously described as power pop, garage rock, punk, post-punk, and/or plain old indie rock. Although she thinks of her style as “just me,” and rarely has a particular band or sound in mind when she’s first writing a song, Mary is a huge fan of Joan Jett’s music, and she’s also been compared to the Bangles, the La’s, the Go-Go’s, the Pretenders, and many more bands, especially ones fronted by women.

Her mix of sounds is no accident. Mary simply loves rock and roll. All of it.

Golden Girl has charted on multiple indie radio stations around the world and has been praised by New York’s Big Takeover magazine and other national press. In 2024, Mary performed at the Big Turn Music Festival, the Bridging the Music Minneapolis MiniFEST, and various venues in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Mary plays her music in a four-piece Minneapolis band called Mary Strand & The Garage. It often (but not always) features her album band of Ryan Smith (Soul Asylum and The Melismatics) on lead guitar, Mark Wade (The Melismatics and The Mood Swings) on bass, and her son Jack Strand (Outta Coentro and Loondale) on drums. Mary also plays guitar on all of her songs.

She’s currently recording her second album, which she plans to release in the first half of 2025.