Mama’s Broke on folk-punk and finding your genre

Mama’s Broke is a Canadian traditional folk duo made up of Lisa Maria and Amy Keeler. Maria is based out of Nova Scotia and Keeler is floating around. They sat down with The Gateway at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival to chat about folk-punk, finding your genre, and what’s next. 

The duo met on the road. “There was this community of travelling folk musicians we both had a lot of friends in. We met through that community. I gave [Maria] a lift to Halifax from Montreal and we listened to the same music and got really excited. We wanted to play music that nobody else really got, and we connected pretty quickly after that trip,” Keeler explained. 

The name, Mama’s Broke, was originally a joke, they said. “When we first met, we would often phrase our emotions like ‘mama’s tired’ or ‘mama’s hungry.’ One we kept going back to was ‘mama’s broke.’” 

While the band is self-defined as traditional folk, one thing often mentioned is their space within the concept or genre of folk-punk. “There’s a genre of music that you can call folk-punk, but there’s also a bunch of punk people who play folk music. And then there’s also like, folk-punk that’s basically pop-punk, but played with acoustic instruments,” Keeler explained. 

For them, they would fall into the concept as punks who play folk, but also in terms of their sound and lyrical content, there’s genre crossover. 

Keeler explained that for her local scene growing up, punk was what was played at house shows. But those within the punk scene would also play traditional music. For her, “it has a lot to do with the attitude and content of the lyrics.” And that folk has similar historical roots in both often being genres of protest. 

“Anything that you’re doing that feels like it’s rooted in folk can be put under that [label],” Keeler says

Anger is a main theme within their music, they said. In their songwriting, they try to take a route of ambiguousness, leaving meaning to be read between the lines. “We express things in a more metaphorical way. It’s hard to write folk music that’s angry without it being obvious. If it’s direct then it’s not approachable,” Maria said. 

And while they maintain an indirect route in their expression, sometimes they outright say what they mean to make things punchier. “That can have more weight than just saying it in every chorus. Just having one line that’s like ‘no, what we’re actually talking about is rape culture’ [for example]. I don’t want to use the word, but I want it to be really obvious in one line to bring it all together,” Keeler explained. 

And while hardcore has some space within their sound, some faster songs are inspired by entirely different genres. One of their songs is inspired by Bulgarian traditional music, which has Keeler playing fast power chords, which is a staple of punk. 

With all around inspiration and different pieces of other genres fitting into their sound, they struggled with defining themselves at the beginning. “When people asked us what our genre is, I didn’t want to say folk because I feel like folk people who aren’t in traditional folk think of something like the coffee shop playlist,” Maria said. But now, the band is confident in their self labelling under folk. “Anything that you’re doing that feels like it’s rooted in folk can be put under that [label]. It’s like your own little corner,” Keeler added.

Coming to be able to confidently call their music folk, for Keeler, was through acceptance. “It was accepting that people are going to compare you to whatever. And I should just go with what it means to me as opposed to what I think it’s gonna mean to other people,” she explained.

For now, the band is headed to Nashville, recording their next record. They’re aiming for a release date to be early next year. And on the next record, they’re looking to make some additions. 

“On our last couple albums we’ve kept it between the two of us, sometimes doubling up. But on this album, we’re looking to bring in some drums and bass on a few tracks,” Maria said. Keeler added that they’re looking to add some psychedelic elements in as well.