Peter Mulvey and Jenna Nichols Present: Floyd Mercantile at Cafe Wha? – New York, NY

Floyd Mercantile is the self-titled record of the collaboration between Jenna Nicholls and Peter Mulvey. They met at a small arts center gig in Massachusetts, where they bonded backstage over their love for the 1941 Hoagy Carmichael classic “Skylark”, a delightful piece of musical origami with a lyric by Johnny Mercer, pining as ever for his muse Judy Garland. Jenna and Peter worked out an arrangement and performed it minutes later.

Both artists have been on the singer/songwriter scene for decades, and have centered their careers in the Northeast (Nicholls in Manhattan and then the Hudson Valley, and Mulvey in Boston and later in Western Massachusetts), so it’s a bit of a head-scratcher that it took them so long to finally meet, but as soon as they did, they wasted little time. 

While playing a few gigs together, they conspired on the idea of a true collaboration. They discovered that both of them had songs lying around that hearkened to the Tin-Pan Alley era, only a few of which had found the light of day. To this little trove they added a few obscure standards and their touchstone, Skylark. Jenna dove into the arranging and curating of the repertoire, and Peter reached out to his friend, the virtuoso guitarist/producer/songwriter Ross Bellenoit (Sweetback Sisters, Muscle Tough) to enlist his skills for the recording session.

They assembled in Floyd, Virginia, in an old mercantile, and spent three spring days rattling around the warm old husk of a building, taking each song through its paces a few times, loose and affable, while Beehive Productions caught the performances on video and audio. Nicholls again took the helm in guiding the mixing and editing, and Floyd Mercantile was launched.

The record is an unhurried ramble through not quite a dozen songs, filled with wit, warmth, and unassuming depth. Jenna’s singing is strong, sweet, and surefooted, and Mulvey’s weathered baritone delivers. They’re at their best when taking lead on each other’s songs, shedding a certain brilliance on unexpected corners of the melodies. And Bellenoit’s playing is effortless, schooled, and wryly humorous, especially given how much they pressed him into playing both the glockenspiel and the melodica.

This project, both the record and their live shows, is an unabashed celebration of the undersold charms of American music- wit, restraint, deftness and warmth.

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