Pamela Mering

Pamela Mering has been a songstress all her life painting melodies on black and white piano keys for as long as she could reach them. From her earliest memory of being a young child dancing in the living room while her mother played the piano singing songs from the 1930’s and 1940’s like “Hi Lily, Hi Low,” “Am I Blue?” and “You Made Me Love you,” she was captured by the lure and intrigue of melody and music.

Pamela was born in a neighborhood called Silverlake which was considered to be an artistic enclave in Southern California to middle aged parents; she was the youngest of five children with an age spread of eleven years from her closest sibling to eighteen years between herself and her oldest brother. Her father was a World War II veteran that had been wounded in the war. He was an entrepreneur and diverse in his vocations. Her mother was a school teacher who as a young child had been forced into a stage career to support her mother and stepfather. So at the age of four, Baby Virginia LaFonde was a throat whistler dressed in bird costumes and known as a child wonder for her imitations of bird calls.

Growing up, Pamela’s musical taste and selection was beyond her age as she was distinctly influenced by the music of her older siblings. She would be listening to what her friends’ parents would be listening to. At the age of seven, she acquired a Judy Collins Song book that became one of her most treasured possessions. She carried it around with her everywhere she would go. Singing folk songs and listening to music was the great escape from a household that was colorfully eccentric to say the least. Pamela could barely reach the phonograph to place the needle on the record albums she would play. The folk singers included Judy Collins, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. Van Morrison and Leon Russell were in the mix as well. An older sister was wearing light blue nail polish and had tickets to see the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl. So there were Beatles albums. . . .Another sister took her to the Troubadour to see a young Linda Ronstadt on the stage barefoot. An older brother would play Frank Sinatra and Harry Neilson. And then came the cataclysmic moment . . . . the moment in time that would determine the future design and course in Pamela’s life. . . .hearing Joni Mitchell. “I remember loving the song that Judy Collins sang, “Both Sides Now.” Upon finding out that the composer of the song was Joni Mitchell and hearing Joni’s album “Clouds” being played at my older brother’s home when I was barely eight years old changed everything for me. I had never heard anyone like her before. Her voice penetrated my soul and she evoked an emotion in me that had never been stirred before. I knew from that very moment in time what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a singer/songwriter.”

Pamela traveled as a young adult, attended college as time would allow and also participated in theater and songwriting. Sitting at any available piano whenever an opportunity would arise, she cultivated her melodic and poetic skills. Her songs hold a sense of melancholy and triumph; they are vignettes of true love, loss and honesty. Pamela has composed an impressive cannon of deep reflections and soulful ballads. Accumulating these over the years has lead to her first album “Childhood Train,” a long awaited presentation of her life’s work.

Her music executes a kaleidoscope of sound, melding beautiful harmonies with blues rhythms. Accompanied by her husband Sumner Mering on guitar and vocal, the duo creates a mixture of singer-songwriter (truth) and instrumental prowess. Coming from a background of Rock n Roll, Jazz, and R&B, Sumner offers a subtle elaboration to Pamela’s straight forward compositions.

She composes strong memorable melodies accented with lush harmonies and syncopated rhythms. The instrumentation on her album incorporates acoustic sounds, including piano, acoustic bass, acoustic guitar, percussion, drums with additional accents from organ, electric guitar, mandolin and cello.