Local singer-songwriter Lea Marra started out on piano when she was 7. When that didn’t take, she switched to guitar and was on her way to what would become a career as an independent musician and music teacher. She was only 10.
“My dad showed me a few chords, and I made a song out of it,” says Marra over coffee once recent morning at Metropolitan in Old Brooklyn. She plays a release party to celebrate her latest album, Raccoon County, on Friday, May 29, at the Beachland Tavern. Local singer-songwriter Cory Grinder opens. “It just happened. Piano enable me to read notes, but it wasn’t that appealing to me.”
At the time, she listened to what she calls “a vast array” of music. Her parents introduced her to ’50s and ’60s music. She also loved pop-punk star Avril Lavigne and old school country singers such as Dwight Yoakam and Randy Travis.
“I really liked Avril, and I was trying to get into that, but what came out wasn’t too much that,” says Marra. “Eventually, my brother showed me [indie rockers] Paramore, and I was hooked, and then, the emo phase came in.”
After circulating on the open mic circuit, Marra formed the indie pop act the Tom Katlees. Cardinal High School in Middlefield held a music event, and the band played its first public show. It would go on to release its debut in 2013 and would follow it up with another release in 2018. In 2019, it would splinter, and Marra would form Lea Marra and the Dreamcatchers.
“People said we were alt-pop country,” she says of the Dreamcatchers. “It had seven people in the beginning because I wanted to try the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes thing.”
She changed the band lineup and rebranded it as Lea Marra and the Riverboys in 2023.
“I changed lineup to four people and turned into a string band,” she explains. “It went from alt-country pop to more of a heavily bluegrass-influenced band.”
Marra and the Riverboys released their debut, Ace of Cups, in 2024.
“It was cool,” Marra says when asked about the release. “We worked with [Bay Village’s] Plastic Dino Records. It was a fun experience. It got the job done. As soon the Dreamcatchers were done, I needed new music. I thought that people needed to listen to how it’s different.”
The group added a fiddle player in 2025, and Marra began writing the songs that would fit the new lineup, which includes banjo player Chase Franklin, bassist Spencer Paul, mandolin player Joe Haugh and fiddle player Forrest Britt.
“I started writing some stuff about a year ago,” she says. “I collected the songs to see what fits.”
Local singer-songwriter David Mayfield heard the band play last October at a benefit show at Beachland for victims of North Carolina’s flood and said he wanted to record their next album at his home studio in Akron. Marra agreed that it was a good idea.
“David is a known bluegrass guy on the scene,” she says, adding that the group cut the music tracks live at his studio and added vocals later. “The album is more of the grassy genre. The title track is a folky ballad that focuses on storytelling. The rest are storytelling songs, but they have the grassy energy. I write about life and encounters. I was reflecting about the past. I just write about life, honestly, but I was reflecting on the past. I thought it would be cool to tie it in with everything, even though some of the songs are not about my time there. Each musician has an animal. The boys wanted the artwork to be a map, so I made it a map of Raccoon County. Mark Graibus did the artwork, and he did a poster too. It features the band members as animals in a canoe.”
With its haunted vocals, the title track is just one of many highlights on the album. Bluegrass-inflected tunes such as “Virgo Moon” and “Dimes & Pennies” come off as traditional ballads.
For the upcoming release party, the group will play the album, which will be available on both vinyl and CD, in its entirety. It will also debut a new music video animated by local artist Sally Francis. The animation will screen when the group plays the tune.
Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
