Songwriting · Canciones Y Recuerdos
Mezcal Maria
By Veronique Medrano · 3 min read
In 2022 I was in New Orleans, traveling the tram around the city as the rain fell on a chill weekday in town. This is not where I expected the story of this song to begin, but it was where it took shape and ultimately led to the essence of what my album MexiAmericana would be about.
As I was walking around the quarter, I stopped by the New Orleans Jazz Museum and stumbled upon a Louie “The King of Swing” Prima exhibit. The section that stuck with me as I walked out and continued my stroll along the French Quarter with gelato in hand was Louie Prima’s “Angelina.”
I began to use the rhythm of the song as the foundation for what initially began with the lyric, “Virgin Maria, Madre de Dios si voy a tomar tomo por dos” (Virgin Mary, Mother of God, If I’m gonna drink I’m gonna drink for two.) That was the foundation that started the story of a woman praying to the Virgin Mary at the club — and allowed me to explore the wildness of my twenties.
A bar holds a thousand stories, but most of them are not from the perspective of a woman.
I remembered Archer from the show ‘Archer,’ when he prays to his glass of Bloody Mary — “Bloody Mary full of vodka” — a turn on the same prayer to the Virgin Mary. That inspired the chorus line to change into “Mezcal Maria, Madre de Dios si voy a tomar tomo por dos.” With that change I was able to run full steam ahead with the full story and lyrics.
Finding the Voice for the Feature
I had completed the song and was listening to the draft of the production and felt like it was missing something. To me the voice felt drawn to Beatriz’s energy and I reached out to her for a feature verse — bringing the rap aspect of her musical repertóire to this song. She cut vocals within a week and it really completed and lifted this song to a higher level.
While we have not done a music video yet, we hope to in the near future. There were so many fun takes from the photoshoot that had us spilling “water” on the set laughing our butts off. When a song feels right it feels right, and this song was the final piece in a narrative that helped shape and focus on this feminine focused album.
Written By
Veronique Medrano
Singer-songwriter, writer, and archivist out of Brownsville, Texas.