We recently connected with Mary Bue and have shared our conversation below.
Mary , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
My utmost dedication and personal power statement came when I was 24, working as a clinical research assistant in Providence RI at the women’s prison and RI hospital. I was sitting in my cubicle doing data entry, and I decided NOPE, I want to be an artist. I booked a month long tour with my music, from Rhode Island to Austin, Texas with my keyboard, guitar, and best friend, and never went back to the desk job. Once we got to Austin I got a tattoo on my left bicep of a monarch butterfly, a symbol for me of creativity and transformation and hope. But it all started sometime before that …
As a teenager, I was always listening to this edgy, eclectic radio station called Rev 105 (out of St. Paul, Minnesota) in my bedroom in small town Princeton, Minnesota. My friend Candace turned me on to it. I became obsessed with the Sunday night program called “Moonlight Meditations” by DJ Shawn Stewart. She would play ethereal, spooky, eerily gorgeous music and always give an astrology reading for the week ahead. This was around the same time that I fell in love with the moon, standing outside on a full moon night, underneath my mother’s clothesline, it as if I had just seen the moon for the first time. I felt the power of the lunar light, in concert with growing pains / menarche / giant friend shifts. Previously, I had been trying hard to fit in to the popular crowd which, as often seems to be the case in small town America, consisted of jocks. Football games were the big social events … and I joined the art club, the speech team, and started sneaking out to dance at raves in Minneapolis instead. It was apparent that I didn’t fit in to any mold there. I felt a lot of alienation and awkwardness. However, I started journaling in earnest and painting voraciously in art class. And I started learning Tori Amos’ songs on the piano when no one was home.
I asked for an electric guitar for my 14th or 15th birthday and started crafting crude songs out of adolescent poetry. I had already been playing the piano for four years. When I was 16 I held my first solo concert – it was all cover songs and some classical pieces – Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, “A Whole New World” from The Little Mermaid, Für Elise. It was exhilarating and also nerve-wracking. I used to be ridiculously shy, would turn beet red when called on in class or even grew flushed when speaking at extended family holiday meals. When I moved up to Duluth, MN to attend college at University of Minnesota Duluth (I started as a 17 year old / senior in High School with the Post Secondary Enrollment Options program), some friends dared me to perform at an open mic at Amazing Grace Bakery and Cafe. This would have been 1998. When I started playing for my slot, the whole bustling cafe shushed. They LISTENED. I was floored. The owner, Chip Stewart offered me a show. I was hooked to be a performing songwriter and wanted badly in years to follow to drop out of UMD and do just that – take the show on the road around the country. I did manage to stay in college and receive my bachelor’s in Psychology (and grateful that I did), however I knew that my path would not involve many offices & cubicles that many day jobs require. The psychology track I was drawn to was Transpersonal Psychology, studying many spiritual / mindfulness methodologies such as meditation, psychedelic experiences, yoga. I had begun dabbling with yoga in high school as well, due to an article in Seventeen Magazine. I was in love with that spiritual exploration, and these years of study greatly influenced the music I was writing.
This youth “blossoming” into an artist / creative took a few years and even more years of self doubt. I got another tattoo in Los Angeles in 2007 on my forearm of a Sacred Heart ~ this was both a recording studio that I had worked at numerous times in Duluth as well as my calling to follow heart’s deepest desire and the claim, symbolically inked on my right arm, that I am an artist.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Songwriter, creativity retreat guide, yoga instructor, creative mentor, music teacher.
Above and beyond, my life has been that of a fairly prolific songwriter running the gamut from dreams, heartbreak, nature, sexual assault, sacred feminine. I’ve always been a writer – journaling and poetry and currently working on a book in the creativity / spirituality sector. My teaching is open-armed and embracing of as many walks of life and skill sets to the best of my ability. My initial* yogic lineage (Viniyoga / Yoga of TKV Desikachar) classically taught yoga one-on-one ~ so I recognize that in any group, there are 1-20+ different bodies / goals / intentions / injuries / hopes / flexibilities. I also embrace online teaching and virtual creations via my Patreon membership platform, sharing songs and their stories, yoga practices on video, poetry, and art with new content rotating on a weekly basis. Super grateful for my subscribers there!
Currently my deep passion is hosting Creativity and Yoga retreats around the globe. I’ve now facilitated retreats both solo as well as and co-hosted with fine artist / professor Sarah Brokke & yoga teacher trainer extraordinaire Tara Cindy Sherman in the following incomparable locales: Bali, Indonesia; Tuscany, Italy; Malta & Gozo; Taos, New Mexico; Bayfield, Wisconsin; and Grand Marais, Minnesota. Coming up in the first half of 2023 are Bali (March), Malta & Gozo (late April), and Western Ireland (early June).
These retreats combine passions of the arts, music, writing, nature, divine feminine, and how the land can inspire creativity. The have come into fruition thanks to all of my previous life experience, happily and nostalgically outlined for you here!
I’ve been writing music since I was 16 and have been a performing songwriter for over 24 years (currently taking a hiatus). I’ve written and recorded 8 albums of original music (available on all major streaming platforms as well as a few on vinyl and cd). Music has been my heart for most of my life. I’ve performed in 48 states as well as a few cameos abroad. I’m an independent musician, meaning that I was never signed to a traditional record label, and have been DIY most of the time, as well as working from time to time with booking agents, publicists, recording engineers, and kick ass band mates. I also was very involved in the Duluth Homegrown Music Festival as a board member and volunteer, and worked as “music director” for a small folk venue (Amazing Grace, where I got my start performing original music!) where I booked musicians, ran sound for them, promoted, kept up the website. From the festival and running the venue I got a good glimpse of other sides of the business.
I found yoga (mostly asana / postures) around age 15 and studied it in college and practiced regularly. In 2008 I moved to Seattle, WA and received my 200 hour yoga teaching certification in the Viniyoga lineage from Tracy Weber, Whole Life Yoga. I moved back to Minnesota in 2011 and started teaching in this lineage in Duluth, creating a pretty popular series called “Yoga for the Absolute Beginner who wants to know what the fuss is all about.” I was very happy to teach fellow musicians and artist types who perhaps normally wouldn’t explore this mindfulness modality.
In 2016, I had a rare opportunity to open a yoga studio in Minneapolis. I had been feeling the itch to move out of Duluth and jumped at the chance to try my hand at a brick and mortar business, which I named Imbue Yoga Studio (Imbue means to permeate, infuse, inspire and also contains my last name)! I took over the lease in April 2016 and began the remodel, painting a fresh yellow and installing a bamboo floor. It was hard going, though, as I had zero yoga connections in Minneapolis (they were all in Seattle and Duluth!) and I was under the misconception that my musician friends in the metro would attend often. A few of them did, and also the neighborhood, and soon we had a fun little studio vibe. We held “Plant Based Yoga” vegan potluck nights once a month, with donations going to compassionate organizations. A few of Firefly Yoga International’s trauma-informed yoga trainings were held there, and I knew if I were to stay open I would eventually develop and run my own teacher training program.
During this time I started my 300 hour yoga teacher certification at Yoga Center of Minneapolis (now Yoga Center Retreat) and met some fantastic teachers who inspired me in the realm of chanting and yoga of sound. Kevin Kortan’s teaching was my impetus to attend YCM / YCR as he was trained in Viniyoga, and I also studied with Tara Cindy Sherman who I plopped down next to on day one, wanting to be fast friends asap. She had actually just heard my new song on the radio the day before, so it was serendipitous! I loved learning from them and many others. During my training, Yoga Center’s new owner unexpectedly closed the doors and declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy. My peers and I had only 3-4 months left of our training to go. The previous owner, Jennifer Gray, saved us and resurrected the business and allowed us to finish. Forever grateful to that. Now the studio is the very beautiful and thriving Yoga Center Retreat in St. Louis Park. These were the stories of my first 200 and 300 hour trainings.
At the end of 2018, 3 years approaching at my yoga studio, I decided that music was still my heart, and the studio wasn’t doing very well financially, and I made the painful decision to close the doors to follow the muse. I also had finally took the leap to visit Bali, Indonesia which I’d been desperate to visit since I learned of it from a surfer in 2004, and while over there travel to India to visit some new friends there. I have often struggled with being a “spiritual white woman” who teaches yoga and delved into cultural appropriation and my part in it. I felt that if I could go to the source – to India – and talk to some yoga masters there and steep in the land, I might have some answers. These journeys took place in March 2019 and proved to be life changing. I attended Jessa Walter’s Sacred Womxn’s Retreat in Ubud, Bali (highly recommend, she is planning it for March 2024), and my boyfriend at the time visited New Delhi and Varanasi.
Upon return, I threw myself into recording my 8th album “The World is Your Lover” with a new band, producer Steve Price, and launched my 4th Kickstarter / crowdfunding campaign. This album was set to release in May 2020.
I also threw myself into teaching piano and guitar lessons and grew my student base to about 25-30. I re-launched a Patreon (a membership platform allowing creatives to live sustainably doing their creative work), continued teaching yoga at a few studios in the metro, and performing a LOT of shows.
I started co-teaching Nada Yoga (the Yoga of Sound) and Goddess studies with my teacher Tara Cindy Sherman (who, thankfully, did become one of my best friends!) and through this I discovered Nada Yoga School in Rishikesh, India, a month long 200 hour training program studying the Yoga of Sound. I signed up almost immediately, for January 2020.
Nov 2019 held our first Creativity & Yoga Retreat by the Fire in Grand Marais, MN. It was a hit! I was so so excited. I had also launched a retreat in West Bali at the stunning Puri Dajuma Eco Resort for March 2020 which sold out.
Flew out to Rishikesh, incredibly fell in love with learning to play the sitar and purchased one, brought it to Bali to host the first retreat (of which half canceled the day before due to Covid 19 …) and that brings us to the pandemic times. By the way, the other half that attended came home happy and well, and I just held my 2nd retreat at Puri Dajuma in November!
During the pandemic, all of my work disintegrated. Live performances, yoga classes, in-person music lessons, retreats. We had to isolate to stay safe. It was disheartening. Prior to the pandemic, I had an inkling to create an e-course on the yoga of sound through my lens as a lifelong musician and songwriter. So my drive to teach online and work on this e-course furthered. Soon the yoga studios offered online classes, I did a few online shows, I taught on zoom for my patreon subscribers, and switched to online music lessons. I still am a huge fan of the online learning sphere and try to offer yoga regularly there as well as the goddess study courses with Tara.
Finally, my 8th album “The World is Your Lover” was released eventually in 2020, during the pandemic. We held two live stream events and somehow, incredibly, I was awarded “Best Songwriter 2020” by the City Pages, in their last “Best of” issue before they closed their doors. It was a huge and unexpected milestone as I’ve been working so hard in music for so many years. I am forever grateful.
As I share all of this, I think I would love for you all to know that it has been a winding road, and I’ve attempted many things, aka “throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.” From the yoga studio to my first retreat attempts “failing,” to many uncomfortable moments on stage and in the background, from not getting paid my worth, from not KNOWING my worth, from the ever-changing landscape of friendships and intimate relationships that might not understand or support the entrepreneurial life … I do my best to teach, mentor, and provide offerings that are full of inspiration, support, integrity, hope, and fun. I swear, I laugh, I am real and raw and try to be down to earth. There is so much suffering, there are so many heartbreaks. I am a human, and often teach what I most need to learn. This humility holds up my humanity. We are all teachers, and we are all walking each other home. Let’s make it entertaining, fun, beautiful, while holding it all.
*From first paragraph: I say “initial” yogic lineage as I received my 200 hour in it and part of my 300 hour, however have explored and teach now influence from multiple lineages.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Within all of my work, whether it is performing, teaching, writing, painting, there is a drive for transformation as well as healing. I do, however, struggle a bit with the word “healing” and would never describe myself as a “healer” (and am often wary of those who do), however the work itself has been healing for me (to write the song, paint the thing, study & practice the yoga / meditation) and my hope is to impart that expansive, inviting, softening, accepting quality to all who listen to & sit with me. I am often crass and swear like a sailor, I don’t shy away from painful things, and am a deeply sensitive person – a “codependent people-pleaser in recovery” – and so I do deeply desire those who interact with my work to feel a sense of connectedness – to each other, to this beautiful and strange planet, through our suffering and challenges. So – Transformation, connection, healing, creativity – those would be my top missions!
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
It seems that many people see the final product and don’t respect or understand what it takes to get there. They see the retreat in Bali and ask “How do you get to take so many fantastic holidays?” They see the album and the accolade and wonder “why / how did she get that?” I, too, had terrible struggles with jealousy and remarkably prickly impatience. And sometimes, I still do!
I was recently told that Reese Witherspoon said something like one of the differences between her success and that of other hard working entrepreneurs / creatives is LUCK. I would agree with that – I am very lucky. And I do work hard. People also see me playing hard, and that also is judged. Yet Creatives need fallow time, and vast experiences to stimulate our creativity. If I’m going to launch a fantastic travel retreat that brings people across the world, then in order to do that safely and confidently, I have to ideally travel there and experience the things which looks like a vacation. I assure you, hosting a retreat is NOT a vacation, nor is pulling a song out of the ether, nor is 24+ years of schlepping a giant full size weighted keyboard and guitar amps and a sound system to gigs.
There is something to be said for perseverance, and dedication. There is something to be said for putting yourself out there and being subject to judgement from the masses – however big or small. Could be your family, could be your friend group. In a time where we ALL get access to our own mini webpage / soapbox / internet TV channel with all the youtube / tiktok / facebook social media technology, it is so easy to get lost in the shuffle, and it is also so easy rise to the top with your song featuring cats meowing christmas songs. It is daunting and it is overwhelming and it is frustrating. I am so grateful for friends who have stuck with me through building what I’ve built, and I’m also grateful to those who have left — because creative work IS transformative, and we won’t stay the same for long, and some people are only walking with us for a time and there are many lessons therein.
My wish is for us, self included, to suspend judgement. In fact, do our best to trash it. In starting anything new, that ugly duckling face, that zitty adolescent phase, that three-fingered Mary Had a Little Lamb on the piano phase, if given time and a chance to develop, with dedication, and persistence, will amount to something. It doesn’t have to be for the public, becoming a side hustle in our capitalist culture. But maybe it becomes that sweater you give to your best friend, that beautiful meal cooked with the vegetables you grew, that poem that came to you in your sleep after writing years of shitty poems. Creativity is transformative. Give yourself a chance. Don’t be a jerk to someone who is trying to write a story or a song or start a new business. Let us play. Let it play out. Honor the fallow time. We are not lazy. We just don’t have regular schedules. And for those of us running our small (or large businesses), our successes are often hard won, over long periods of time, with many pivots. I would invite us all to open to grace, for ourselves and each other.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://marybue.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/marybuemusic
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/marybuemusic
- Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/marybue
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/marybuemusic
- Youtube: http://youtube.com/marybuemusic
- Other: Patreon: http://patreon.com/marybue
Image Credits
Sarah Brokke, Doc, Patricia Olga, Hattie Peterson, Tom Irvine, Lindsey Dehmer