Roadblock or Roadhouse, She’s Aiming to Conquer

“I really like having to put my shoulder against something and push as hard as I can,” Mary Cutrufello says, her mop-top of dreadlocks flowing through the air as she fakes a forcible entry against the back of a restaurant booth.

The 27-year-old, husky-voiced rock singer--whose debut album, “When the Night Is Through,” has just been released by Mercury Records--has already pushed open plenty of doors in Texas, despite sizable odds.

When she moved to the Lone Star State in 1991, Cutrufello (pronounced Coot-ruh-FELL-o) hoped to explore the rootsier side of rock--the twang that she heard in albums by Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and John Mellencamp.

She set out to play in Texas roadhouses and honky-tonks, where women her age are often resigned to carrying trays and anyone of her skin color is often looked at with wonderment, and worse.

“I was an outsider, a visitor,” she admits. It wasn’t just that Cutrufello was African American. She played these Lone Star strongholds as a Northerner--a Yale alumna, no less--who had just left the suburban Connecticut home where she grew up as a half-black kid adopted by white parents. Clearly, she already had a notion of what it’s like working to fit in.

“I reconciled myself to the fact that I’m not just another white guy,” Cutrufello says during an interview here, where her band--made up specifically of three white guys, including former Springsteen keyboardist Danny Federici--has spent the last few weeks in hectic rehearsal mode in preparation for a U.S. tour that includes a Sept. 17 date at the Mint in Los Angeles.

“My skin color--it is what it is,” she continues. “I don’t try to make any sweeping statements about it because I don’t want it to be an issue. If other people want to make it an issue, that’s fine, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the music.”

“When the Night Is Through” makes it clear that Cutrufello doesn’t use gender, race or anything but rock ‘n’ roll basics and raw energy to open her doors. The album is remarkably traditional, full of American-heartland rock songs that could have been played by any of those guys who dominated FM radio in the ‘70s and ‘80s, songs that inherently come across better in a barroom serving domestic beer.

On stage a few nights before the interview, with her hair flopping around her head, her Telecaster hanging all the way down to the bottom of her worn flannel shirt, Cutrufello looks like a cross between Terence Trent D’Arby and Springsteen, and shows the energy to match both.

As her raspy voice soars to howling heights, and the down-and-out characters of her songs fight their fights--suffering at the hands of abusive husbands (“Good Night Dark Angel”), leaving dead-end relationships (“Sad, Sad World”), conquering loneliness on long, dark roads (“Highway 59”)--it becomes clear that Cutrufello is going more for the Boss approach.

“She has that same love for basic rock ‘n’ roll that Bruce has, and for songs about basic people,” says Federici, who met Cutrufello through her album’s producer, onetime Springsteen engineer Thom Panunzio.

“It’s the kind of album that lets the songs do the work,” Steve Greenberg, the Mercury A&R; director who signed Cutrufello, says of the singer’s major-label debut. “We aren’t just focusing on one hit single, we’re pushing the entire album. We’re sending it to press everywhere, because we think critics will love it. And we’re sending Mary out to do live shows everywhere, because that’s how she really connects.”

Cutrufello definitely connected a few years ago in Nashville with her current manager Holly Gleason, a former journalist who entered the Music Row ranks as a publicist for Sony Nashville. Gleason took on the role of manager for the first time sort of as a protectant for Cutrufello, who at the time was switching from country to a more rock-oriented style.

“She wasn’t getting proper treatment, so I told her I’d manage her until she simply couldn’t be managed,” says Gleason. “She’s such a passionate, incredibly bright performer, I didn’t want her to get lost before she had the chance to reach the next level.”

As a rock act, comparisons can be made to such no-frills rock queens as Melissa Etheridge and Chrissie Hynde--as well as to African American figures such as Tina Turner and Jimi Hendrix (Mary plays a mean guitar). The singer was pretty much on her own, though, as recently as two years ago, when her music was better classified as gritty country.

She self-released a CD in 1994, appeared in an “Austin City Limits” special a year later, and even toured with Jimmie Dale Gilmore in 1996 as part of his band.

“Growing up in Connecticut, I hadn’t been exposed to that kind of music, so I was fascinated by it and wanted to learn it,” she says of her country music interest. “The thing I learned, though, was that for the people who play country really well, it’s their home. It’s what they know. I wanted to go back to what I know, go back to my home, musically speaking.”

There’s still a little bit of twang in her, but for the most part, Cutrufello has instinctively returned to the working-class rock sound that she grew up on, that she says made her childhood complete.

Raised by two educators along with a younger sister (also adopted), the singer describes her upbringing as “happy but banal.” Music was where she found her excitement, and a large portion of her identity.

After hearing that she was such a music fanatic growing up that she not only drew imaginary album covers, but also invented liner notes to go with them, you have to believe her.

“I was a nut,” she says. “But for someone who grew up the way I did--a loner, an introvert--rock ‘n’ roll meant everything, it meant there was a world outside my bedroom where there were like-minded people, that I wasn’t the only one who felt whatever I was going through that day. It gave me a place where I felt like I belonged.”

Chris Riemenschneider is an occasional contributor to Calendar.

Hear the Music

* Excerpts from Mary Cutrufello’s “When the Night Is Through” and other recent releases are available on The Times’ World Wide Web site. Point your browser to: https://www.latimes.com/soundclips