We'd like to extend a big thanks to Lisa Balde of the Daily Herald for interviewing MER and writing up a great article.  What are you waiting for, read it already!

The unsinkable mission of Mer

Lisa Balde | Beep Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Ever heard of a bald Filipino kid with a slight Prince fetish, who dresses like a club DJ and plays acoustic guitar ala Dave Matthews with a tinge of Jack Johnson? Indie folkster Mer is willing to bet his whole image on the hunch that you haven’t – unless you’ve heard of him, in which case he figures you’d come around sooner or later.                                                                                                                                                    
It’s safe to say 27-year-old Edmer Abante (affectionately known to everyone who knows him as “Mer”) isn’t just a musician, although he’s more excitedly motivated about music than almost any other pre-label band I’ve met. No, he’s more of a start-up marketing-guru in a sweater vest and neck tie, who knows it’s more economically feasible to “sell” oneself, than fall to the ever-ominous risks of “selling out.”

Basically, if Mer’s music Master Plan for Greatness made a bumper sticker, it’d say “Musicians do it live every day of the week.” (His buttons would read, “Hey baby, what’s your brand?)

“You build the brand, you sell the image, you sell the record,” Mer says in such a matter-of-fact, way-of-life manner that one can only assume this is his daily mantra – or nightly meditation.

Tonight, not unlike every other Wednesday during his weekly stage stint at Chicago club Mix, Mer schmoozes briefly with the bar manager and bartenders before he spots and meets a few fans who straggled in early for the show. He fits in well with the scene. Decked out in collared shirt and casual suit coat, he is as materially hip as he is savvy to the persona that this look conveys to his peers.

Mer picks up his usual vodka tonic (with lime) from the bar and momentarily works the room like a networking business man who’s got his priorities straight. There are hand shakes, smiles, a few half-hugs exchanged. Somehow, for a guy who works music like a business, Mer never forgets to come off genuinely.

Not long after Mer shakes my hand and offers me a drink, wondering if I’ve waited long (I hadn’t), he confesses what’s immediately clear in his sleek, urban folk sound and the energy with which he performs it onstage: “I want to ensure that I’m doing this for the rest of my life,” he says.

Mer grew up near the city with his first-generation Filipino parents, who moved to the states for the sake of their kids. “They came here to give their first-born son the education he deserved,” Mer laughs, a little guiltily. The statement seems ironic now; Mer dropped out of college his second year to follow his jazz dream for mainstream greatness.

Although Mom and Dad are two musically inclined artists who held infrequent jam sessions among the family while Mer was growing up, they were initially less than pleased with their son’s decision. Who could blame them, really (Mer doesn't), parents’ expectations for their kids are always high. Everyone came around in the end, as soon as it became clear their college-school-drop-out Mer knew exactly what he was doing all along.

“My mom still gets a kick out of seeing other people sing my music,” Mer says, adding that the first night he played the Chicago House of Blues (the same stage James Brown stepped foot on, he says), his parents stood in the audience and couldn’t help but feel proud.

“They loved it,” he says.

Since Mer’s college days, where he (surprise, surprise) studied marketing, Mer has endured as a constant ball of motion. He lives in Aurora (just bought a townhouse), but basically lives in his car, where he practices pre-performance scales every night he hits the stage. P.S. That means he’s in his car all the time.

“I feel so unproductive when I’m at a comfortable place at home,” he says. “It doesn’t matter where I live. I live out of my car; I love it.”

For the past six years, Mer’s jazz backing has rotated among a dozen musicians, although somehow I think he prefers it that way. And for just as long, his folk-rock act has played Chicago’s suburbs and the city proper nearly every weekend, save a few dates for tours.

He’s grown used to people looking at him incredulously, saying “We never knew that that music would come out of you; we thought you were the DJ.” Responsively, he’s used to saying, “Yep, I’m a folk singer.”

Mer makes his way almost on name recognition and face time alone. The music is all gravy to him; it’s his life’s passion. So far, it’s worked. See, you can’t deny the bald Polynesian thing.

More quickly than ever, he’s convincing people. And the more people who know his name and know his work end up wanting to know him.

Not long ago, he collaborated with Kanye West doing backup vocals for West’s rendition of “Hotel California” for a movie soundtrack. The song never made it to the big screen, but connections are always nice. He met Destiny’s Child’s Michelle Williams a while back too (schmoozing will do that for you).

Mer even landed himself a try-out for music reality show “The One.” It could’ve been a sweet gig, until the show questionnaire posed questions about his “biggest secrets” and whether he would “cheat on your significant other for camera time.”

Sure he’s learned a thing or two about the business since he started his band in all of its folksy, grassy glory. But perhaps the biggest lesson of all is this: Mer can make it if he makes it happen according to the new rules of the indie circuit.

“I think it’s evolving,” he says about the music scene, specifically the one in Chicago. “I think there’s a whole lot more power going back to the little guy.”

As the night went on, Mer talked about his career in commercial value and marketability, a means to end he hopes includes mansions and million-dollar studios. He stressed saturation and face value, necessities to a guy who firmly believes music is his only career path.

But it works for him.

Stop by his future dream studio someday and you’ll see. He’ll probably shake your hand, exchange a half-hug and ask you if you’ve waited long (you probably won’t have). He’ll offer you a drink, thank you for stopping by and tell you how marketing his brand changed his life and even bought him a mansion.

“It’s a consumers market,” he says. “You have to force-feed people your brand, otherwise you’re not going to get your music in their hands. I think you have to sell yourself.”