The $600 Boots CD is now on iTunes.
Country music singer, songwriter, and guitarist from Cuba, Missouri
Mandy Marie Luke, daughter of Sue and Monty Dale Luke, currently based in Indianapolis, Indiana is a Missouri born singer, songwriter, and guitarist. She’s what you call a triple threat musician, who grew up on a farm outside of Cuba and graduated from Cuba High School.
Recently, Mandy Marie and her band the Cool Hand Lukes launched their CD $600 Boots. They are celebrating the fact that it is for sale at Apples’ iTunes store, a benchmark for any musical group. The group is known for their rockabilly-style country music. They sometimes refer to themselves as hillbillies. Or as they sing in one of their more humorous songs, “Too dumb for New York, too ugly for LA.”
Mandy Marie never sang on stage until she started with the Cool Hand Lukes.
Mandy Marie became interested in the old-style country music by listening to her grandparents’ collection of music, which included Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, and Merle Haggard. She learned to play guitar chords and spent hours after school practicing. She and her mom went along when her country musician dad played local Missouri honkytonks.
When she was 13, her dad would throw out the challenge for her to take the stage and play along with the band. It is hard to believe considering the quality of her voice, but she did not sing with a band until partnering with the Cool Hand Lukes.
Mandy wrote the music and lyrics for all but two of the songs on $600 Boots. In a recent email she said the songs “were written in my living room or a lonely hotel room in between shows.” Some songs have a hard driving country beat, but Mandy can sing a sorrowful ballad as well. “Nothing left to do,” is one of the saddest songs you will hear.
“I’m really proud of that album, which feels weird to say because I’m hardly ever proud of anything,” said Mandy Marie. She went on to say how happy she was to work with the engineer Paul Mahern who produced it. At the same time that he was working with her group he was working on the Bob Dylan/Willie Nelson/John Mellencamp tour cuts as well as Mellencamp’s new album. She said that she and her band would sometime overhear him talking to the greats on the phone.
Mandy said about working with Mahern, “I’m praying he gives us another go and agrees to take on the next one.”
If you are from Cuba, you might enjoy the numerous local references in her songs. She mentions Voss’s, the Cuba Free Press, and Crawford County.
As far as plans to come to Cuba, Mandy stated, “We get to St. Louis fairly often but, unfortunately, no plans for Cuba. I did a Route 66 tour recently and begged the promoter to add a Cuba stop, but he sent us out to the bigger cities on the Mother Road instead, and we passed right by Cuba…with me shouting ‘this is my hometown!’ loud and proud from the back.”
Mandy is giving her hometown friends a free download of the song “The Girl is Just Gone” and hopes you enjoy the local references. (Click to stream, right click to download.)
For a sample of Mandy Marie and the Cool Hand Lukes other music visit iTunes. And if you want to give a hometown girl a boost, buy $600 Boots while you are there. It is also available for a listen and purchase at Amazon.
While she’s not a MOHick chic, she is a Cuba chic, and that’s good enough. Maybe we can get her to pen a tune about our murals. Something like, “When will they paint a mural of me, I’m almost famous and I don’t sing for free.” Well, maybe I should leave the songwriting to Mandy Marie and the Cool Hand Lukes.
Ben Roe Graphic
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