Mandy Mercier, known for impactful live performances and lifelong connections in the Austin music scene, died on Monday, March 27, on her 74th birthday., said Mercier died due to Parkinson's disease, worsened by a case of COVID-19 last year. The Austin artist spent her final years living in Wimberley, Texas. Mercier was put into hospice care in December while living in the Symphony of Wimberley assisted living facility.
As an accomplished singer and instrumentalist, Mercier played shows with and in the bands of artists like Townes Van Zandt, Lucinda Williams, Butch Hancock, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore in the generative Eighties Austin singer-songwriter scene. In an excellent 2001 profile on Mercier entitled “’s Margaret Moser wrote: “Singer, songwriter, guitarist, fiddler, lover, and free spirit wrapped up in one, Mandy Mercier is less a jack-of-all-trades than a force of nature.
For all her ball o' fire energy, Mercier will tell you that romantic involvement makes for better songs than relationships. There was guitarist Tom Pacheco from the Hellhounds, in which she also played. There was Blaze Foley . There was Ray Wylie Hubbard, with whom she toured and shot pool. It's an attraction she describes as getting"turned on [by men] because of how they played and what they knew based on what they wrote about -- what they represented.".