Tim Avram • From The Mongrels to 'SCORPIONS'

Tim Avram is a tattooed punk rock patriot whose songwriting skills have broken many cracks in the concrete to illuminate buried truths in the landscape of the Mid-Michigan musical scene. Ever since he first surfaced with his righteous and riotous group The Mongrels back in 2002, almost 25-years down the fractured road of contemporary America, Tim continues to write songs that have always covered a lot of topical ground.

REVIEW contributor Bo White once described Tim as a “Punk Rocker disguised as an under-the-radar Country Roots musician - a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing who grew up learning the mandolin from Zydeco Ziggie while Grandma played the banjo as she spit chew tobacco. With lyrics both thoughtful and profane, the music keeps a breakneck beat that is locked into the tightest rhythm section since Green Day kicked up the speed to overdrive.”

Born and bred in the heartland of the Saginaw Swamp, unlike many composers who specialize in writing silly love songs, another strong quality of Tim’s songwriting skills is the almost ominous Cassandra-like visionary honesty they possess to predict how things we celebrate today have a tendency to become the horrors we confront in the future.

A good reference point would be an album The Mongrels released ten years ago called 4383, which is the general latitude and longitude of mid-Michigan. Much of the topical focus is about holding on to this planet while technology and computers are in the driver’s seat; but it’s really about the intelligence of men without wisdom and how that impacts the fate of mankind. On one track Avram issues a warning: “…get your ducks in a row, machines are out there committing crimes!” and it ends in a clever wordplay, “It flows so smoothly like a grenade in a wedding cake.”

Although he hasn’t played with The Mongrels or done any solo shows in over a year, Tim certainly hasn’t disappeared.  Instead, Avram has been intensely focused on writing, recording, and hatching a new batch of material - most notably, a song he was requested to write for a major film currently in preproduction called SCORPIONS, which is  a new thriller from executive producer director Dwayne Parker and writer James Alan Ross, starring Grant Campbell and Laura Peterson.

Doing solo work for well over a decade, Avram securing an award for Best Solo Artist back in 2013 at the REVIEW”s 25^th Annual Music Awards Celebration, and says he’s been writing more than ever, creating at least 30 Mongrel songs.   “For the past five years or so I’ve been working with David Danger, and over that time together we’ve come up with probably another 30 songs.”

“James Alan Ross wrote the script for this film called. ‘SCORPIONS”, explains Tim, and he’s  been a big supporter. He believes in my music  and he’s directed movies and written scripts for many films and is a big advocate of my work. James is a novelist first & foremost and wrote Forever Green along with The Haunting of Dylan Klaypool and has won multiple awards. Currently he’s in production for the television series Paranormal Nobodies. His novel Spirit of the Woods received the 1^st Place Middle Grade Royal Dragonfly Book Award in 2020, and he’s also an accomplished screenwriter, known for the Lifetime Original Movie A Lifeguard's Obsession, and has been doing a lot of work for the Lifetime network.”

“We’ve been trying to get something together for a while now,” explains Avram. “He said he had a perfect project for me, so sent me a script. I read it a few times and came up with a song called Hello & Goodbye to go along with the narrative of the film.”

According to Avram, this new project is a short drama film. “It’s currently being filmed in New Jersey and set in Toronto, The concept and story behind SCORPIONS is strong and compelling. I really like the plotline, but don’t want to spoil it for anybody by revealing too much about it.  It has an anticipated release date of late 2025 or early 2026.”

“”When James handed me the script he said, ‘Can you write a song that would fit this?’  I read half of the script and had already started a song that kind of went along with it, so I tweaked the song here and there and finished writing it to make it fit the story.”

Although Tim is stylistically grounded in Punk rock music, as far as this particular song goes he says there’s a few softer edges to it now that he’s older, but still retains that rhythmic fervor and intensity that Punk rock is known for.

“What I’ve been doing is  working with David Danger for almost a decade now and he owns and operates DNA Studios here in Saginaw. He’s been a drummer on the scene for years now, and  he’s recorded a few bands.  He’s played with a lot of groups and sits in with bands like The Temperpadics.  He recorded The Mongrels last album, along with a few other bands like Badmouth and Germ Squirrel. He’s out there hustling.”

“We’ve got this band project called Shred City and about half an album completed, including this new song that will be featured in the film,” concludes Tim. “We’ll probably be releasing it next month as a single. I’m not sure if we’ll release the album as an EP or as an album, because we’re about five songs into it and still working on stuff, but it all depends on how badly I want to get it finished”

“It’s a cool opportunity. Hello & Goodbye will be released on all the streaming sites, and I’m really stoked about this project and am still out there making music!”