Chris Merenda is known to many Seacoast music fans as the force behind Chewy. Others may know him as a former member of the ska band Skarotum. Now people are getting to know him as the drummer for The Mammals, his brother's band.

Michael Merenda, like his brother, is from Durham, where they formed the humorously named and fondly remembered band Skarotum as teenagers. After high school, Chris stayed in the area, going to UNH, while Michael went northeast to Bowdoin in Maine.

A return, with The Mammals and a reunion of Skarotum, to the Stone Church in Newmarket on Friday, Nov. 26, is a special homecoming. Pierce Woodward, Mammals bass player and another Skarotum alumnus, is also from Durham. It's one of Woodward's final shows with the band, as he's pursuing a solo career.

The Mammals have quietly been taking hold of the folk and Americana music world. Based in western Massachusetts, the seeds for the group were sown in the late 1990s when Michael Merenda met Ruth Ungar at a bar in New York City. Later, while in Massachusetts, Michael met Tao Rodriguez-Seeger at a music gear shop. Michael was working, Tao was shopping.

While the three musicians are the core of the group, Chris Merenda and Woodward make it a quintet that's been full-time since the very end of 2003. Woodward joined before Chris.

"New Year's Eve last year," said Chris Merenda in a phone interview on the road between gigs down the East Coast in support of the group's latest CD, Rock That Babe (Signature Sounds). "It was a good time for me to start. Why not ... start the year fresh, a new project."

The Mammals are a supergroup of sorts. While the term is usually held for formations of established music stars into another group, such as Blind Faith (Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Steve Winwood), Asia (Steve Howe, Geoff Downes, John Wetton and Carl Palmer) or Cry Cry Cry (Lucy Kaplansky, Richard Shindell and Dar Williams), The Mammals have a pedigree that makes for a supergroup.

Tao is the grandson of Pete Seeger and has played with him periodically since Tao was 14. Ruth is the daughter of Grammy-award-winning fiddler Jay Ungar. And of course the other three men were in Skarotum.

The core trio melds banjo and fiddle playing into something different. The instrumentation begs for Americana, early 20th-century folk, and roots music. However, band members were not content with just that.

They are modernists. They like to rock, to make people think and react.

The addition of bass and drums allowed them to approach music like a rock band, but they don't ignore history and tradition. Just as music was not labeled or placed in genre-specific bins a century ago, The Mammals play what they want and how they want it.

Michael's songwriting reflects his early days with ska.

"It had a pretty profound effect," said Michael. "With ska music is political overtones, like with '80s bands like The Specials and English Beat. They made a big deal over being two-toned. They incorporated blacks and whites together... bringing up unity and organizing, then it opens the doors for other political overtures. That stuck with me beyond the ska. There's a delicate balance between delivering a message and not being preachy."

This ideology has led to songs such as "The Bush Boys," which is decidedly anti-President Bush. However, the band's content covers all moods. Instrumentals, traditionals, fun, serious.

Even the band name is intentionally nondescript.

"I think it's an all-inclusive title," said Ruth on her mobile phone from a cafe in Columbia, S.C. "It doesn't describe the music at all. It doesn't sound like a string band or a rock band. We didn't want a name that ended in 'Ramblers.' We like the idea of having a name that keeps people guessing."

While more and more acts are coerced to stay within a single style, fans appreciate The Mammals for bouncing around genres with reckless abandon. They drape Americana around themselves like the Union Jack, but it's a tattered, well-worn and respected flag that's been across the countryside and absorbed its many influences.

The Mammals are young, mostly in their 20s (Tao's the eldest at 31), but their music is nearly timeless. Whether it's a medley of traditional tunes, an original song of observational substance or an instrumental that could have been taken from an acid-laced contra dance, there's always an homage to the past. Often their live shows come off as a hootenanny of sorts, since each of the three lead members sing, harmonize and craft songs for the band. The raw, energetic sound is organic.

Maybe they should thank the filmmaking Coen brothers for bringing bluegrass and Americana back to our consciousness with the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which could be followed by a tip of the hat to Anthony Minghella's inclusion of Sacred Harp and early 20th-century Appalachian folk in the film Cold Mountain. Those pop culture successes have certainly helped music like that of The Mammals to reemerge.

Unlike other current Americana bands that bridge punk and modern sensibilities, the traditional sound is ever-present with The Mammals, be it Ruth's heartbreaking fiddle, a jangly guitar from one of the guys or an earnest, folky acoustic guitar.

But don't call them bluegrass. Michael is adamant about the differentiation. Bluegrass is a hybrid formed decades after old-time Americana began. It received mainstream acceptance thanks to artists such as Bill Monroe. Bluegrass is a jazzy style, with its structure being about solos. Old-time, Americana and roots all have a structure of each group member playing together along the same melody and ushering in improvisation.

Michael learned this lesson the minute he was handed a banjo.

"The style of guitar playing I taught myself was similar to the claw-hammer banjo. I was doing something like it, not using picks, just slapping the strings," he said.

He was with Ruth visiting her parents when they offered him a banjo.

"I started picking it like a bluegrass player," Michael continued. "And (Ruth's mother) said 'no bluegrass in my house!' Once you get to know the history and geography, there's a big difference."

Despite his guitar-playing technique, it didn't occur to him to implement that on the banjo immediately, but he was perfect for it. The claw-hammer banjo style gets its name for the way it's played. The player's index and middle fingers knock the strings like a piano hammer hits a piano string, while the thumb plucks the short string on the top. Claw-thumb; hammer-fingers.

He started with drums as a youngster before he learned the guitar. Chris did as well. And they blame/thank a cousin for that.

"We both started as drummers back in elementary school," said Chris. "Inspired by our cousin, who had a drum kit. He was rockin'. Our parents were psyched, as you can imagine. We got a full kit. My brother started playing guitar beginning around sixth grade. Drums were our first love, besides hockey."

Michael has professionally played both instruments, but he never planned on music as a vocation. Ruth also wasn't looking to be a professional musician. They both had dreams of theater. Michael moved to New York to pursue that career after graduating from Bowdoin. Ruth was in the city to act, for which she also went to school.

"I'm a performer," Ruth said. "I came to the fiddle a little bit late, only about six years ago. After I met Mike, we started to play together and I was singing with him. I decided to remember how to play the fiddle in 1999. The Mammals started playing in 2001, and I began feeling confident with my fiddle playing."

Growing up with a singer and fiddle master as parents, Ruth was always around music. She said that the fiddle always felt comfortable in her hand. She practiced the ukulele a bit when she was 12. She sang mostly then, which is where the performing angle really came into play.

"Most people think I'm, like, 22, so they assume that I've been playing for five years means since high school, but I'm 28, and there's a big gap in there where I didn't do music at all."

Tao, on the other hand, has played music his whole life. He grew up in Nicaragua, where the country's own musical culture had an effect on him. Not that his grandfather, Pete Seeger, didn't. He has performed alongside Seeger since his early teen years. Of the band members, Tao often gets credit for the driving guitar rhythms and energetic melodies, though they each write music for the group to play.

Michael and Ruth left the comforts of their backgrounds and met in the middle, and there was Tao.

"I was being exposed to older traditions," said Michael. "It was exciting for (Ruth) to play music with someone young. The professional traditional musicians were an older crowd."

This may have been a new audience, but Michael has experience with differing crowds.

"I got a lot of experience with jazz, funk, punk because of playing drums and simultaneously with the guitar, writing acoustic songs in my room," said Michael.

"I've picked up some banjo, too," said Chris. "It's been fun to learn the past couple years. The Mammals came along at a great time. I wanted to do music full time and it was getting harder to do with Chewy."

One Chewy bandmate "keeps getting promoted" and another is married and just had a baby, according to Chris.

Apparently ska music veterans can move from that energetic, bouncy form to this one with little setback.

"People think The Mammals are high energy, positive music," said Michael. "We can also write and have a lot to say about what's going on today. We can be extraordinarily fun and deathly serious in the same four to five minutes."

The Mammals and Skarotum will play the Stone Church in Newmarket (603-659-6321) on Friday, Nov. 26 at 9 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the door.