He also has a solo career and performs with the Jay Ungar and Molly Mason Family Band.

[2] In 1998, he graduated with a creative writing degree from Bowdoin College in Maine and he then moved to New York City.

[3] As a teenager Merenda started out playing guitar with the band Skarotum with his brother Chris.

He started playing drums in elementary school, started playing the guitar in sixth grade and picked up the banjo after he met Ruth Ungar in 1998, daughter of Jay Ungar and Lyn Hardy.

In 2008, he and Ruth released their first duo cd, The Honeymoon Agenda, on their own record label, Humble Abode Music.