BIO
The music of triple-threat songwriter-musician-producer Paul Mark has mystifying critics and barflies for decades. With a striking lyrical edge and an encyclopedic facility with American roots music, Mark has curated a top-drawer original song catalog that draws the most discerning listeners. Mark’s latest collection, Gravity, on New York City-based Radiation Records, completes a trilogy of albums that has pushed Mark’s songwriting and recording into a space well beyond his blues and Americana bona fides. Following up on Stowaways and Smartest Man In the Room, Gravity is Mark’s 11th commercially-released album. His recorded output spans several decades, embracing the roots spectrum with a relentlessly original take on blues, rock, soul, country, surf, cabaret, R’nB, and old-timey sounds.
Mark is best known for his unique songwriting, his roadhouse-ruff vocal delivery and for the raucous barroom sounds of his urban blues/roots rock ensemble, The Van Dorens. His originals such as When God Finds the Time, Fritos, BBQ and Scotch, I’m Going Blind, One More Coat of Paint, How Do the Blind Become So Famous?, and The Drinks are On Me take on traditional genres and weave them into contemporary, vital music. Mark praises his collaborative musical family, the Van Dorens, a revolving-door collective of dedicated musicians and engineering contributors. He’s said that the family name was sourced from the schlock exploitation flick High School Confidential. Over several decades he’s performed a thousand-plus of sets of live music at clubs and festivals with his band.
Mark has written and recorded hundreds of commercially-released songs (see the Lyrics page). Before setting up his own studio in New York City he cut albums at numerous world-class facilities including Ardent Studios (Memphis), Compass Point Studios (The Bahamas), The Music Shed (New Orleans) and Dockside Studios (Maurice, Louisiana). Most frequent among his session collaborators is the Grammy-winning Memphis producer/engineer Jeff Powell, who to date has collaborated on seven Paul Mark albums. Mark’s also worked with Grammy-winning producers Jim Gaines, Terry Manning and the late John Hampton. Mark’s most recently released several vintage cover tracks, including a trash-guitar version of the Yardbirds classic Heart Full of Soul and a deep-soul guitar instrumental version of Grace Slick’s White Rabbit. Radiation Records has also pre-released several singles from Gravity, including the holiday original December at the P.O. and the download single Con Man VIP, a blistering take on a certain White House occupant. On his instrumental roots guitar CDs, titled Roadside Americana and Mirage Cartography, Mark pays quiet homage to country blues greats such as Blind Blake, Mississippi John Hurt and Rev. Gary Davis, as well as next generation influences such as John Fahey, Jorma Kaukonen and Leo Kottke.
Paul Mark is principal owner of Radiation Records Inc. and its publishing affiliate Last Warning Music. Both were founded in 1995. Mark grew up in Connecticut and attended University of CT and got bachelor’s degrees in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and English. Mark then attended grad school at New York University where he earned a Masters in English. There he was nearly finished with his Ph.D in English when a recording contract halted his studies. After traveling in Europe and living in Paris for an extended period he returned to Manhattan where he’s lived for the past 25 years. Mark toured for decades with his band, normally performing three sets a night in bars and clubs. In retrospect he says his worldview was permanently changed by the years of long van rides, budget hotels and lousy on-stage audio systems.
