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Lastest news from Paul Mark and Radiation Records
Live Garage Summit
Performing Underneath the Queensboro Bridge
For three days in summer 2024 Paul Mark & The Van Dorens hung out in a vacant taxi garage underneath the Queensboro Bridge in Long Island City, performing very live and very loud with pro audio and video recording crews on hand to capture it all. Playing through relic guitars, vintage amps, a ’57 Hammond organ with honked out Leslie amp, and yeah, live drums. Raw and ruff…If it sounds great it ain’t “retro”.
The first YouTube release is a warehouse blast-off performance of the Mark original Shakin’ In My Head, which debuted on the band’s album IndigoVertigo back in 2002.
Next up is The Drinks Are On Me, a polished gem for which no live performance had ever been recorded — despite it’s having been performed live hundreds of times before fixated (inebriated?) late night audiences. The song debuted in 1991 on Go Big Or Go Home, the first commercially released album by Paul Mark & The Van Dorens, which was recorded in Memphis TN.
Also on the garage set list is Times Have Changed, a swinging original written by Mark as set closer.
You can listen and download all the Garage Summit audio tracks at BandCamp/PaulMark. More tracks to be added to this set soon. The full album is slated for release on Spotify in early 2025.
Film in post production: These garage sessions will eventually become the centerpiece thread of a long-form documentary probing the 3-decade plus saga of Paul Mark & The Van Dorens. The film will include lots of live music, interviews and insights from collaborators over the years. Stay tuned, more info and more real music to come.
Blue Walls
Live Revival of Folk Blues Track, Originally from "Trick Fiction"
From Paul Mark:
In front of live mics and cameras in New York City with long-time collaborator James Strain, a style purist who always keeps you pointed towards musical true north.
Over the years James and I would joke that we should cut an album of duets – we’d rehearsed together for so many years in prep for band sessions that we began to think we sounded pretty good playing without them. Well maybe…
The original Fear of Grief track (listen here) was recorded as part of the album Trick Fiction by Paul Mark & The Van Dorens, released in 2006. Given the slam-bang tone of much of that album (opening track was Fritos, BBQ and Scotch), I’d intentionally written a couple of change-of-pace songs just before those sessions began. The idea was to slow things down a bit. Grief was a folk ballad that resulted.
“‘Trick Fiction’, recorded in Memphis at Ardent Studios, is jam-packed with killer guitar and some of the coolest lyrics we’ve heard in quite some time!…A definite breath of fresh air on the blues scene, Paul Mark and the Van Dorens have hit it big with ‘Trick Fiction’.”
– Music City Blues
Rich References
Under the Influence of Charlie Rich's "Just Like Old Times"
From Paul Mark:
In the spirit of acknowledging influences, we just released a live-to-video cover of Just Like Old Times, a seldom-heard chestnut recorded by Charlie Rich back in the late 1960s before he hit it big.
Rich’s uncanny vocal talent and piano style, firmly set in blues and gospel, along with his brooding songwriting, shook me as a kid, and his music became a persistent inspiration. His bone-deep, much-covered originals, like No Headstone on My Grave, Feel Like Going Home and Who Will the Next Fool Be leave a mark on anyone who writes lyrics. His best original songs were all penned long before he was famous.
I came upon Rich’s version of Just Like Old Times many years ago and it’s been on my list of warm-up tunes ever since. There’s a concise simpatico between the church-meets country counterpoint of the keyboard and the lyrics that slide from nostalgic pining to that gothic wind-up in the final breakdown verse. When I play it I usually pause to lament that I’ll never deliver a song as good as Charlie Rich. But few ever did.
Outwardly cordial but privately reticent and moody, Charlie drank a good amount of gin in his day, sadly (check out his confessional gem Sitting and Thinking). And for some fans it never quite registered that he died in 1992 at 62. Memphis friends tell me that Rich is regularly spotted hitchhiking with Elvis just outside the city limits.
The original
Rich’s recording of Just Like Old Times appeared on Set Me Free (1968), his first album on the Epic label.
The countrypolitan sound was well established in Nashville by then (Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, Jim Reeves, George Jones, etc.). But Rich considered himself a jazz musician first and had always steered away from straight country. A jazz-schooled pianist with a velvety, masculine vocal delivery, born and raised in Arkansas? With a recalcitrant, reticent personality?…Try sorting all that out.
Since his first records with Sam Phillips on Sun, Rich’s robust, eclectic talents had been recognized across the industry. And in 1959 he had a hit with the self-penned Lonely Weekends, which sure sounded a lot like an Elvis outtake. But after years of writing and recording on several labels Rich’s big follow-up hit never arrived.
Then came the prophetically titled Set Me Free. In the 1960s Producer Billy Sherrill and Owen Bradley (along with studio cats like Chet Atkins, Floyd Cramer and Pig Robbins, frequently uncredited in liner notes) had come up with the countrypolitan style of sophisticated Nashville production. Sweeping string sections, full choruses, tinkling lounge piano, deep reverb, all topped with soaring soul vocals. Hit-maker Sherrill convinced Rich that his next success was waiting for him on Epic if he’d take a headfirst dive into the corporate countrypolitan sound.
Rich was willing to try anything so he gingerly stepped into Sherill’s fat, orchestrated country melange. Set Me Free on Epic, which included Just Like Old Times, sold enough to warrant several follow up LPs, during which the formula was heightened and perfected. The Fabulous Charlie Rich LP on Epic is the middle step.
The bomb finally hit in 1973 with the Sherrill-produced Behind Closed Doors (right). You know you saw that record cover among the cassettes (8-tracks?) in your crazy uncle’s car, right?
With lush production and smart song selection, Behind Closed Doors included two smash crossover hits, The Most Beautiful Girl and the title cut, that established Rich almost overnight as one of the biggest stars of the 1970s in any musical genre. At this point the moody Rich was not even playing piano on the sessions (far as I can tell it was blind legend Pig Robbins laying down the piano session tracks). Rich’s wife Margaret Ann has said that by then Charlie lost interest in the studio time required to build arrangements.
True there were some who thought the country-meets-pop sound of Behind Closed Doors was overly commercial and syrupy. I just liked hearing Rich sing, and the songwriting is superb on several of the tracks on this career-making LP.
Songwriters
Just Like Old Times was written by Papa Don Schroeder (a Florida-based DJ and sometime record producer) and organist Spooner Oldham (left), a familiar figure to those who read liner notes. Alabama-born Oldham wrote and played on dozens of sensational soul tracks, including prime-time albums by Aretha, Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge. He later recorded regularly with Neil Young, among many others.
Rich references
Aside from his records, the best place to learn about Charlie Rich are the masterful essays by music writer Peter Guralnick from his classic collections, Feel Like Going Home (1971) and Lost Highway (1979, original faded cover shown from my bookshelf). Rich wrote the classic song Feel Like Going Home after his interviewer friend Guralnick’s book title.
Guralnick’s research revealed some of the biographical darkness that informs Rich’s life and music even after he became world famous in the mid-70s as a crowd-pleasing crooner. After devouring Guralnick’s books as a kid musician I wanted to become both Charlie Rich and an investigative journalist.
Trying On Handel
17th Century Aria Is Given a Live Run Through in the Studio
Why Handel’s Lascia?
Tess Primack mentioned she was prepping for an audition that required proficiency in early 18th century opera stylings, a genre outside her show tune wheelhouse. I sent over a couple Italian arias lodged in my head after years of closeted listening to European classical music.
Next time we met I sat down and played for her not another Ray Charles impromptu but instead a rendition of George Frederick Handel’s Lascia that I’d picked out by ear a while back. When Tess jumped in to sing it was clear her faking was more polished than mine. We agreed that a formal duet would be a good exercise. What started as fun then turned into an intermittent obsession with the track and a sequence of dinner-then-rehearsal sessions.
The final live recording, including video, is here.
Some History
The aria was first performed in 1711 in London as part of the opera Rinaldo, which is generally recognized as the first Italian opera written specifically for the English stage. In fact the Lascia melody was used in earlier works by Handel and was recycled for Rinaldo.
The set up: At the time of the Crusades a maiden Almirena is abducted and imprisoned. Before her captor she weeps over her separation from her lover Rinaldo. Her attentive captor, turns out, has fallen in love-at-first sight with her.
About Tess
She’s a singer/actor working here in the New York City theater world. Graduated from Carnegie Mellon’s Drama program. Check out her impressive credentials at www.TessPrimack.com.
Tess is also my niece. When she shows up here for meals we usually end up in my studio tossing around music ideas. It can get ugly.
You can also listen to to our earlier collaboration Once Upon a Weekend, a cabaret-blues original included on the album Stowaways.
– Paul Mark
Feed Your Head!
Paul Mark Gives The Airplane's "White Rabbit" the Soul Strat Treatment
Feed Your Head!
The latest single from Paul Mark & The Van Dorens is a drastic makeover of the Jefferson Airplane’s psycho-profundo classic White Rabbit. The take-off point is Mark’s vintage Stratocaster sound that launches the trippy masterpiece into deep-soul guitar orbit.
“This cover track began as one of those closeted pandemic lock-down projects,” says Mark from his Manhattan studio. “After lining up a number of possible remakes White Rabbit seemed to be the most weirdly apt for a keep-it-under-3-minutes Strat workout. Catchy, familiar and ripe for a cockeyed string-bending lift off. I’d always had one little complaint about the original (don’t send me hate mail): the mix always seemed a bit off – the instrumental punch had been somewhat washed out and rendered too foggy.
“To feed my head I decided to retro-attack with a deep-soul guitar version, crisply mixed,” he added. “The idea of me singing on this track never entered the equation. That would’ve been like attempting to play the Frankenstein monster after watching Karloff’s performance.”
Lead singer Grace Slick had written and performed White Rabbit well before she joined Jefferson Airplane. But the first commercial pressing of her song was on the band’s 1966 album Surrealistic Pillow. In the decades since its release generations of listeners have wallowed in the track’s druggy Lewis Carrol ruminations and Alice’s allegorical search for logic in a looking glass world. The bolero rhythm – rarely heard in rock music – is a wicked compositional device, itself a sort of dervish-inducing hallucinogen. And Slick’s stagey enunciation of her cherry-picked Carroll quotes evokes the crazed rantings you hear in high-camp horror movies.
“I’ve always thought White Rabbit was hands-down the best single to come out of San Francisco in the 60s,” says Mark. “It’s as trippy-transcendent as anything even the Beatles or Dylan did in those heady years. Go ask Hunter Thompson – references to White Rabbit turn up like yesterday’s roaches in his writing.”
The lead instrument on the track is a 30-year old maple-necked tobacco-sunburst ’57 reissue Stratocaster.
“The guitar’s tricked out with oversized frets and Texas Special pickups which have extra coil windings to generate a slightly hotter tone,” adds Mark. “The guitar signal was split and channeled through several separately-mic’d amps, including a 1964 Fender Deluxe Reverb, all of which are blended in the final mix to achieve a hyper-clean classic-quack Strat sound. I aggressively played with my bare fingers (no pick used here) to get that pull-and-snap attack on the fretboard. As you can probably hear I was crazy-riding the whammy bar throughout. During the sessions I went through two tremolo bars and stripped the bar’s insertion threads in the bridge. Definitely a freeing approach to performance. But murder on the instrument…Guitar’s now in the shop.”
All instruments were recorded in Mark’s Manhattan home studio. A Fender Jazz Bass and a military field drum make up the basic rhythm track, along with an old Guild D25M acoustic guitar.
Soundtrack News: “Death in Texas”
"Dead End Town" Revs Up the New Bruce Dern/Lara Flynn Boyle Movie
Soundtrack News: Death in Texas
Paul Mark’s heavy urban blues track Dead End Town from the album IndigoVertigo has been contracted for extended play in the soundtrack of the new indie flick Death In Texas, starring Bruce Dern, Lara Flynn Boyle, Ronnie Blevins, Stephen Lang and directed by Scott Winhauser. Filming began in late 2019 and, after pandemic-related delays, is now slated for a late 2021 premier in Hollywood.
“Me and the Van Dorens played Dead End Town at every gig for four years straight,” said Mark. “Last exit before the deluge. Fingers hurt when I think back on it. Hope the movie’s good.”
Gravity Levitates Above the Madding Crowd
Paul Mark's 11th studio album rises to meet the noise
Gravity Levitates
“Have you heard? Gravity is failing.” The opening line from the title track of Paul Mark and The Van Dorens newest release Gravity immediately draws you into a clanking carnival of pop Americana spiked with Mark’s trademark lyricism. With one eye on the boundaries of roots-Americana songwriting and the other on a society in disarray, Gravity is Mark’s 11th studio album.
Asked if politics informed his latest collection, Mark’s is cryptic. “Other than Brecht and Bob Marley, I don’t really care much for overtly political lyrics. Maybe because the half-life of political lyrics is often predictably short. The best songs carry their own context with them, they don’t rely on the context of today’s news to make them reverberate.”
The songs on Gravity nonetheless evince a writer who’s been following current events. A lot. And with its release date almost exactly coinciding with a crescendo of public unrest
in the American streets, Gravity similarly roils with rebellion below its masterful arrangements and lyrical slight-of-hand. With a dollop of Mark’s trademark wit.
“All the Gravity tracks were written, recorded and mixed long before the crises of 2020 hit,” says Mark. “So no, I was not sitting at the piano two months ago reading headlines then speed-writing songs about the day’s news. Personal songwriters generally write about personal things. Maybe what’s happening now is that we’re living through an extended time when the personal is particularly political.
“It’s really unlikely that a song that explicitly describes events, or worse, beliefs, can work,” he adds. “Songwriters are smarter when the story they write gives details of some unreliable narrator’s reaction to some event or belief. Indirectly telling the story this way drills down quicker to the facts and into the mystery of the situation. Which is always more provocative for the listener.”
Mark says the final song written for Gravity, completed in January of this year, was Waiting Round for You. “A New Orleans piano song, with a melodic nod to Ray Davies and The Kinks. Not political at all. Although maybe a song about a person who’s never showing up on time might just be a little bit political,” he adds with a wink.
Nonetheless, the coincidence of Gravity‘s release with the current upheaval in the streets reveals a remarkable creative prescience. “I do read the papers. Every day,” Mark notes. “And yeah, I do get angry. Sometimes about stuff that hasn’t even happened yet.”
Hiway UK Revisited: Upending a British Invasion Classic
Hiway UK Revisited: Upending a British Invasion Classic
With his latest single Paul Mark covers Heart Full of Soul which was written by Graham Goulman and first charted by Brit-rock innovators the Yardbirds in 1965. Recorded in New York City, Mark takes this classic track and weaves his trademark trash-can vocal style over showcase vintage guitar sounds.
“I listened to this track all the time when I was a kid,” says Mark. “It was on an LP on the Epic label titled The Yardbirds Greatest Hits. Jeff Beck’s mind-blowing guitar part was the centerpiece of the track. This was before Zeppelin or Are You Experienced? or metal music of any sort.”
So the sonic impact was very strong. The guitar was being pushed to this higher energy level, much higher than, say, the Beatles. Blues dudes in Chicago were already creating these sorts of powerful electric sounds way before then. But it was exciting to hear young white kids from Britain doing it.
“I’d been playing this song since I was a teenager, fooling around with different arrangements. Awhile back I demo’d a couple of acoustic guitar versions of it. Then about a year ago a good friend of mine gave me an obscure vintage electric guitar, a really cool looking instrument.”
“I pulled out some old pedals and amps to see how the guitar sounded, using Heart Full of Soul as a trial song. Before you know it I was producing a finished track.”
Mark’s complete production notes, including a history of the Contessa guitar used on the track, are included in the liner notes that appear on the CD version of Heart Full of Soul.
Vaudeville Caberet and Brechtian Angst Stew Up on Stowaways
Saloon-Sonic Piano Sits Center Stage on PM's Latest CD Release
Stowaways cuts a new creative path, with Paul Mark performing on piano on every one of the ten new cabaret-ready tracks. It’s Mark’s 10th studio release, recorded in Manhattan and released in late 2015.
Time-worn vocals and transcendent songwriting sit front and center in a soundscape that fuses dystopian rants with romantic lullabys. A full string section is used on several tracks, lending a nostalgic counterpoint to Mark’s world-weary crank vocals.
“Maybe some folks’ll be happy to hear that on this record I’ve set aside the guitar for a spell? I think my neighbors were pleased, anyway,” says Mark. “Actually the upright piano and strings open up all sorts of contrasts and tonal possibilities that are real different from the straight-ahead guitar approach. It’s a texture that sits okay with the sort of music I’ve been writing lately.”
The new collection is true to the lyrical density and backhanded irony familiar to listeners of Mark’s previous work. He also plays acoustic bass, guitars and keyboards, along with a junkbox full of pawn shop instruments. The set includes a cover of Mack the Knife that harkens back not to Bobby Darin’s familiar ’59 swing hit but rather to the world-gone-mad Brecht/Weill original from 1928.
The new CD was co-mixed by Mark and his long-time collaborator, Memphis music maven Jeff Powell, and assisted in the control room by Lucas Peterson, who’s contributed engineering expertise to numerous Paul Mark projects. “I’m grateful both those guys are still willing to work with me, I’d be lost without them,” says Mark. “Actually I suspect the only reason they hang is because I usually pick up the booze tab during the sessions.”
Smartest Man
Groundbreaking new standard for alternative urban blues
WHERE IS THIS??
Smartest Man in the Room is the latest roots rock standard from Paul Mark & the Van Dorens.
If you’re waiting to hear this sorta Rad-Records industrial noise production on your favorite rock radio, TV-talent show, Internet-soft-rock stream broadcast, well, don’t hold your breath. Deep inhale…then step outa that little world for a second and check into this stink bomb of a record. Tired of corporate-controlled culture? Had enough of the celebrity-infused rainbow of nobody-gives-a-sh#*-except-to-make-some-green sounds mechanically pulsing out of your ear buds? Well then Smartest Man is the I’m-so-fed-up-I’m-gonna-sleep-in-a-tent record you need to hear.
Smartest Man in the Room is a roots-rock dynamite stick lobbed into today’s music-biz garbage culture cocktail party. This production assembles a whole new model of what today’s music can and should be. Raw and original, this set of thematically-connected blues-based performances jabs a thumb in the eye of not just the music
industry – yeah, easy target – but it goes after the big boys, the NYC and LA 1% who hold court over what can and can’t be said in the cultural marketplace. Fasten your frayed seat belt – the cats in charge are going to freak when they hear – and see – Smartest Man. As will first-time listeners to Paul Mark. Even the smart ones.
Oh, and you can dance to it. This stew-pot of lyrical provocation and warehouse noise – created with iconoclastic abandon by P.Mark and his Van Dorens crack team – was custom fabricated out of the NYC-street scene and infused with the we-just-need-to-do-this attitude that, 15 years later, you found out was the common thread to all the cool records you always loved.
Smartest Man was recorded in New Orleans and Memphis. The audio tones crank and dive in a swirl of lyrical humor and accusation, and the production reflects everything sound engineers were told NOT to do in school. Mark’s songwriting once again points to that strange poetry dance between contemplation and gut feel, and the band’s groove sticks hard to the seismic pulse of the street. Yeah, you definitely can move to it.
Sure you can download all the tracks. But if you do you’ll miss the cover art. Doesn’t matter? Well, someday you may learn. Get this CD. And maybe things will begin to change.
Screw the publicity gibberish…Check out this YouTube vid of the Texas-tinged cover of Dylan’s Don’t Ya Tell Henry. Or for you smart guys, watch the title toon vid, sweating with current-events accusation. If you aren’t getting it, go ask your teacher.
Coat of Paint Premier Single from “Smartest Man”
Raucous CD/Download Single Explodes with Warehouse Ambience
One More Coat of Paintwill be released on April 20, 2012! This brand new song, penned by Mark, is the first single from Paul Mark and the Van Dorens’ soon to be released CD Smartest Man in the Room.
The new track was recorded in New Orleans, and is the first taste of the band’s crazed-warehouse sound that evolved during the sessions. “This CD pushes at the edge a bit harder, I’d say,” says Mark. “There’s this industrial grit tone that we were shooting for – the kinda sound that would scare a dog – and this first track catches a bit of that.”
Listen to a sample here. Go here to get a copy of the CD Single or to download an MP3 version!
The complete new CD Smartest Man in the Room will be released in late May 2012.
“We figured it was a good idea to give our friends a taste of what the band’s been up to,” Mark says. “Smartest Man will be out in late May, so this track is a bit of a preview. Or a warning. Whatever.”
Smartest Man in the Room is Born in New Orleans
Raw Blues Originals Recorded in the Crescent City
A new collection of music by Paul Mark & the Van Dorens is currently in postproduction and is slated for release in early 2012. The new CD is to be titled Smartest Man in the Room and release on Radiation Records.
Co-producing the sessions with Mark is long-time collaborator and Memphis music maestro Jeff Powell. Most of the basic tracks were recorded in Summer 2011 at the Music Shed, one of the premier working studios in the New Orleans.
“I largely succeeded in keeping the musicians out of the bars for several long spells, so we ended up with some really great tracks,” says Mark. “Of course no one’s perfect, and as a result there are now several establishments in the French Quarter where we will never be welcomed again.
“New Orleans is one of those places where all the horrors of its past make you believe you could live there for some time with interest,” says Mark. “Like Berlin. Like New York. Like Paris, San Francisco. The chill factor…it worked well for us.”
After his acoustic guitar departure (Mirage Cartography) Mark and the band are once again working in the muscular roots rock tradition of the Van Dorens. “For me there was a good year of lonely finger-picking, working on Mirage. Now my mind has regressed into the realm of troubadour blues-rock,” says Mark. “It was nice while it lasted.”
Gold Medal to Mirage Cartography Cover Art
Society of Illustrators Selects CD Cover from Hundreds of Entries
The Society of Illustratorshas awarded its 53rd annual gold medal in advertising artwork to the design and cover artwork of Paul Mark’s recently released collection of acoustic guitar instrumentals titledMirage Cartography(RDTN 5909). The remarkable gatefold cover illustration to the Radiation Records release was created by Chris Buzelli (www.ChrisBuzelli.com).
The prestigious award competition was judged by a broad panel of illustrators and art directors who selected the winner from a field of nearly 1,000 entries from across many industries. “I’m just really proud and thrilled that we won,” says Buzelli. “It’s sort of like the Oscars for illustrators and art directors.
“I really connected to the title of the album,” he added. “I listened to one of the first tracks on the album and I was hooked. The album played in the background while I painted the cover.”
Founded in 1901, the NYC-based Society of Illustrators’ (www.societyillustrators.org) ongoing mission is to provide illustrators with a center to discuss, demonstrate and exhibit their work. Over the decades its august history has included participatory roles by some of America’s greatest illustrators, including Maxfield Parish, N.C. Wyeth, Charles Dana Gibson and Frederic Remington.
A gallery show celebrating the year’s award winners will take place from Feb. 23, 2011 through March 19 at the Society’s headquarters in New York City. At the show’s official opening on March 4 gold medals will be awarded to Chris for his brilliant illustration and to Paul Mark as art director of the project.
“I could tell that Paul understood how to get the best work out of an artist,” says Chris. “I’m sure it had something to do with his experience as a musician. He said to me one of the best things that an art director could say to an illustrator: ‘I just want you to do your thing.’”
Read the entire Radiation Records press release. See the complete 3-panel cover art here, and the internal panels of the CD package here.
Guitar Dreamscape Mirage Cartography Paints With Sound
Instrumental Roots Guitar at Its Most Refined
The new CD from Paul Mark, titled Mirage Cartography, hits the street on Sept. 22, 2010, a much anticipated guitar instrumental collection that brims a with the introspective tunefulness and compositional depth familiar to fans of his earlier instrumental CD, Roadside Americana.
But with Mirage Cartography the melodies and the backwoods instrumentation are pushed even further into the meditative wilderness, with Mark’s tranquil approach and showcase guitar technique flowing richly through each song. The styles vary unexpectedly, from Piedmont fingerpicking, to lap steel tranquility, to 12-string whip-saw flat-picking to straight-up ragtime blues. And lots of detours in between.
“It was time for me to take a break from the band and the road work and get back to the acoustic sound,” says Mark. “I’m not one to whine on about mysterious inspirations from afar. But the project came to me relatively quickly as a whole, with each track complimenting some other track and reverberating in a kind of sonic weave. A rootsy, organic concept took hold, with every idea feeding off another. Very invigorating and satisfying to pull it all together, though there were months of woodsheding required to get my hands back in shape for this type of playing.”
The entire CD of acoustic guitar dreamscapes was composed by Mark and was recorded in New York City and in Memphis TN. All the instruments throughout were played by Mark, with the exception of a dreamy blues guitar centerpiece, titled Mirage Avenue #2, where his band the Van Dorens step in seamlessly to propel the collection into the R&B realm. Working hand in hand on the project was his long time friend and collaborator Jeff Powell, who mixed the CD.
“It’s really not a album for our times,” Mark adds ironically, “in that Mirage Cartography was conceived to be heard in one sitting. In this day and age when songs are purchased and played individually – the way I used to buy 45s when I was a kid – how many people really listen to entire albums anymore? Well, I do anyway. And I like to think there are a few people left out there who recognize and embrace the rewards of that sort of approach to music listening. And those are the folks who should check this out.”
New Paul Mark Instrumental Album in Production
Solo Roots Guitar Collection Takes Up the Path Set by Roadside Americana
The next CD by Paul Mark is in the recording stage and is planned as an all-instrumental solo collection of guitar-based originals. The new CD looks to be a continuation of the rootsy stylings of Mark’s earlier solo guitar effort, Roadside Americana, released back in 1999.
“No title for it yet,” Mark says, “But we’re working on it. I’m back into that acoustic, rural sound. Private music. With lots of live miking of real guitars. Not really a Van Dorens record, but I know the folks who like the Americana element of our band will like the backporch attitude of this new record. A hand sliding up a guitar neck. Steel strings pressing against a fretboard. A foot tapping on the floor. Encoded messages, spiritual visions and tons of melody.”
Tracking for the new CD has already begun, with recording sessions at Ardent Studios in Memphis and at Radiation Records in New York City. As with all Radiation Records releases, the music will be available from ITunes, CDBaby and a broad array of retailers and download sites.
These latest sessions have also included tracks for a new Van Dorens CD release as well. “We laid down several tracks with the full band while we were in Memphis, and they’ll be part of the next Van Dorens CD. Some very raucous stuff, great rhythm tracks. The band keeps rolling forward like some horror movie beast. It can’t really be stopped.”
Blood & Treasure For Sale
Latest Paul Mark CD Available in Stores and Online
WHERE IS THIS??
Blood & Treasure, the brand new collection by Paul Mark & the Van Dorens, is now on sale throughout North America, both in brick-and-mortar stores as well as at Internet storefronts CDBaby , ITunes, and Amazon.com.
Cut in Memphis, Tennessee at legendary Ardent Studios, Blood & Treasure (RDTN 5901) was co-produced by Paul Mark and Jeff Powell(Big Star, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Afghan Whigs, B.B. King, The Bottle Rockets). This is Mark’s seventh CD on the NYC-based indie label Radiation Records.
Blood & Treasure is the highly-anticipated follow-up to Mark’s celebrated 2006 release Trick Fiction (RDTN 5899). The new release builds on Paul Mark’s growing word-of-mouth legacy with a live, no-holds-barred roots rock sound.
This is emotional, thinking-person’s music that overlays a contemporary singer/songwriter sensibility on to the Americana legacy of blues, soul, and raucous rock’n roll. Blood & Treasure spills over with classic Americana rhythms and provocative vocals that demand attention – the rave reviews are already piling up.
True to form, the band’s new tracks cut across a wide spectrum of musical genres and styles. A national radio promotion campaign is underway in the blues, AAA, jam band and Americana radio markets at hundreds of stations across North America and Europe.
“Always exciting for us to have some new music to play for our fans and friends,” said Mark about Blood & Treasure. “And people are picking up on this one so fast — sales are much quicker than for our previous CDs…Can B-movie cameos, celebrity divorces and jailhouse mug shots be far behind?.”
Memphis Sounds
Fall Release Planned
Winter’s chill has sent Paul Mark & the Van Dorens south once again! Holing up at Memphis’s Ardent Studios the band is currently working on a new collection of songs. Release is tentatively scheduled for fall 2008 on Radiation Records.
Keeping with a proven formula, the sessions are being produced by Paul Mark and his Memphis cohort Jeff Powell. The working title for the new release is Blood and Treasure.
“So far so good,” says PM. “We’re working with some very cool Memphis people on this one and the tracks are sounding great. Moving a little different direction these days…the spectrum of styles is a bit wider I think. Seems like everything we’ve been trying has hit the mark. ‘Course maybe I’m deaf and dumb after all these years. That’s one reason why we’ve got Jeff in the room, to rein in the delusions.”
Memphis folks who are working with the band on the sessions include Harry Peel, Rick Steff, Susan Marshall and Jackie Johnson.
Keep an eye on the web site for further details on the new release. And get on the mailing list so Radiation Records can make sure you’re in the loop.
Trick Fiction on a Roll!
Airplay on Hundreds of North American Radio Stations
TRICK FICTION, the latest CD by Paul Mark & the Van Dorens contains a fresh batch of Paul Mark originals accompanied by the righteous rhythms of the Van Dorens. The new Radiation Records release was recorded and mixed at famed Ardent Studios in Memphis TN and has been a hit on the roots rock radio scene.
The CD is currently being played on hundreds of blues and rock stations across North America, both over the airwaves and on Internet channels. Critical acclaim and awards for the release just keep rolling in. And with the signing of a distribution agreement between Radiation Records and big-time indie distributor Select-O-Hits, TRICK FICTION can be found in brick-and-mortar retail stores across the U.S.
TRICK FICTION, with the band’s trademark eclecticism and relentless lyrical inventiveness, reaffirms PM’s status as one of the finest roots rock/blues songwriters working today. And the NYC-based band, with James Strain on bass, Josh Wheeler on drums and Dan Schnapp on organ, is spot-on in delivering that lean-forward R&B propulsion that the band has become known for after decades of road work.
“It got to the point where we had so much new material that we had to cut a CD,” says Mark. “We were performing and rehearsing non-stop but never seemed to make our way into the recording studio. By the time we recorded Trick Fiction I’d written more than two albums worth of material and the band was sounding slam-bang tight…great rhythm tracks. A lot of stuff ended up on the cutting room floor…As it turned out we were arguing among ourselves about which tracks to keep. I guess we’ll release the outtakes some day to counter the bootleggers, you know, the way real rock stars do.”
Co-piloting the production with Mark was long-time band confidant and Memphis music maven Jeff Powell, who also engineered and mixed the sessions. “Powell’s like fifth member of the band at this point,” says Mark. “We’d already worked together on MetSwamp and IndigoVertigo, so our comfort level is real high,” says Mark. “That is, we’re real comfortable arguing with each other.” Powell’s wife, high-octane talent Susan Marshall, contributed deep soul background vocals to the Trick Fiction tracks, paired up with the sweet harmonies of Memphis gospel great Jackie Johnson.