By: David de Young
It's Friday afternoon. After his sound check for his two EP Release shows scheduled for later that night, Mark Mallman took a few minutes out of his extremely busy day to answer some questions. We sat down on a couple of folding chairs in the dank, stark basement of the 7th Street Entry for an interview which is transcribed below in nearly its entirety.
HWTS: Are you still working a day job?
MM: Oh yeah. Fuck yeah. I don't make any money at music 'cause I have a lot of debt to pay off. We're building Chicago now, and if I can get Chicago as big as this I might be able to quit. I've been doing some commercials, so that helps bring money in, but I still have my part time job. But I hate working because all I do is work on stuff. So when I'm working it's not like I wish I was off so I could be watching TV, it's like, fuck, I could be doing a lot of other stuff with this time that I'm spending at this part time job. But it's part of what you've got to do. I don't know how long I'll be there. Maybe I'll always be there. [laughs]
HWTS: Don't you find some kind of inspiration comes from your part time job?
MM: Just rent.
HWTS: No inspiration at all?
MM: No, not at all.
HWTS: How do you feel about Joni Mitchell?
MM: I love Joni Mitchell. We were driving to Milwaukee and I was singing along with Joni Mitchell and I didn't realize it. We were listening to "Blue." [1971] I was really getting into it and they were making fun of me. And then I realized that I was obviously moving my head around. I think she's good. I'm not into the middle stuff like the [Charles] Mingus record. But I like the classics. I mean she's fuckin' great.
HWTS: Have you seen The Last Waltz?
MM: Yeah. That's cool. But someone's always stealing her thunder even in that movie. I mean you can see her in the movie but you can't see her. She's not really lit very well. I've been listening to "Déjà vu" a lot, the CSN&Y record. And I think about the Woodstock song, and I love that song, but there she got the shaft again, and she played Woodstock. Funny. But she didn't really get the shaft in the end I suppose.
HWTS: How do you feel about music file sharing and how it might relate to someone burning copies of your CD's?
MM: I think that it's good for people to take power away from corporations because especially with the major label acts, the artist isn't losing a ton of money. I mean, they're losing some money, but the corporation is losing a lot more money. And I just think that it's weird now that corporations rule our climate. And I think it sucks when people say "Oh, I'll just burn it from you" like right when I'm selling a CD from my stage and one person buys it and [the other person says] "No, I'll just burn it from you." I don't know if they realize it, but that's really rude because I barely pay off the album. And now that it's on this label, it's just lost money. It costs 5 thousand dollars to make a record, so it's only 500 CD's sold, but still it kind of sucks. But I've burned CD's myself so I can't really say it would be wrong.
It's like when DVD audio came out, or even before DVD audio was available, or when CD-ROM came out people were like "You can get the new Peter Gabriel album and mix it yourself." And then there was kind of a stir amongst a degree of musicians, not amongst my friends but like you know "well, um mixing is obsolete now." But it's not true because in the end you'll find that the album was probably mixed the way it's mixed for a reason. And the track listing, you don't get the track order when you burn it. I think that's important. For me, I like it. And you're always like "Shit, I got the one song but did I get all the songs on the record?" In the end you end up buying the record anyway.
HWTS: Do you like being interviewed? What do you like or not like about it?
MM: I like how it makes me re-think and focus. I don't like doing FM radio interviews because it's so fast paced and it doesn't allow me to really think. I don't mind doing radio interviews but I tend to think that it's more conversational and I think the words are really important and you kind of lose that feeling when you're in conversation. I feel I do my best job when I can write in email back.
But I don't like reading them too much, especially people's opinions about my music. I don't really want to hear that.
HWTS: How do you think your audience has changed over the years?
MM: It's grown. [Guitar player Ryan Smith walks in.] What do you think Ryan?
RS: It has grown, and I think it's more diverse. You started with more scenesters, and now it's expanded.
MM: Our fan base is weird because you can look out into a crowd and see a fuckin' punk rock dude standing next to somebody's Mom. And it's good. I think that now that the albums are more clarified we're getting more of a clarified fan base. I'm just glad that people like it.
HWTS: What about the differences between playing solo and with your band? Can you talk a bit about that?
MM: I opened for Beth Orton last week solo in Madison at the Barrymore Theatre. And it's just heavenly because if you have a quiet audience and if you get them in the first five seconds or first five minutes they wanna hear more. And it's quiet and you can stop the song and you can change the set list. That's fun. When you're playing in a bar and you're first of four and you're solo piano you've just gotta close your eyes and just hope that the person's out there that wants to hear it and ignore everybody else, because it can be really hard. It can be really hard.
But it's fun playing with the band. I find that now I'm getting more focused. But sometimes I get a little too wild and the next morning I think what happened with all the time spent writing a song and then I get up on stage and babble about some chick's ass or something. And I have a problem, sometimes I make too many jokes. But it's just little things I keep in my mind, mental footnotes. I like performing. I love it. I love it. Now I can get on stage and remember it. But like for the first three years I'd get onstage and get offstage and it was so intense for me I couldn't totally remember what happened the next day or the day after. It was very weird. Now I'm more focused.
HWTS: Your new "Who's Gonna Save You Now?" The The Red Bedroom Outtakes EP is coming out . . .
MM: I had a totally different version of the song "Who's Gonna Save You Now?" that was 8 minutes, and it didn't really fit into "The Red Bedroom." But I wanted to have "Who's Gonna Save You Now?" the real version so you could hear the difference. I don't know. I didn't want the second version to be on there. I wanted them to be side by side in the same piece of work so you wouldn't have to reference it in your mind. It would start out with "Who's Gonna Save You Now?" and then it would end with part two of "Who's Gonna Save You Now?" So instead of it just being a collection of B-Sides I thought of it as a whole piece that happens to have one of the same songs as the Red Bedroom on it. It has a totally different feel. It's a lot darker and a lot more surreal and sonic.
HWTS: So people who have the red bedroom should definitely get this EP as well?
MM: Well, if you like it, it's cheap. It's like five bucks or around there, different in different stores. We just did it because we had the tracks.
HWTS: When did it come out officially?
MM: It kind of just slipped out. It kind of got out on Wednesday [November 20th] or something. You know when your fan base is fairly small you don't have to worry too much. We're still establishing a nationwide presence.
HWTS: Speaking of which, you played in New York recently. . .
MM: We've played in New York, we've played in L.A., Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, and all the college shows.
HWTS: You're from Milwaukee originally. When did you move to Minneapolis?
MM: '91.
HWTS: Were you playing music when you were in Milwaukee?
MM: I went to MCAD [Minneapolis College of Art and Design]. I was going to be a painter. My brother's an artist and I just kind of fell into it. Then I was writing music the whole time, but I didn't want to allow myself or admit to myself that I wanted to be a musician. So I just took a long time to admit to myself that that's what I wanted to do. I had an open stage and I would play my songs there. I ran that for four years. And that was good practice learning how to put a show together and flyer. That was from '91 to '95 and there were like 30 people a week or something. But every other week I would perform my songs. And I would re-write songs, and that allowed me to become a better songwriter. Because now when I listen to Jackson Browne or Springsteen's records when they were around 20 or 21 I wasn't at that level of songwriting skill at that point. I don't know if I am now. But I feel like I have a grasp of what I want to do. I wasn't lucky enough to have that kind of focus. So I'm glad that I had that time to learn how to be a songwriter before I presented the work.
HWTS: What's next for Mark Mallman?
MM: December and January is demo-ing the new album. And then we'll probably start recording the record maybe. I'll probably burn all the demos. I have the sketches for about 30 songs. The Red Bedroom came out in May [2002.] I'd finished writing it last January. So it's been a year of other songs. So the record's fairly written. So I'll probably be writing while I'm doing demos. And maybe record the record in May or June [of 2003.] And then hopefully have it out in the fall of next year. Just keep on not stopping, you know, just keep on not stopping.
HWTS: Including a lot more touring?
MM: Oh, as much as I can. I mean as much work as I can get. I'm not the kind of person that allows much relaxation in my life. Relaxing for me is writing music.
Artist Info: Mark Mallman
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