Hello magical friends, with a great big welcome to all my magical patrons who make these interview episodes possible. I’m your hostwitch Bess, and I think episode 123 is a very fun number, don’t you?
I hope you’re ready for this interview; it’s a particularly great one. But first and foremost, we’re all about the music. Here’s “Cheering Charm” from Grace Kendall.
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That was “Cheering Charm” by Grace Kendall, “Witchin’ Time” from Teen Girl Scientist Monthly [lyrics], and Chuck and Brenda singing “Which House Are You In.”
I hope you’re all having a wonderful Summer! Of! Fun! Don’t forget to be noodling on music for the Just Joy comp, and doodles and writing for the Summer! Of! Fun! Zine.
While you work on that, here’s my chat with Marked As His Equal.
Welcome to the show, Mark of Marked As His Equal. I am so incredibly excited to talk with you today!
Mark: Bess, I’m really glad to be here with you. Thank you for having me.
You are one of sort of the legends that we hear a lot about from other wizard rockers these days, but I know very little about your experience and your journey with wizard rock. So why don’t you start from the beginning, how did you get into it?
Mark: Sure. Um, I got involved with wizard rock in 2006, which my goodness gracious, was nearly 20 years ago now. I was working at a company and I started a MySpace fan page called the “Harry Potter Book and Film Club,” which I ran like a fan site on MySpace for a couple of years. And I had us divided into houses and we had house leaders and we did all these discussions about the books and about the movies and all these things. And at some point someone on that website, on that fan site mentioned that there was going to be a Harry Potter convention called Lumos. I was living in Los Angeles at the time, and Lumos was in Las Vegas. So a group of us decided that we were going to attend Lumos 2006, and I did. And it was a great deal of fun. I had a wonderful time.
It was my first honest convention. I’d never done one before. Even growing up in San Diego, I’d never been to Comic-Con or anything. Um, and I had a wonderful time at the convention, but there was a wizard rocker there and they were playing their own songs. And I’d been a music– I mean, I’ve been a musician my entire life. And I was there and I heard this wizard rock, and I was like, “I think this is a thing that I could do.”” And I wrote my first song in the Las Vegas airport on my boarding pass, like little envelope that they gave me. That’s Hermione’s My Hero” is the first one I ever wrote. I still have that boarding pass like in a scrapbook because it was just so fun to have done that. But yeah, so I wrote “Hermione’s My Hero,” and I got home and I recorded it and I put it up on MySpace and kind of the rest is history <laugh>.
Do you remember who it was that was playing at Lumos?
Mark: I do. It was, um, the Remus Lupins were there.
Ah! You know, normally when people come on, the first band they hear is either Harry and the Potters or Draco andthe Malfoys.
Mark: Mm-hmm <affirmative>.
Which I feel like sets the tone for all of their bands.
Mark: Yep.
You get, you know, like the Gryffindor bold or like the Slytherin and edgy.
Mark: Right.
Marked As His Equal. It doesn’t exactly follow that path.
Mark: No. So I had never heard anything by Harry and the Potters or Draco and the Malfoys until after I had become fairly established in the scene. I don’t believe I’d recorded my first album, but I put up a couple of singles and, um, it was getting some traction. I was starting to get some offers for some gigs, which was really fun. But all that time my experience was, was pretty insular. I mean, I’d, I’d met the Remus Lupins and so I had an idea of how Alex had been doing things. Um, but I wasn’t going around and listening to a lot of other bands, among other things, there weren’t that many. I mean, at that point it was, uh, the Hermione Crookshanks Experience. They, I definitely listened to, um, and really enjoyed them. Um, and then the Remus Lupins I listened to a little bit.
The Whomping Willows were out, and then Harry and the Potters and Draco and the Malfoys were out. But I was so busy writing my own music that I was sort of not focused on anybody else. I was really just trying to write my songs. So, so yeah, I think I didn’t really follow the perspective of a single like house? If there’s a character I connect to the most, it’s Sirius Black for sure. But I never thought of this as like, “I am representing Sirius.” It was always, “I’m just Mark. And these were my songs about Harry Potter” <laugh>.
You know, the Marauders era is probably the biggest micro fandom within Harry Potter at the moment, thanks to like this fan fiction, “All The Young Dudes,” it’s huge on TikTok. So it’s funny that you, as one of the early adopters would resonate so strongly nowadays.
Mark: Yes. Yeah. I, I always connected with the Marauders, that, that is very familiar to me. Um, I have a group of three guy friends that I’ve known since I was 11 years old. And we used to run around and get in all sorts of trouble like that. And in fact, the first time I took, uh, Marked As His Equal electric, those three guys were my band. And they drove with me to Vegas and we played a big show and did the whole thing, all rock and roll style. And that was the band. They became the Azkaban Work Release Program, which I always thought was a fantastic band name.
Well, I have to get their contact information from you later.
Mark: <laugh>. Yeah. I’m sure they’d be happy to talk to you. They only ever released one song. Uh, but we did it as part, so when, when we played live, it was Marked As His Equal featuring the Azkaban Work Release Program, which was really fun because then they got to just act like idiots and we could explain it that they were criminals,<laugh>.
Now that does sort of beg an interesting question. If the three of them went separate from you, does that make you the Pettigrew of the group?
Mark: Ooh, ouch. Possibly. That’s a good question. No, I mean, I, I, uh, probably if, if, if you asked them, they would certainly say that I was the Pettigrew <laugh>.
Now my favorite question is asking where the band name came from. ’cause some of them are really obvious and some people really surprise you with how they came up with it or what it means to them. So–
Mark: Sure.
–Marked As His Equal, how did it happen?
Mark: Well, I mean, Harry is marked as Voldemort’s equal, and my name is Mark, right? So that just sort of made sense. I remember I was, I had written, I had written “Hermione’s My Hero,” and I had written the “Ballad of Sirius Black” and I played them for my friends. And, um, we were talking about what I was gonna do next and I said, “well, I gotta come up with a band name” ’cause that’s really important. And someone was like, you know, “Harry was marked as Voldemort’s equal.” And I was like, “yeah.” And they were like, “and your name’s Mark.” And I was like, “So I can be Mark Equal!” And it was like, “yes.” So that, I mean, it’s not more complicated than that. <laugh>,
Did you consider any other options?
Mark: I did.
Were The Marauders on the table?
Mark: The Marauders were never on the table. The other one that I considered was Pensieve, which I thought would be kind of a, a cool band name. And I actually got talked out of that by Mallory of the, uh, Wizard Rockumentary.
What did she have against Pensieve? That’s pretty cool.
Mark: Uh, thank you. Um, I don’t think she had anything against it. I think she just liked Marked As His Equal more, and I asked her what she thought. She thought that, so I picked it. <laugh>. Sometimes you just need someone to kick you, right? And move you down the road. I was really ready to launch. I wanted to get my website up. I wanted to get the music out there and I needed to pick a name. So <laugh>, there you go.
So you have met a lot of the OGs of wizard rock. You must have some amazing stories.
Mark: Well, I don’t know how many amazing stories I have. I do– I’ve met a lot of the original wizard rockers. I, I never have actually met Harry and the Potters. I played the same convention that they did once, but I never met them. Brian and Bradley from Draco and The Malfoys were always such standup guys and really, really fun. They were really, really nice to get to know. I played several shows with them. Um, and I played a number of shows with Matt Maggiacomo of the Whomping Willows, and when you get Matt, you pretty much get Justin Finch-Fletchley. So I played with him and got to know him. And of course, the Hermione Crookshanks Experience, I got to play a couple of shows with her, which I mean, I was so starstruck when I met her ’cause I always loved her music so much.
So, um, it was really fun to get to play with her. But, uh, yeah, it was fun. I mean, back, back then there, there weren’t a ton of bands yet when I was getting started. And so when the conventions would come along, there weren’t a ton of us. And so, so we all would sort of get tapped to come play the convention. So I went to, uh, Toronto, I think in ’08 and played that convention there, which was Terminus, I believe. And that one, everybody was there. Harry and the Potters played the main stage that night. Draco and the Malfoys were there, Christian from Oliver Boyd and the Remember alls who was such a talented guy, that was actually really fun because I got to play with him and Jayce and we did a version of, uh, “End of an Era” and I got to play with them, which was really, really fun. So that was, that was really cool. Christian was always a really, is a really talented musician. It was really fun to get to work with him and talk to him. We sort of came at music differently. I studied theory and he came from the recording side. So we had a lot of like, really fun crossover stuff to talk about. It was fun.
You are naming all these dream interviews
Mark: <laugh> It’s funny, there really weren’t very many of us. By the time we got to Terminus, there were a lot more bands, but by then the soup had become so thick that like, it was harder to sort of pick ’em out. I was just very lucky that I jumped in kind of early and I wasn’t like the earliest earliest. But when people talk about Marked As His Equal with me, I, I always sort of say I was sort of in the second wave. Like there was the first wave, which was Harry and the Potters and Draco and the Malfoys, the Whomping Willows. And then you had the Remus Lupins from the West Coast, right? I sort of count them as the first wave. And Hermione Crookshanks was in there. She never got the same level of notoriety as some of these other bands, which was too bad because she was, I mean, her stuff was just wonderful.
But then I sort of came out at the same time as Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls and several of those other sort of second wave bands, and we were, there were not enough of us that we all kind of got noticed. Uh, and people got, got picked up for like different reasons. Like, “oh, this person can really sing.” Or “Oh, this person writes really good songs.” Or, “oh, this person’s doing hip hop,” or “Oh, this per–” you know, like it was just, we all sort of had our little niches and we kind of fit into them and there was not a ton of other noise that was distracting. So that made it a lot– It just sort of got me in the right place at the right time. I got very lucky with that. And I got to play with some really incredibly talented human beings who were writing wonderful songs and doing really fun things with this genre.
Do any of the conventions stand out or any of the gigs? Were they in a really wild place?
Mark: Well, going to Toronto was pretty cool. I’m from San Diego originally, and getting to fly all the way to Canada was really neat. That’s also, um, that’s, that’s home to a story I’m sure we’ll probably get to in a little bit. But, uh, yeah, going, going to Toronto was really fun. That had one of the largest like, groups of fans that I ever encountered. It was really huge. There were a few others. I played a number of conventions in Florida. There were just a bunch of ’em in Orlando. So I played three or four. And one of those stood out because we were in one of those really big ballrooms and it was really full. So that was a really fun room to play. That was, I don’t remember who else. I know I played with the Gryffindor Common Room Rejects on that show, whom I just adore. Amber and Andrea are, are fantastic. I invited them to my wedding <laugh>. Um, they’re such great, great people. And, uh, the Remus Lupins were there for that one. I’m trying to remember who else was there for that. It was so long ago. Uh, but anyway, that was a really fun show. And I did play, um, I did play the final Wrockstock, I think it was the last one. That was a pretty wild show too. <laugh>
Wrockstock sounds amazing. I love hearing about that. The big stage and the one for people who just like brought a guitar and people trading CDs and pajama parties. It sounds amazing.
Mark: It was really, really fun. I brought the whole band to that one. So we played a, we played a punk rock show for that. Um, the, it’s, it’s funny, Bess, the, the way that I envisioned the band was always a punk rock band, but, um, it’s much, much harder to maneuver four people around than it is to maneuver one. So when I started, I just was recording on my acoustic guitar and playing shows that way. And it was great fun, but I always envisioned it as a punk rock band. So once I started getting a, a few more gigs and people were willing to, to move more of us around, um, that’s when I started bringing the band. So I brought the whole band with me to Wrockstock and, uh, we had a wonderful time. We won the award for Best Hug, which was really, really cool.
We had this whole thing that we did where my bass player would– whoever it was who wanted the hug, would wrap his arms around this person, pick them up and spin them around. And then my drummer– that, so my bass player was Josh, and he would, he would lift them up and spin them around–my drummer would yell, “Go!” And we would all converge on this person and basically like dog pile them. And there would just be this massive like, hug pile in the middle of the room. And it became this like, epically known thing. And so people would come up to us and be like, “can I have a hug?” <laugh>? And poor, poor Josh would be like, “my arms are so tired. Okay,”<laugh>, he would wrap his arms around somebody and lift him up and spin ’em around and suddenly we would all converge. It was really fun. So we won the award for Best Hug at Wrockstock. That was great. <laugh>.
I would’ve voted for that. That sounds spectacular. At the beginning of the interview, you mentioned that you wrote your first song on your boarding pass.
Mark: Mm-hmm <affirmative>.
Is that how all of your songs have happened? Scraps of paper while traveling?
Mark: Songwriting for me is a torturous process. I hate it. I do not consider myself much of a lyricist, nor do I consider myself particularly clever or pithy. So when I have a good idea, I’m always like, “yes!” <Laugh> like, “Okay!” So songwriting is, is pretty hard.”Hermione’s My Hero” kind of tumbled out of me. I was very much in the space of like thinking about wizard rock and, you know, I’d gotten this idea while I was at the convention. And so I was just sitting there with kind of nothing to do. This was long before smartphones, so it was back when we just kind of had to sit around and wait. So I had all this time and I’d been thinking about that song. Anyway, the idea, the sort of riff of it had come to my brain and, um, the, the idea of the song had already come to me.
So that one kind of tumbled out me, but the rest of them are much, much harder to get to. The first record, My Scars Speak Volumes, I sort of came at it with the idea that it was gonna be a bunch of different styles of music and I was gonna present like all these different styles. So I had a punk rock song, which was “Hermione’s My Hero,” I had the like folky acoustic, uh, you know, coffee shop song that was the “Ballad of Sirius Black.” And then, um, I wrote a song with a French title called “Elle Est Une Ville” Villa, uh, which was about Fleur. And that was sort of like my French Cabaret song, like I was going for Eric Satie, Moulin Rouge Vibes. Um, but then it just sort of turned into, “okay, I need to finish this record.” So I just sort of started writing songs and um, in order to do it, I would give myself a limit.
So I would say, “okay, I’m gonna have a song completely ready, written, and ready to record by the end of tomorrow night.” And then I would wait for like 34 hours until the very last minute, and then suddenly I’d just pour a song out because the pressure would make me do it. That’s actually where “Face the Dragon” came from, which was, is one of my favorite songs of mine that I’ve ever written. It never really took, got anywhere. Like other people didn’t like it that much, but I love that one. And that one was like a last minute, “I must finish this song, or I’m never gonna finish this album,” <laugh>.
And then the second record, uh, which was Never Say Goodbye, was, that was done as an RPM Challenge, which, um, are you familiar with the RPM Challenge? This is really neat. And, um, if you’re out there and you’re listening to this and you’re interested in doing more music and recording more music, the RPM Challenge is a fantastic way to do it. The RPM Challenge is a challenge where you write an album in the short write and record an album in the shortest month of the year. So it’s in February and you aren’t allowed to start until February 1st, and you must be done by February 28th. And you do the entire record in that time, and it can be whatever record you want. And they say it doesn’t have to be the best record you’ve ever written, you’ve ever written. It doesn’t have to be the best songs you’ve ever written.
Just actually do it. Stop saying you’re gonna do it and do it. So it’s kind of like the, you know, like the novel writing month that people do or whatever, things like that. It’s just like that. So I did it as an RPM Challenge and I recorded that entire record in 28 days. Um, so I wrote every song and recorded every instrument. And one fun thing about Never Say Goodbye, a little bit of trivia that no one no one really knows is, um, I made every single sound on that record. I played every single instrument, I recorded every voice. Um, I made every, every noise that’s on that album I made, which was pretty fun.
And you did all of that in February.
Mark: Did all of it in one month? Yes. I was very busy that month.
I imagine so.
Mark: It was like four in the morning finishing up writing a song in my apartment and then 7:00 AM arriving at the recording studio to do the recording. It was just wild. I mean, I never slept <laugh>.
Would you do it again?
Mark: Uh, yes, I would. In fact, I’ve done the RPM Challenge again. I did it, uh, a few years back. In 2021 in the middle of COVID. I did an RPM Challenge back then.
Okay, now I know your songs as individuals, but not so much the albums. Was it just the two or was, was there more?
Mark: Yeah, so I released, I did the two full length albums and then I did, I released an EP called Re-Released, and that was with the Azkaban Work Release Program. So that is where, um, we did some of the punk rock arrangements of the tunes. There’s a song I wrote called “Champion” which is about Harry when he’s in the, the Triwizard Tournament. And it’s kind of this like moody song. Um, and I, I, I liked it and we were trying to figure out how to do it with the rock band. And my bass player Josh came up with this very like, Tool-like baseline that was sort of moving and, and, and driving and a really different approach to the song. And so we released that version of that song on that EP. There’s a pretty kickin punk rock version of “Hermione’s My Hero” on that.
Um, so anyway, yeah, so a, an EP as well. And then since then, there uh, was a song called “Flight Feathers,” which Amanda wrote and she and I recorded and released. And then, um, there was a project that was done a couple of years ago, in fact, I think I can pull up the information. Yeah, the, um, the Wizrocklopedia did a, has done a series of compilation albums and they did one where they kind of went back and asked like, legacy bands that weren’t recording anymore if they would do new music. So I recorded a new song for one of those back in 2022, which I think is one of my daughter’s favorite songs of all time.
So we’ve been keeping you pretty busy then.
Mark: Yeah, yeah. Um, I basically felt like I retired after Wrockstock. Uh, I, I sort of announced that as my last show and I, I intended it to be my last show. Uh, but then, yeah, just a couple of, a couple of things have come up since then that seemed worth doing, actually re revisiting this world in ’22 when I did, I, I recorded a song called “The Ballad of Bellatrix LeStrange.” And I’d been thinking about, you know, if I were gonna come back and write a new song, I feel like “The Ballad of Sirius Black” was sort of my trademark. And so I thought it would be fun to, to look the, the idea behind “The Ballad of Sirius Black” is that it’s an off-camera moment. Um, I always imagined it as Christmas during book five, Order of the Phoenix. And it’s just a thing that we don’t see in the books. We don’t read it in the books, we don’t see it in the movies. But I imagine Sirius and Harry having this like, quiet conversation where Sirius is telling Harry about his dad and how much Sirius loved James. And so I thought, well, what would happen if at some point in book six Draco’s home and his Aunt Bellatrix is there and she pulls him aside and talks to him off camera. So that’s where that song came from, which was a fun, a fun side of things to explore. <laugh>
What an interesting parallel.
Mark: Yeah. Yeah, that’s, I imagined them as like, as parallel songs. They’re kind of designed to go together.
So after this interview, should everyone go and listen to one then the other or…
Mark: Yeah, you can if you want. Absolutely. Yeah. The song is called, um, “The Ballad of Bellatrix LeStrange.” It’s up on BandCamp, so you can find it there. It, it was fun too ’cause it was a totally different style. I don’t actually play my acoustic guitar very much anymore. I play a lot more electric. I, I’ve gotten really into like, ambient guitar and making really weird noises with my guitar. So, um, so “The Ballad of Bellatrix LeStrange” uses, like all electric instruments, I used like six different guitars to record it and all these different effects. It’s really, the background track is really wild. So it’s pretty fun.
Six?
Mark: Yeah, they all sound different.
So I’m not a musician–
Mark: Uh-huh <affirmative>,
–but how different can they sound?
Mark: Really different.
Like if I go and listen to the song, will I be able to tell which part is like guitar A versus guitar E?
Mark: Probably not, because the track itself is so kind of messy. I mean, it mostly doesn’t sound like guitar. <laugh>, there’s a little lick at the beginning that sounds like kind of an old timey, clinky-clunky thing, which is what it’s meant to sound like. Um, uh, my daughter, um, the 7-year-old in her wisdom, says that the last sound you hear sounds like a ghost playing the violin. So it’s fun. I have a good time. I like, I like screwing around with sound like that. So I do a lot of that.
This is gonna lend a whole new dimension to listening to the Marked As His Equal, uh, ouvre. Are there any other things that we should keep an ear out for?
Mark: Well, not at this point, no one has contacted me about doing anything else. Um, so I, I don’t, I don’t know, uh, but e- every once in a while Amanda does mention like, “you know, maybe you should consider restarting Marked As His Equal” <laugh>.
Well, I meant in the songs you have out. Is there, like, did you use 14 oboes in one or…
Mark: Oh, I see. Now I understand your question. No, so in the, in the earlier songs, no, I actually, um, the guitar that’s sitting right next to me is the guitar that I played on all of those albums. In between the first and the second record, I learned to play the mandolin. So there is, I added mandolin to my mixes on the second record, and then there’s some percussion and stuff. But no, I didn’t, I didn’t get into all the like, various sonic implications of the electric guitar until after Marked As His Equal.
I see.
Mark: Yeah, it’s been a long time. Let’s see, Wrockstock must have been 2010? And that was my, that was my last like big gig I guess. I guess I played one during the pandemic. You probably know about this Bess, but there was a series of concerts that, or there was a, a concert that they did during pandemic that were all these at home concerts. So it was livestreamed and, um, I did one from my living room, which was fun.
We have some Australian wizard rock fans who said that that was the best era for them.
Mark: Oh yeah?
All the virtual concerts that they could attend.
Mark: That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that was, that was fun.
Let’s pause here for a break. Striking Down Diggory is ready in the wings with their “Hagrid on a Ladder.”
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You just heard Striking Down Diggory with “Hagrid on a Ladder” [lyrics], “Neville Never Gets the Girl” from Neville’s Diary, and The Weasel King with “Painted Black.”
Now let’s get back to my chat with Mark!
So you’ve played with, sounds like basically everyone, are there any collabs that you haven’t done yet that you think would be amazing?
Mark: Well, I always regretted not ever doing a song with Brian and Bradley. I think that would’ve been very fun. I was lucky I got to do a couple of of fun collaborations. The one that sort of stands out the most to me is I did a song with Devon from The Owl Post, and it’s called “A Different Kind.” I met her, she was out at a show in, uh, Orange County. I had just gone to the show. I wasn’t actually playing. Um, but she sang and I, I just fell in love with her voice. She had a wonderful voice. And so I approached her like random guy with ponytail walking up to her out of nowhere and being like, “hi, I’m Mark, I wanna sing with you.” And she was like, “uh,” but I convinced her to gimme her email address. So she did, and I wrote her and I sent her a couple of the songs that I’d been working on.
She wrote back and said, “I would love to do a song with you”. So we, we did a, a song that ended up on the first record and we even got to sing it live once because she was in, um, Toronto. So, uh, we got to actually do it. It was the only time I ever did that song live, which was really fun. But yeah, I think of all of the people that I got to work with, the ones that I would’ve liked to work with the most that I didn’t would be Brian and Bradley. Um, I think it would’ve been fun to do a song with Christian, uh, from Oliver Boyd. He, I mean, he was just so talented and we did sing together, um, and we sounded really good together. So I think, I think if we had done a song together, that would’ve been really fun. Um, and anybody else? Let’s see. Uh, I mean, it’s, it’s too many to name. I like collaborating too. So honestly, I mean, if there are wizard rockers out there who are listening to this and you wanna be like, “Hey Mark, let’s do a collaboration.” I’ll probably say yes.
Now, this is the question I was most excited about because you’ve come up a couple times in other interviews and over the years talking to other people as someone who was so warm and supportive and helped people find their voice and, you know, get comfortable with performing or their musicality. And I was wondering what kind of advice you would have for people who are starting their wizard rock journey now.
Mark: I have a couple of really strong feelings about music and performance. The primary one is: every one is a musician. Every single person on the planet is a musician. If you can walk, you are a musician. Even if you can’t walk, you are a musician. If you are capable of making noise, you are a musician because all music is, at its very basic stripped down place, is sound organized in time. That’s all it takes to be music, is it has to be sound and it has to be organized in time. So one of the things that has happened is in the last 150 years, we have as a society created recorded music. And I believe that a sea change occurred when the phonograph became regularly available to most people because music stopped being something that we created and started being something that we consumed. And now the problem is that we hear these people, we hear them on Spotify, we hear them in these highly produced, very slick, very controlled environments where their voices are really incredible.
And certainly some of them are incredibly talented. The example that I like to use for this is Kelly Clarkson, because Kelly Clarkson has an absolutely astonishing instrument just by herself just singing in a room, she sounds incredible. But the problem is that we hear these recordings of her and we think, “I don’t sound like Kelly Clarkson, so I don’t have any business doing this.” And that is simply not true. If you have the ability to make noise, you have music inside of you. And don’t shy away from it because someone out there wants to hear it and the only way they’re going to is if you get out there and actually do it. So that’s the first thing is don’t think that because you don’t sound like someone else, that you are not good enough. You need to sound like you. That is the first and most important thing.
The second thing is be honest about what you’re writing. You have to write something that you care about. If you’re writing a song, it needs to be something that means something to you. If you’re going to write about Harry Potter, you need to write about the parts of Harry Potter that affected you, that matter to you, that are important to you, that spoke to you. Why did this story become a part of your life and your journey? Sing about that. And that is the thing that is going to make it so that the music that you put out there is meaningful to someone else, because they’re gonna hear the music that’s inside of you and they’re gonna hear why it’s important to you. So those are my two basic things. Everybody’s a musician and write what you love.
I’m so glad that you use your passion for good and not evil, because that was, you know, like spine-tinglingly Wonderful.
Mark: <laugh>. Thank you. Um, I mean, it’s true. And I, this, this comes up a lot in my day-to-day life still. I am constantly in a place of people telling me, “I could never sing. I could never do what you do”. And it’s like, “yes you could. You really could. It’s not gonna look like what I do. It’s not gonna sound like what I do, but it shouldn’t.” That’s what makes it exciting. That’s what makes it interesting. When I think about Harry Potter and one of the reasons why that story is so particularly important to me, it’s because to me, friendship is the thing that has carried me through my entire life. I see commercials involving friends and I will get weepy. Movies about friendship are the things that hit me the hardest, right? It’s like getting punched right in the heart when something really beautiful about friendship comes up.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione are all wildly different people. <laugh>, they are completely different from each other. They have differences that span the gamut, but the three of them coming together is what makes it so valuable. It’s what makes it so worth it. If everybody sounded like me, music would get boring really fast. It’s important that we all be out there and all offer our voices and maybe you like what I offer and maybe you don’t like what someone else does, but someone else is gonna like what they offer and not like what I offer. And that’s all fine. What’s important is just that we all get out there and do it. So again, everybody’s a musician, don’t be afraid of it.
You’ve mentioned your day-to-day life still involves a lot of music and I like to get from everyone, like technical advice, like here’s a great warmup, or here’s a button you should always use in recording.
Mark: Mm-hmm <affirmative>.
Or, you know, here’s a term you should know. Do you have any of that for listeners?
Mark: Well, I am a big fan of a good quality audio, like input device of some kind. I have several of them now ’cause I do a fair amount of recording in my day-to-day life. But the one that I I recommend the most is the little $99 one by Focusrite, not sponsored <laugh>, but it’s their smallest one. It’s called the 2i2. It has one input for, uh, a mic cable and one input for an instrument cable. So you can plug in your guitar and you can plug in a microphone and you can record live, but you can also use it to record track by track. And it has this wonderful little button that says ‘air,’ and you just push that button and everything sounds better. So I’m a big fan of pressing air. The other thing as a, as a vocalist, I will say if you’re doing any singing <laugh>, it’s a little difficult to describe, but when you sing, it is always better to step up than it is to reach up. So if you’re going for a high note in your register, engage your core, like you would if you were about to get punched in the stomach and, and you knew it <laugh>, right? Tighten your core and let the sound come up from below. Imagine if you’re getting something off of a high shelf. It’s much safer to step up on a step ladder than it is to reach up and like hang from the bookshelf to try and get it right? Same idea with your voice, instead of reaching for it in your throat, step up to it from your diaphragm and you’ll, your, your high notes are gonna sound a lot better, a lot clearer, and a lot more supported. So those are my, those are my two little trinkets. <laugh>,
I think the, what was it? I two i, I
Mark: 2i2.
–2i2 has come up before.
Mark: The Focusrite 2i2.
Yes.
Mark: Yeah. So it’s a good, it’s the one I’m using right now.
Wizard rock approved.
Mark: Yes, exactly.
You said you sort of semi-retired from wizard rock, but maybe it’s coming back, maybe you got some song ideas, maybe you’re doing something else entirely. What are you working on these days?
Mark: So my day job is actually, I’m very lucky that I am a musician for a living. And specifically I am a choral conductor. So I run the music program at a major Episcopal church. I now live in Austin, Texas, and I’m the music director at the church that’s right downtown. So I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of South by Southwest? We are a venue for South by Southwest. So we have bands come and play at, South by Southwest at my church. And I’m very proud of working at this church. We fly a pri– a pride flag right outside and our logo actually is really neat. And, uh, yeah, we host a, we host a pride parade every, uh, event every year. So I’m very proud of the church that I work for. It’s very accepting, very, very liberal. We were actually the first church in all of Texas to perform a legal gay marriage which I thought was really neat. But yeah, I get to direct a choir for a living, which is really, really fun. So I spend a lot of time with choral music now and I got my master’s degree in choral conducting, so I get to wave my arm around and call it a job. <laugh>
You know, anytime there’s two or more wizard rockers in a place to start thinking of it as a wizard rock hub. So you are, uh, in a wizard rock hub.
Mark: Yeah? Who else is here?
The Galleon Guy.
Mark: Oh!
He’s right down your area. He’s one of our new wizard rockers.
Mark: Awesome. Well, I’ll make a point of checking out the Galleon Guy. Everybody go check out the Galleon Guy.
The last music break has arrived. Here are Gred & Forge, proving “We’re the Best.”
~*~
That was “We’re the Best” from Gred & Forge, Wingardium Leviosa’s “Patronus,” and “Dance With Me” from the House of Black.
And here’s the final bit of my conversation with Mark.
Thank you so much for making time to talk with me today.
Mark: Of course. It was my pleasure.
I was so excited and so nervous and hopefully you got a little bit of a hint of how, uh, what a, a difference you’ve made to the community over the years.
Mark: Well, I don’t know how much of a difference that I’ve made, but I will tell you that when I look back on the time that I spent with this band, when it was really the focus of my life, it comes back to me as one of the happiest, most fun parts of my life. I met incredible people, I had a really wonderful opportunity to, um, meet with people and to be inspired and apparently do a little inspiring myself, which is just an incredibly humbling feeling to have. If I may, I’ve got, um, just sort of one more thing that was like, it was just like the coolest thing that happened to me. I went to a convention and it was kind of my first big show. I played a few like little library shows and I played the book six book release, but I’d never, I’d never played a big show and every show I’d played up until that point was all people who didn’t know who I was.
I had some fans on MySpace and stuff, so there were people around the country who were listening to my music, but they, but anybody who was at these particular shows, no one knew my music. And I went and I played this show at a convention, I’m trying to remember– it may, this may have actually been Toronto, but I remember I was so nervous. I started with this song called “Run Free,” which is about the marauders. And um, it’s actually the song that I started most of my shows with. And I did the entire first verse with my eyes closed because I was just absolutely terrified. I’m in this ballroom and there are like 300 people in there with me, and I was so scared and I went through the first verse and I got to the first chorus and I opened my eyes and like, I’m getting emotional right now, remembering this from 15 years ago.
But I opened my eyes and everybody in the room was singing along with me and it was like, I had no idea. I mean, that, that, what an incredible, that is just the most incredible feeling to have when you’re in a room. And it’s, I mean, this is just like some doofy little song that I wrote in my bedroom, you know? And to have it matter was just this incredible feeling and to have so many people be there and singing along with me. And it was, it was this incredibly supportive moment. It was like, “we’re with you, dude, you can do this. We’ve got you.” You know? It just really felt really good. So it was an incredibly wonderful time and it’s an incredible fandom. It’s a wonderful group of people and I’m proud of the work that I did and I’m really humbled by the time that I got spend.
That sounds magical. And it is still my favorite community in the world.
Mark: Absolutely.
So where can members of that community find you and your music online?
Mark: So all the Marked As His Equal stuff was uploaded to BandCamp. I actually didn’t do it. I think this was the Wizrocklopedia that managed that. Um, and I’m grateful to, to whomever uploaded it because I’m happy for people to just have it. So it’s all on BandCamp. If you search for Marked As His Equal and BandCamp, you’ll find me. Basically everything I ever did is for wizard rock is on there. If you’re interested in some of my spacier stuff, uh, I have an ambient guitar project called The Lighted Hilltop, and that is on Spotify and Pandora anywhere you can get your streaming. I did an album in 2020. I recorded a hundred track ambient record, and I, I started it after we went into lockdown, um, which I guess was end of February, beginning of March. And I uploaded the last track on January on December 31st. It’s a hundred tracks. It’s all instrumental, it’s all ambient and all told it’s over 24 hours of music <laugh>.
Um, so it’s really long. It’s great for like, if you need music, if you’re studying for an exam and you’re gonna be up all night, it’s great for that and not for nothing. But I offered that music to a friend whose mom has really severe anxiety and, um, she played the music for her mom, and her mom was able to leave the house for the first time in two months because she had my music in her ears. So it’s really good for like calming you down if you suffer from anxiety, people with ADHD often find that my music can help them focus. So, um, my neurodivergent siblings out there, go check out The Lighted Hilltop. It can be helpful.
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And now, magical friends: Marked As His Equal!
Mark: So this song is “The Ballad of Sirius Black,” which is the second song I ever wrote as Marked As His Equal. And it’s definitely one of the my favorites that I ever wrote. And I, I sort of always did it as the big meaningful song in the middle of my set. And like I said in the interview, I imagine it as sort of an off camera conversation between Sirius Black and Harry, Christmas in the middle of book five. So that’s what’s happening and uh, my wife Amanda is gonna join on backup vocals. So here we go. It’s been a minute since we’ve done this, but here we go.
WZRD Radio Podcast 