Early on music became an obsession for Mark soon after he heard Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit on his friend's parents' stereo system around age 10 (similar to many jazz boomers that talk about their formative experiences with The Beatles). The mercurial guitar dripping in chorus and the pounding syncopated drums hit him instantly like an injection. Transfixed, he scoured the local Wall-To-Wall sound for another dose of this cathartic magic. He neglected to read the fine print on the album cover and ultimately purchased Weird Al's "Off The Deep End", which iconically contained a parody of the song and album cover. Mark listened to the record in error for about a year suspiciously until he found Nevermind, the original 'holy grail' if you will. This event marked his initiation into a lifetime of these sorts of dumb luck encounters.
Born and raised in the Philadelphia area, Mark got lucky when his elementary school band director Miss Fritz connected him to his first drum teacher Hoagy Wing. Hoagy taught Mark many lifelong lessons including rudimental snare drumming, "Love Shack" by the B52s and the art of the hang. Mark's musical career began in New York City in 2001 when he moved there to pursue a Bachelor's Degree in Music & Philosophy at NYU. Arriving one week before 9-11 proved to be an existentially formative experience for Mark and many others, leading to a continued lifelong search for meaning through music and the "world of ideas". While at NYU, Mark was fortunate to study jazz and West African polyrhythmic drumming with Tony Moreno and participate in jazz combos lead by Johannes Wallman, among others. Outside of the university bubble Mark was hitting the pavement most nights performing or soaking in the scene with a fake ID in hand. Notably he had a stint performing with The Thumpus, a wacky supergroup comprised of Greg Heffernan (cello), Stephen Hodde (guitar), Danny Klein (melodica, motivation), Aaron Fast (trumpet, aburdity technician), all titans in their respective creative, professional and spiritual worlds to this day.
His last year in New York City afforded him and his roomate Rolando Alvarado (bass) an auspicious encounter with the Manuschevich brothers (a.k.a. Diego & Hugo). The four of them started a quartet that was by far the most free jazz project Mark had been a part of up until that point. Gravitating toward more abstract sounds and styles, around this time Mark & Rolando were also in close proximity to the downtown Manhattan's avant-garde music venue Tonic while it was still operational during John Zorn's year long 50th birthday residency there. Seeing countless shows there, he recalls once being brought to tears during a drum solo performed by Joey Baron.
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In 2006, he moved to Santiago, Chile to join forces with the Manuschevich brothers & NRE collective. Living together near a surplus of bakeries, cheap avacados, a historically infamous soccer stadium, and an early home recording setup became a part of the fabric of everyday life. The collective was lead by the brothers Diego & Hugo Manuschevich and included the groups Los Ogros Del Swing, Los Mananeros, Los Secretarios Generales De Jazz, recording & performing all over the capital city and touring the country. The living situation might be best described as a punk house for free jazzers. Motivated by youthful radical political sensibilties and an anti-professionalism bent that they saw watering down the jazz scenes in Santiago and back in New York. Incidentally, Augustus Pinochet passed away during this time and Mark experienced the riots that ensued first-hand, as the citizens purged the memories of this violent dictator / evil grandfather figure.
Upon returning to the US and landing back in Philadelphia, Mark began traveling back and forth between NYC on the weekends to study piano and improvisation with the late Connie Crothers, a musical disciple of Lennie Tristano & proponent of the teachings of Wilhelm Reich. Mark also once met with Bob Moses for an 8 hour lesson/hang back in these days, which involved not only music but a homemade blackberry ginger smoothie and hearing about the spiritual teachings of Tisziji Munoz. Soon thereafter Mark and Rolando Alvarado re-joined forces stateside and started the group The Sassafras Spine Trio with Max Carmichael on guitar. The group performed often at The Brighton Bar in Long Branch NJ, often on bills with members of the metal group East Of The Wall, among others. The three also started a Klezmer group called The Mazel Tov Cocktails, with Max on banjo and Paul Arendt on guitar. Around this time Los Ogros Del Swing re-united in the states to perform live with free jazz sax luminary and poet Elliott Levin (Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra Arkestra, etc). The performance was later released as a recording Los Ogros Del Swing 'Live At The Black Lodge'.
In 2011 Mark made a controversial decision with the urging of dear friend & lifelong sax collaborator Joe MF Wilson, to go an ambitious 3 month coast-to-coast tour of the US with the rockabilly, Americana group Izzy & The Catastrophics (formerly Izzy & The Kesstronics). When Mark first heard the band he was taken by the unique stylistic interaction of Django Reinhardt & Chuck Berry sensibilites. Having performed for relatively cerebral crowds over the past several years, Mark was interested in getting back to the basics, making people dance, drink, and laugh all while wearing a 3 piece pinstripe suit he purchased at a goodwill for $19 daily for essentially 9 months out of the long year he worked with the group. Mark is still proud of the work he contributed on the album The Lucky Dragon Swing Buffet written, arranged and recorded mostly in New Orleans with cameos from local heavy hitters from the trad jazz scene (Dennis Lichtman, etc). His dance moves featured in the video for "Mambo On Your Grave" in a New Orleans cemetery were truly unprecendented and implanted via a momentary download of divine inspiration. He also toured Belgium and Holland with the group, performing a memorable Johnny Cash-style performance at a Belgian Prison after being served cold cuts by an elderly serial killer.
After leaving the Catastrophics, Mark did a stint with the Camden-based sci-fi punk band Discorporate!. During this time he became inspired by the sounds and ethos of New York's No Wave movement.
In 2013, in search of renewal Mark moved with his then girlfriend at the time to Santa Fe, New Mexico. During this chapter he began learning how to record autonomously and releasing top secret tracks under the alias Bearded Holy Man on soundcloud. Experimental recording techniques and dada humor became the new outlet for Mark's often abstract sensibilities. He also released a record Holy Heat as the solo project Psalm Reader. On this record (mastered by John Dietrich of Deerhoof), Mark began transitioning from purely experiemental sensibilities to involve more songwriting and singing into his process/practice. His friend saxophist/educator Joe MF Wilson (dustlights) was a key ally during this period, among countless others when Mark's relationship had fallen apart and he was feeling very much alone and in need of support.
After recording music and drawing "funny stuff" for several years in isolation, Mark met Jacob Verghese through a mutual friend Barron Preuss after bartering soup at a local establishment. The two of them co-founded the psycho-magik dance band Cult Tourist (alongside prolific comicbook artist & singer-songwriter Will Schreitz, vocalist Madeline Gartman and synth player/spiritual technician Sahaih Escobedo). CT soon became hometown heroes. They rehearsed and recorded their album Prisoners Of Charisma in the alien-themed roller rink Rock n' Rollers onto 8 track cassette with spiritual advisor/engineering wizard Evan Lawrence on the decks. Their video for "Can You Feel The Evil?" was selected as one of the top ten finalists for NPR's 2019 Tiny Desk contest. The desk in the video was actually an altar populated by a variety of sacred objects. The group also made waves in town by re-establishing the roller rink as a hub for shows from local and regional acts (Machine Girl, Meow Wolf, etc.)
His years in Santa Fe made up one of the most abundant "yes" periods of his life as a musical collaborator. After a memorable 2020 New Years Eve show, Mark and local punk rocker and music journalist Luke Henley exchanged several puns backstage and Luke later invited Mark to join the proto-punk band Sex Headaches on bass. The group peformed on several occassions at Meow Wolf's House of Eternal Returns alongside Protomatyr, with Sick Thoughts, among others. Lead guitarist Ivan Gamboa asked Mark & Luke to join his epicly prolific solo project The Bed Band soon after going on tour with Ty Segall. Together the band recorded We Are The Bed Band as a trio. Around this time Mark also began performing with the late Mikey Rae, who was well known for his zany, absurd, mind-bending cartoons draping the walls of Meow Wolf's House of Eternal Returns.
The Bed Band shared the stage at Meow Wolf with the infamous Ariel Pink (prior to his cancellation & re-emergence) as well as Drugdealer. At one of the shows Mark & Madeline Gartman connected with the legendary Germ's drummer Don Bolles, who invited them to perform at his underground LA hotspot The Hyperion Tavern.
In 2019, The Bed Band performed at the Gnar Fest in LA alongside White Fang, Slut Island, Tomorrow's Tulips and others. Arriving at the venue in a large black suburban SUV many of the other bands seemed concerned that The Bed Band may have been somehow affiliated with the Mexican drug cartel. It was just a rental. This rumor soon disipated as there turned out to be no affiliation whatsoever.
Luke Henley and Mark joined forces on yet another project Microdoser, recording their first EP together at the rehearsal space at Rockin' Rollers on garageband and radioshack microphones. The EP quickly garnered attention from the local community and soonthereafter Paris Mancini (of Psirens) joined on bass and the smash hit video for "Debbie Loves Cops" was made.
The group later toured through Arizona performing alongside The ExBats and recording their follow-up EP Protein Punk with Burger Records mainstay Matt Rendon at Midtown Island Studio in Tucson, AZ.
Around this time, Sex Headaches drummer Ben Brodsky invited Mark to join thrash death metal band Street Tombs on bass, alongside local shredder Damian Jacoby (guitar) and then David McMaster (guitar/co-founder of legendary Santa Fe metal venue The Cave). They all met under the umbrella of the local pizza shop they worked at nextdoor to the "oldest house" in unAmerica. Performing throughout the southwest alongside groups like Toxic Holocaust and Liverpool's Conan everywhere from Colorado to Taos the group quickly established itself as a force within the metal scene. For their next EP Schizophrenic Visions, Street Tombs enlisted local metal engineer Augustine Ortiz and the Oakland-based Greg Wilkinson (often hailed as the Steve Albini of metal) as mixing engineer.
Around the same time Mark was also performing a weekly residency gig with John Francis & The Poor Claires at La Reina, essentially a diametric opposite to Street Tombs style-wise. This group was more of a classic-rock Americana outfit with earthy roots in the vein of early Beatles and JJ Cale. Despite the high level of musicianship in the band, the group did not play jazz (though several members including Greg Butera & Casey Anderson did so outside the band). They all had a lot of laughs to say the least.
Now to zoom out (not zone out) for a bit: As a drummer, Mark established himself as a musical omnivore early on. However at this time he felt that his musical identity was being spread thin by the 7 projects he was involved in all at once. At the urging of his romantic partner and collaborator, photographer Hayley Rheagan, he decided to compile songs and tracks he'd been working on in between rehearsals and gigs into a solo project The Far Heads in an attempt to regain some footing in the realm of his identity. The compilation soon turned into a full-lenth bedroom/weirdo pop album "Plainclothes". Mark and Hayley collaborated on videos for several singles including "Help!" and the colorful paper-animated "Witchcraft LDS".
Plainclothes was released at the outset of the COVID pandemic while on lockdown, around the time that hand sanitizing groceries was standard practice. The record was positively received and felt like a tremendous milestone in Mark's artistic evolution in spite of the chaotic situation ensuing in a hotly polarized society under the grips of a global pandemic and the BLM protests in response to the death of George Floyd.
During the lockdown Mark and Hayley conceived their son Sam Arlo while watching The Walking Dead, which turned out to be oddly prescient. (*disclaimer: after Mark took the SATs in high school he later developed a bad habit of using some of the vocabularly words in common speech. A habit he has undergone countless therapeautic modalities in an attempt to reverse engineer... unsuccessfully).
In the midst of so much global uncertainty and a baby on the way, Mark and Hayley decided to move to Philadelphia to be closer to Mark's family in an attempt to embrace the saying "it takes a village". On Mark's birthday July 17, 2020, the newly established family unit including the pregnant Hayley, world's best/worst corgi Charlie, and feline Nadine, embarked on their cross country drive to the east coast. This was by far the most stressful birthday Mark has ever had.
During Hayley's pregnancy Mark began recording tracks again from the 3rd floor of their Fishtown apartment and releasing them on soundcloud as J Masochist and on his YouTube channel. Samuel Arlo Ettingoff was born in a hospital on February 10, 2021. His mother loves the fact that he is an Aquarius.
Since moving back to the heart of his homeland, Mark has collaborated with likes of Mateo Gloistein (keys) and Philadelphia bass legend Tone Whitfield. He has also recorded remotely with longtime friend and collaborator Dan Kwon, based in Tokyo. In December of 2023, "Ad Libs and Chat Pieces" was released on the prolific experimental moniker hallo tanuki !? on bandcamp.
More to come. Stay tuned, stay calm, stay in-tune, maybe buy a tuner (if need be)
Or don't
Gear
Whatever I can get my hands on
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