This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
at whatever age I learned it, like 10 or 12 or whatever.


Mark, who are your earliest musical influences, espe- cially on guitar, besides BB King? Well, the Beatles and Jimi Hen- drix ‘cuz that’s what my brother liked, you know. And those two artists I probably played a whole lot, and whatever albums we had around the house. We had, not stuff guitar stuff but stuff like the Temptations. I would pick that stuff up and listen to it but gui- tar-wise, it was definitely The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. And there was the country stuff that my mom listened to, a lot of George Jones and Tammy Wynette and a lot of bluegrass stuff because my uncle was a bluegrass musician from Pikeville, Kentucky.


You were out playing a lot early on. I read somewhere that you were playing professional gigs even at 16 years old. Is that true? Yeah, I started singing around with my brother and a guy named Jack Willup and we started doing a few gigs when I was about 14 or 15. Just a few. And then when I was 16 I was in a band called Diamonds and Rust which was out in Newark, Ohio. We played all the local clubs and VFW’s and the same places that everybody still plays at, and in ar- mories and stuff like that. So I started play- ing quite a bit with them, just about every weekend within the last couple of years of high school. You know, I got to playing sports. I was really into basketball but I started devoting all my time to playing music you know, later in high school.


Were you doing a lot of country music back then, like country bands and stuff?


Not ‘til after high school, and then I kind of got into doing that. Like I said, you know I had a family band with my brother and mom and we played. We just did a variety of stuff. We played a little bit of rock and roll but we did a lot of country back then ‘cuz that’s what she did, you know.


Right. I kind of went through a phase where we were doing a lot of Ricky Skaggs when Ray Flack was playing with him, so I was trying to learn that kind of stuff, and then me and my brother played some trio gigs and stuff like that. We did just a variety of different stuff, you know.


Your brother has some sort of connec- tion to Pure Prairie League, right? He was in a band in Columbus called J.D. Blackfoot.


Oh yeah, I remember them They were a pretty big original band here in Columbus and real popular in St. Louis after that. He recorded on that Ultimate Prophecy album, played bass on it and had this song on it that Craig Fuller sang because Craig Fuller was in that band. When Craig got ready to do the Pure Prairie League thing, I think he was


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72