MSM recently was able to chat with Mark Bryan.
Mark Bryan lined up his newest single on July 19th, an infectious nugget, "Ain’t Nothing Better", framed by an a capella intro/outro, and alongside a new video. The track is also included on Bryan’s upcoming album of original songs Popped, set for release via Vere Music in early fall. The new song tags on the heels of the well-received second single, an upbeat, ska-influenced tribute to the loss of the musician’s best friend, "To You, My Friend" (June 14th). Both songs follow the lead single, a Beach Boys-inspired tune called Coastin’ and hit the airwaves while Hootie and the Blowfish cross the country on their 45+ city Summer Camp with Trucks Tour. (See tour dates below).
The three songs already released off this album is a fun collection of masterfully arranged feel good music. Check it out here!
MSM:
Thank you for sitting down to chat. It looks like you're between shows on this tour, you had a four or so day gap.
Mark:
Exactly. Making our way back east from our Seattle stop on the tour, and we went to Bozeman, Montana, didn't get to spend much time there, but that was our first stop. And then Mount Rushmore on the way back, which was nice. Was my first time. And it was spectacular. Just spectacular. Highly recommended. And there's a lot of history about it, obviously when you go and there's a nice trail for hiking if you're up for it. And then it's also just the feeling of you get a strong feeling of American history when you're there. I'll just say it that way, not just the history of the actual project of Mount Rushmore, but it's so much more. So you have to kind of experience to see what I'm talking about. But it was great.
And then from there, we drove through the Great Plains and the Badlands and all that too, and made our way to Chicago eventually, and then down to Nashville and onto Birmingham, Alabama, and then back to Nashville. And then I get to go home for a couple days.
MSM:
Where's home?
Mark:
Charleston, South Carolina.
MSM:
I heard you started out with a broadcasting background?
Mark :
Yeah, I studied broadcast journalism at the University of South Carolina. And not only did Darius live on my dorm hall, but he also was a broadcast. So we had two classes together freshman year and lived on the same dorm hall and then started a band. I guess it was meant to be.
Yeah, Darius and I always joke that if it doesn't work out with the music thing, we would try to become Sportscasters.
I was a college DJ for a while at WUSC, the college radio station there at the campus, and it was a really good one. Paid attention to what was going on nationally with college radio at the time, and we had a nice playlist. It was good. It was a good thing to be a part of. I learned a lot of really great music at a very formative time.
Speaking of- this band right here, the Rainmakers [shows t-shirt].
They came out while I was in school playing music on college radio station. Great example.
MSM :
Let's talk about your new work. It says that it had Beach Boys inspiration.
Mark :
One of the songs I did some loopy parts and my engineer put some effects on it that sounded a little beachy. And then I also just did a lot of harmony layering on that song. I don't think the first thing you hear when you hear the song is Beach Boys, but I think, I think you can definitely hear the inspiration there.
It's also a song called “Coastin'” and it's about being on the coast and growing up. And so that in itself is Beach Boys anything, I guess. But anyway, it's a fun song. It feels good to listen to it and play it still. It feels fresh. It's cool.
MSM :
Yeah, I enjoyed it. It was the first group that came through this season at PNC (NJ) that we caught - the Beach Boys. And that was the first time I ever saw them live, and it was fantastic.
Mark :
I got to see them recently too, and they're still great. It's still a really great show.
MSM :
Listening to your songs, I was like, okay, I could see it [the beach boys inspiration]. But yes, it’s fun and I enjoyed it. It's a fun, happy type vibe going on.
Mark :
It's definitely a feel good song. I'm not sure where it came out of, but I knew it was good when I was coming up with it, it felt right.
I think the hook of Coastin’, that's something that, that's one of those things that comes out of the ether. You don't know why that comes to you, but you're like, oh, that's cool. And so I kind of just built the arrangement off that. It is kind of fun.
MSM :
I really enjoy it, it's good. I noticed it was different than your other solo work. Do you think you're going to continue along that path?
Mark :
I guess what's happening is that as I grow older, I grow musically, and I learn different instruments and then therefore songs come to me in a different way than they did before. And so I'm just adapting to that and I'm trying to take the songs as I hear 'em in my head and put 'em on tape the best I can. And it's nice working with an engineer who can then take another step past that. And he's creative too, and so we have some fun doing that kind of stuff. Like I was telling you with the loop, I made the loop, but then he put this cool effect on it that I wouldn't have thought of. It's just that kind of, and so I think I'll just keep doing that, which just following sort of my muse that wherever it leads me and growing as a musician helps.
And so I'm playing a lot of different instruments now and it's possible to make arrangements in different ways because of that. Then I brought a horn section in for three tracks on this album just because of the songs called for it. It's not because I was like, Hey man, I'm going to become a big horn band now or anything. It's, that's where these songs led me and I really liked the direction of it. So it's nice to, but I picture it as if I was to do a concert of my solo stuff, I would do little bits of each thing over the years, and some of that would include the horns and a bigger sound, and some of that would be a more stripped down punky thing like I used to come from. And so I like that it's all over the map a little bit stylistically, and I'll just keep growing with that as it feels natural to me.
As I always say about this stuff, every time I put out an album and release new songs, I wish it was, some of these songs were on a new Hootie album. I love making Hootie records and I hope we get to make another one at some point. It's a bummer that we didn't get to make one for this current tour that we're on, but the tour is still AMAZING, so it's fine with me, but moving forward, I would love to be able to make a new record with the guys at some point. And so that's always sort of my first priority. And then when I have a bunch of songs and we're not doing anything active with the band, I'm always looking for ways to, how do I put this out? How do I get people to hear this? Then you never know. Maybe somebody records one of them someday or one gets put in a movie or something cool like that. You just never know what, but you got to release 'em for that kind of stuff to happen.
So yeah, man, I think I'm always going to be active musically with creating, and if it's not my own stuff, I like to produce other artists too. I like to find up and coming artists or already establish artists that I can help them create something out of wherever they're at artistically at that time. And I'm getting pretty good at that.
MSM :
Actually. I had a question with that.
For artists that are already part of a group, like you, and they do want to go do some solo stuff, what type of advice would you give them?
Mark :
I can only tell you from my standpoint, because I think the dynamics between all bands are different, but from my standpoint, I love being in my band. And like I said earlier, I wish all my stuff was going towards Hootie projects, but when I realized that we're only going to make an album every couple of years, or now maybe every five or 10 years or whatever, I started having that feeling of how do I do something with these songs other than leave them on my hard drive in my studio, I can’t in good conscience, just leave 'em sitting on the, and so I started coming up with ways to put 'em out. It wasn't so much about having a solo career as it was for me, this is just, again, this is my personal experience, but it was less about having a solo career and more about giving the songs a life, giving birth to the songs. If you put 'em out there, then things can start to happen. And over the years and after five albums, now it's developing into a solo career because the band Hootie is less active. So now I say, okay, well could I do shows as a solo artist? Yes. And that would be fun. And I have enough content to pull from now after five records. And then I can also do Hootie material at those shows too. Darius does three or four Hootie songs in his solo set, so why not?
MSM :
Do you have any plans for that to go on a solo tour?
Mark :
I don't. I hadn’t made any plans for it, but the less active Hootie is, the more likely it is that I'll do some stuff like that. But again, my priority is always like, Hey, I'd rather make a new Hootie record and do another Hootie tour. That's where my head's at usually.
MSM :
Can you describe the creative process, the differences between creating with Hootie versus your solo?
Mark :
Yeah. It's the obvious things of when you're doing a solo thing, you kind of make all the decisions yourself. And again, this is, I think it's important to point, there's never any right or wrong with this. It's art. You're creating art, so when you're solo, it's me and my engineer making almost all of the decisions on the direction of a song or an arrangement or anything like that. And then with the band, with our band, it's been such a healthy process of getting in early on each other's songs and everybody's input makes the song a little better than it would've been beforehand. And so I like to bring in songs unfinished to the group and let them add their ideas to it and that kind of thing, because it almost always makes for a stronger result when everybody's input is on it. And again, there's no right or wrong. So it's not necessarily that it's better one way or the other, but it's always going to be something different than what I would've done myself once those guys get their input on it. And I love that process. I think it's the coolest thing. It's, it's like a gift from the universe when everybody can put their input on it and it just grows.
MSM :
Can you think of one that you did where it just totally spiraled and you weren't expecting that from the group?
Mark :
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. A great example. There's a song on Fairweather Johnson called Honeyscrew, and Dean was playing this really weird baseline, but it was cool. And we were calling it Screw That was the working title. It sounded screwy like SKR. And I started playing this guitar riff along to it. Eventually I found the little riff that fit, and it sort of made it make a little more sense as, oh, this could be a song, but we still didn't know it. This kind of just riffing. And then Soni started playing along and it was in like three, four, a weird time signature, but he found a groove to it. So next thing you know, we're grooving on this really weird piece of music and we bring it to Darius and he's like, man, I dunno. I'm not sure. And it was hard too. It was kind hard, which he wasn't against Hard Rock. He wasn't necessarily feeling this one yet. And this was all written when we were in Bermuda doing a song thing, all writing a writing camp in Bermuda. So it came out of that, and then we all went home, and then a couple months went by and there's this long story that happened to me where some, it's a ghost story of this house that Soni and I were living at. And from that came the line, is it me or Is It Honey? And Honey was the ghost in the house. And I started singing that over the music, over the weird music that we wrote from Dean's song. Is it Me? Is It Honey? And when I brought that to Darius, he was like, ah, now we can make a song. And then he wrote all the other lyrics off of that. And so everybody's input, Dean started the song, then Soni and I added to it to make the music feel like it could be an actual song. And then I finally found one line, I found one line that worked, and then he wrote a hundred lines after that. And it's a great song, and it's one of those ones where it would've never happened without any one of those people. There's no way. It would've just been some weird idea on a tape somewhere. It's true. I love that. Yeah.
MSM :
How do you find balance between your time between doing your solo and the Hootie stuff?
Mark :
Well, it is either one or the other. I'm only doing anything solo when we're not doing the Hootie stuff. So I made this record last fall before the tour, and now I'm just releasing the songs while we're on tour. Okay. So I'm not doing anything active other than posting and letting people know it's out there. That's all I can do. I'm doing as much as I can with all of that. And I'm working on playlisting and doing publicity opportunities like this, and thank you very much for having me today. And I do a mailing list to let everybody know, all my friends and family and everybody here's the new videos, and then they share it. Hopefully.
MSM :
How many songs do you think you're going to be on this album?
Mark :
It's 12. 12, yeah. Yeah. So I cut it all before I left. It was mixed and mastered by May. It was done by May.
MSM :
Do you have a dream venue you haven't played yet? Or if you don't, because you've done a lot already, which was your favorite?
Mark :
Wow. There's some really beautiful spots along this tour, and one of them is Saratoga Springs in New York. It's performing arts center called SPAC and it's in a state park, and so you can hike around it and it's just the most serene setting.
So that's one of the great venues, but it's hard to list them all. Red Rocks is obviously an amazing venue. We didn't get to play it on this tour, but we have in the past. And I went and saw Avett Brothers and the Daws. I went to that show before our Denver at Fiddler's Green, which is also a beautiful amphitheater. And a lot of these amphitheaters, like Fiddler's Green and SPAC are the typical seats and then the grass lawn behind it. And I mean, 90% of where we're playing are those kind of places.
Every day we bring the dogs out, running up on the hill and the perfect for the dogs. This is a great place for the dogs to run. So yeah, it's been a great tour.
I should mention that we played Fenway Park in Boston. Which is not traditionally a music venue. They're doing a lot of really cool shows. I think Foo Fighters played there the other night, and we did that for the first time. And what an amazing feeling that was. I mean, just not like any other place I could tell you. And Boston crowds are always as good as it gets.
MSM :
What are you currently listening to on your playlist?
Mark :
Wow. Tell you right now. Let's see. Oh, okay. Well, my cool playlist is from last year, but then I made this recently. I made an eighties college radio playlist. The idea is to do play all these songs from college radio that I got turned onto back then, and then these bands, and then you eventually see that this was the genesis of a bunch of the music. It was big hits in the nineties. It was when alternative, it was actually alternative before it became, and obviously REM was led the way with that. They had three or four records that were on this college radio level before they busted out to a national level. And U2 kind of same thing, but there's a whole bunch of other acts, Midnight Oil, and I'm going through right now, Hüsker Dü, HooDoo Gurus, the Reivers who Hootie covers a lot, the The Smithereens, Red Hot Chili Peppers before the nineties, like the early Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fishbone, The Smiths, this kind of thing, Violent Femmes, the list goes on and on.
And so I'd like to put together a show that's almost like a little Stevens Underground Garage kind of thing, but for eighties College Alternative Rock and the show, the idea behind the show is to present how that music paved the way for what then became pop music in the nineties, the grunge and everything else that came out of the nineties, us and Third Eye Blind and all the rest. You can almost hear it happening before. It's kind of cool. I just want to make a show maybe that that where it'll be like half hour segments or hour long segments about certain eras from the eighties that influenced me when I was listening to college radio and DJing on college radio. That's the new playlist. Yeah, it's retro. Let's, and I do have a playlist of new songs too, like I said, that I made last year with my daughter, and it might've been two years ago now, but she turned me onto so much cool new music. She's just now 20. We made the playlist together when she's probably 18 or maybe had just turned 19, I don't know. But I think it was summer when she was 18, because at first it was the Hot Girl summer playlist. She allowed me into the Hot Girl summer group that summer, which was cool. But no, because I was turning her onto some cool new music too, and she was like, oh dad, what's that? That's cool. I like that. And then she would play something, I'd be like, oh my God, that's really cool. Next thing you know, we made a playlist together, which is really fun.
MSM :
Do you have a memorable moment or experience from your solo career that stands out?
Mark :
Oh, I'll tell you something cool. That happened about a year and a half ago. I got invited by my idol, John Riggins. He played the running back for the Redskins, and my dog is named after him, got dog named. And I got invited to perform for a USO event for a lot of the brass in DC. And it was such an honor, and I went and got to do three songs. And so that was super cool. And I was wearing a tuxedo, and while was, before it was a big deal, and it was in DC at the harbor there, the national harbor in front of a lot of brass, like I said. And dude, Bootsy Collins was there, I don't know why, but Bootsy Collins Funkadelic was there and everybody, it was black tie and he had on a colorful tuxedo, but he still had star glasses and the hat and everything.
He was a sight, and I performed, but then I got my picture with him and he was like, you were great, man. Great to meet you. He was super cool. Couldn't have been cooler, but I got to perform in front of Bootsy and all this military brass. And then five of the former Redskins that I was a huge fan of growing up that I idolized The Hogs were there basically all these classic names for the Redskins. So that was a pretty big deal. Yeah, that was a pretty big moment as a solo artist to get to do that.
Mark :
See. Yeah, I don't have many, like I said, it's never been, never focused too hard on touring solo or trying to make more out of my releases than what I can. I just do what I can. And for me, it's about getting the songs out there. That's my goal.
MSM :
That makes sense. Do you have any messages through your solo work that you want to convey?
Mark :
There seems to be a little bit of theme, two themes that I've noticed when I put the collection of songs together. I don't think I would've been aware of this until I heard them as a collection. And one is this sort of, we need to acknowledge truth. We all need to acknowledge the same truth. There can't be two separate versions of the truth. And so I think it's a scary place we're going with that in our society. And I think there's a few of my songs that sort of point to that, Hey, this is how important it's for us to be able to acknowledge the same facts that are as truth. And then we work from there about our differences. And so that seems to be something I keep coming back to three or four songs maybe. And then there's the same thing with this other theme of just light and always working towards and moving towards light.
And it seems to keep popping up in my poetry and in my songs, and I know it sounds obvious, but I'm doing innovative takes on that theme. And again, I didn't set out to do it that way. It's just how I'm writing right now. And as I look back on it, a collection that's a theme that as a collection, that's a theme that is popping up. So that's probably the two things to answer that question. And you might hear more that I'm not even aware of. Once people listen you like, oh, this theme seems, oh, and I'll like, oh really? Yeah, maybe. Right. None of it's intentional as far as an overarching theme, but anytime you write a body of work over a span of time, there's going to be some theme in there, whether you probably, if you're writing, honestly. Anyway.
MSM:
I have some silly questions for you.
If you or your music were an ice cream, what flavor would it be and why?
Mark :
I would say how there's those things and you go down the line, baby, just go down the line. But I'm definitely more from a rock background, so maybe the base of it is a rocky road that's at the base, and then you put all these different other flavors on top of the rocky road and you.
MSM :
And okay, here's another one. If your music was a holiday, what would it be called? And how would you celebrate?
Mark :
Well, the first thing that came to mind has already been invented and it's Festiv us for the rest of us. No, let's see. That's a pretty good actually because I want my music to be festive. I want people to feel good. And I guess if I look back, it's not all that. Some of it's pretty intense and serious or whatever here and there sometimes. But I would call it, let's see, Song Day. Song day. And everybody gets to express themselves and we find everyone's sort of, they can release their inner demons and find their inner message from coming up with songs and everybody gets to do it on that one day. And they get to experience what I experience all year long on that one day it's Song Day.
Yeah. Because to me it's all about that process, that creative process. It's not about being as ascribing to some kind of style or genre or wanting to sound a certain way. It's about expressing yourself. And if that comes across as a ballad during that time, then it's a ballad. But if it comes across as a big rocker, then fucking rock it out, get the go for it. And so it's all about the song and where it leads you. Song day. We come up with way more creative holiday, but I wanted to get my explanation across. And the best way to do that is just be simple and call it Song Day for now.
Thank you for asking me about the new album and the process behind it. Hopefully people get something out of that. The main thing for me is to make people feel what I feel when I listen to my favorite songs in music. And it gives me that chills, and that's what I'm going for when I spend a bunch of time in the studio trying to make timeless, ageless recordings. And when I'm writing from my heart and messages were coming through me or, but I'm trying to convey something to make you feel something. And so anybody that takes the time to listen, I just really appreciate it. That's all I can ask.
MSM :
I had one last question. Your cover album, the Gumballs, what was that inspiration?
Mark :
Oh yeah. So there's this neighborhood outside of Charleston called The Old Village of Mount Pleasant. And I lived there for several years and my kids were really young, and there's a drug store in the neighborhood, like an old school, like fifties drug store where you go get ice cream and hot dog, the whole kind of thing. You sit at the counter and under the counter is chewed gum stuck up under the counter. Since the fifties, probably, I don't know how long people have been doing it. The entire counter is covered. If you look under, there's not one space of counter that you could see left on the bottom. It's all gum. And it's funny and it's a great story. And so my creative mind always thought, well, it'd be really fun to have a gumball machine on the front of your album, which is really eye catching. Anyway, all these big circular, colorful balls and then on the back have the chewed gum.
And so I did it, and then once I got the photos taken and everything, it came to me to call, it Popped like the gum on the front is not yet chewed and the gum on the back is already chewed and therefore popped. I think my son was talking, Kenny was talking about, you got to do something with pop if you're going do that. I was like, oh, that's a great idea. So it came to me to call it popped, and I love it. And I think it's really eye catching. Like I said, when you see those gumballs. Then when you have the vinyl or the CD and you flip it over, it'll be all the chewed gum.
MSM :
I'm looking forward to hearing the other songs.
Mark :
Thanks. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, they're all coming slowly but surely. I’ve got three of them out now, and the video for the third one, "Ain't Nothing Better" .It features the dogs, so definitely want to check that one out. But anyway, thanks everybody. Please give it a listen and please share it for me. Appreciate it. Thanks for your time.
MSM :
Thank you for your time today. Take care. Bye!
Images taken 8.2.24 during the Hootie & the Blowfish Summer Camp with Trucks Tour 2024 at PNC Bank Arts Center (Holmdel, NJ)
Catch Hootie and the Blowfish on tour this Summer/ Fall season!
August
8- Somerset Amphitheater, Somerset WI
9- Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre, Chicago IL
10- Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy WI
15- Blossom Music Center, Cleveland OH
16- Freedom Mortgage Pavilion, Philadelphia PA
17- Jiffy Lube Live, Bristow VA
23- Fontainebleau Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV
24-Fontainebleau Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV
29- Colonial Life Arena, Columbia SC
30- Colonial Life Arena, Columbia SC
September
5- Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater, Wantagh NY
6- Empower Federal Credit Union Amphitheater at Lakeview, Syracuse NY
7- Budweiser Stage, Toronto Canada
12- Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center, Knoxville TN
13- Coastal Credit Union Music Park At Walnut Creek, Raleigh NC
14- Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater at Virginia Beach, Virginia Beach, VA
19- PNC Music Pavilion, Charlotte NC
20- Ameris Bank Amphitheatre, Alpharetta, GA
21- Bon Secours Wellness Arena, Greenville SC
26- MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre Tampa FL
27- VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, Jacksonville FL
28- iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre, West Palm Beach FL
October
12- Riverfront Revival 2024, North Charleston, SC
