Mark & Fish rock Sylvania!

Fish is a musician friend of Mark's –go here
http://www.myspace.com/scottfishsongs


Mark Mikel "It was a normal fun night out at a dive bar. Nothing more. It was nice hanging with friends I don't see often enough. I'm lucky Fish likes to perform so much because I got to just sit in the crowd most of the time. I only played about 5 or 6 songs by myself. The rest of the time when I was up there I was just embellishing the songs Fish sang."


Mark Mikel "I'm really done with playing acoustic guitars in bars. I've already been fired from virtually every club in town anyway. I've done it for years and I've always felt uncomfortable with it ...and that made me really lousy at it, I suppose. It's more for performers who don't mind top40 music and don't mind intoxicated people telling them to play American Pie, Hotel California, Brown Eyed Girl (I wouldn't play them anyway). I'm not saying those are bad songs (they are actually very good songs) but they've become anthems for people who don't really enjoy or like to think about music. There are a few other songs I could add to that list.People who really get into music aren't generally out at these kind of bars anyway. They're more likely home jamming to their CD or album collection. There are exceptions of course. I've met a lot of great people while gigging. The patrons themselves would usually be a handful of friends plus some others who came back enough to become familiar. Still I could never make a bar owner happy.To be a human jukebox, you have to not care about music at all. You have to have a book in front of you so you can happily play the new James Blunt or Dave Matthews hit to keep your job. I'm the only solo performer in Toledo that I know of who never sang out of a book. I only sang songs that were so deeply embedded in my psyche that I could just feel every word and chord. Mostly Beatles, Monkees, Who etc...I rarely want to share my own songs in these settings. It would be different if I wrote folk songs. But I write rock songs that shouldn't be aired as folk songs to the first time listener in a loud environment. Once someone's familiar with the recorded version, it's easier for them to relate to the unplugged version.I did it for the money basically. I'm hoping I don't need it that badly to have to go back. I never had the ambition to be a folk singer. It was nice to keep the callouses on my fingers and my voice in shape but, if I just stay prolific in the studio, I can have that and more."